Let me preface this review with a bit of history – I'm not a Lord of the Rings fan or Tolkien fan in general. The Hobbit was good enough, but a bit too droll for me. I read Lord of the Rings before the movies, because the trailers looked good. However, what I found was anything doing with the hobbits was way too boring, and it all felt like one giant nature walk instead anything of real importance. However, did like the movies, so take that (though I didn't think they all deserved to win the Oscar, just the last one that rightfully did). That now said, I must tell you I'm absolutely in love with The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, and after tirelessly searching for a MMORPG to call my own, I believe I have now truly found it.

THE STORY SO FAR
The box says it best, and it is fair to say that if you've read the book or seen the movies, you'll have a good idea as to what you can expect. As for what the box says:

"The War of the Ring has commenced: as the fellowship embarks on its quest to destroy the one ring, you must defend the free peoples against Sauron's evil minion, the Nazgul Witch King. Adventure solo or forge fellowships, battle hideous monsters, and rise to fame in the only massively multi-player online game based on the books of J.R.R. Tolkien."

Depending on the character race you pick, you'll start off with an intro scenario to get you accustomed to the play and controls of the game. The nice thing about these intros is how they overlap, for example, when I went to this mine one time, I saw on a stone bridge a troll that had been turned to stone by the light. How did the troll get that way? By playing through the intro of another character, I actually got to see the troll chase Gimli, and then it all ended when Gandalf himself showed up and saved the day by making the light come through.

Once the intro is done, you'll find yourself in a more customary intro world, where beginners will find themselves, and meet the next level of things they'll need to master, such as taking quests, leveling up their skills with their trainers, buying weapons and armor, and other such tasks. The two intro lands offer different quests, enemies, and types. The lands are split with elves and dwarves going to one together, and hobbits and humans going to the other. After you complete the main story quest for these intro lands, you'll then flash away to the next part of the world, where you are finally in the open and get to go wherever you want now. I particularly love the intro lands, as they'll help you level up five, six, or seven levels just by doing quests and battling enemies you come across.

And it is the quests which is ultimately the greatest thing about the game, because not only did I really enjoy reading them, but unlike other games of the same genre, quests give you a ton of XP, and are a big reason why you'll level up relatively quickly, and won't need to grind away on boar after boar after boar, getting tired and bored and ultimately losing favor with the game. Though many quests are simple fetches, you'll also get story driven quests, which move you along in step to the big story happening in the books.

GAMEPLAY
MMORPGs are all about solo and multiplayers coming together, so no reason to write up two different sections. Needless to say, you'll see other players playing at the same time as you. You'll form up fellowships to take on missions together. And you'll even be able to have friendly sparring matches with each other, or actually battle each other as both a hero and evil monster of Sauron.

You'll start off by picking one of the four main classes from the books, which are that of man, hobbit, elf, and dwarf. Next, you'll pick what class you want your character to be, though if there are certain classes you want to be, you'll need to be mindful of your race, as not everyone can be everything. You've got your tanks of the group in the form of Guardians and such, the long range nukers like the Hunter with their bow, the group controllers like Lore-masters, and the healers in the form of the Minstrels just to name a few. You'll then go through some physical traits to determine their look, pick their sex (except for dwarf, since the story goes you can never tell if a dwarf is a man or woman cause they all look the same), and then name then. Once all that is done, off to the intros you go.

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