Me:
I’ll leave the positive and more detailed feedback to people who actually liked the game or who spent a bit more time playing it than I did.

Thank you, Bryan. Yours is the first reply this post has gotten that actually makes any valid points. I’ve been saving the others as fodder for ridicule in a future article.

I have no intention of “updating” my review. Why would I go back and pay money to re-review a game that I, personally, don’t find entertaining?

I still feel it was a mistake to launch a “stress test” beta when they did. The game was way too unpolished to forcefeed to as many people as they did.

I never intended to write a full review the game so much as simply give my general impressions. At the time I wrote this, nobody else had really written much of anything – outside of blindly glowing praise from fanboys who’d swallow anything with the LOTR stamp on it.

Bryan:
Another thing, maybe you should have atleast a decent machine before you review somthing?

Yay for ignorance! Read the bloody review before you complain, eh?

I never once complained of performance issues. My machine is just fine (3.2ghz amd64, 2gb ram, radeon x1900). The game screamed. I’d have mentioned if it performed as poorly as Matrix Online or something. (Back when Matrix Online hit beta, we tested it out on what was bleeding edge hardware at the time. We couldn’t turn graphics up more than halfway w/o incurring general meltdown problems)

I complained because the UI made use of fixed pixel art. That means that the buttons get illegibly small when rendered at a high resolution because the number of pixels is fixed. 50×50 pixel art that is fine at 1024×768 is downright invisible at 1600×1050.

Again, if they’ve solved this problem, WONDERFUL, but I still insist that it was a terrible mistake to stress test the game without first cleaning up such glaring issues.

Bryan, you are correct that the notion that games have to be entirely original in order to have merit is terribly flawed.

Me:
Now, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with copying features from the most successful game ever to hit the genre… but… meh.

I have actually been working on an essay on this very subject, but between work and buying a new house and having a new baby… I’ve had a very hard time getting the essay out the door. Perhaps you’ll understand more if you read it whenever I finish writing the thing.

I never meant to compare the game to WoW, and I certainly never intended to say that WoW was in any way better than LOTRO. People who assume that have obviously never read my complaints about Blizzard’s terrible customer service and complete lack of insight into basic player psychology. Blizzard certainly has no moral high ground for originality – other than the fact that they’ve been developing their own IP since I was in jr high. I am very much looking forward to a few new games forcing Blizzard to improve if they want to remain competitive. However, I have no expectation that LOTRO will be one of those games.

WoW is a decent enough game. It is fun, its main draws are their incredibly gentle initial learning curve and their absolutely enormous amount of content once you get into the game. I have canceled my account three times on them now for one reason or another. I play WoW currently because I have family members who do. I play to spend time with my little brother. And, since I’ve played the game quite a bit, I write about it. Just like I write about City of Heroes or anything else that interests me.