I dont know what all you guys are crying about honstly, come to Australia and live with what we have.

All our internet is capped. The largest cap you can get is 80gb I believe but it is a huge monthly fee, the average cap is 12gb - 20gb and that on average costs us about $50 - $100 a month depending on speed.

Now onto speed, Dial up here is still a very real option, they still offer you the 56kb/s connection and you will be suprized at how many people take it. The average speed that 70% of people have is 1500/ 256, and the fastest you can get atm in Australia is 25mb/5mb and that speed is only aviable in very select areas.

So you guys even after these caps get implmented will still have it much better then we do down here.

The quest was gated by a 20k quest hand in system yes, the hand in though is different per player as the quests it gives out is determined by what craft skill you have also you can do a fishing quest which is easy to complete so each day you can do multipul hand ins as there was no quest cool down. Although 20k seems like alot Brandywine had the quest hand turnins done 5 days after bk7 went live elid had them done 6 days after the book went live.

So to answer your question yes the raid was gated by quests and as you can see it does not take long to get 20k turn ins.

Hey,

First off lotro does split their regions, like wow they have higher level mobs in different areas so you are forced to level up to experience that content. In all honesty though its not hard to level at all. Apart from the higher level mobs the world is seamless and you can enter any zone at any time but beware you may get slaughtered if you go into the really high level areas. To enter the mines them self you need to be level 48+ as you need to do a quest to actually gain access to the mines.

What do players do at cap level, there are many things to do like in all MMO's. You can craft, but to be honest they have kinda stuffed it up with the expansion, who knows where it will go from where its at at the moment. Its not completely bodged but not as good as it's former days.

There is also the lotro version of pvp which is called PVMP. Its sort of like DAOC style of keep raiding. There is one area dedicated to PVMP where you can play as Freeps (your main character) or Creeps (once you reach level 10 on your main character you can create a level 60 monster). Depending on the time zone and what server you are on the pvp action is usually pretty fun. Most nights is 24man raid vs 24man raid which can get very interesting at times as some nights its more like 60 vs 30.

As for raids there are raids and instances and plenty of them. At the moment in game you have your choice of Solo instance, 3 man instances, 6 man instances or the 12 man raids and one 24 man raid. Most of the instance content is at end game which you need to be 54+ to do but there is a fair bit in the early game but it is a bit tougher to find a group for. Off the top of my head there are currently (including low and high level instances)

15: 6man instances

5: 3man instances

6: solo instance

2: 12man raids

1: 24 man raid.

Now with all that said turbine has also promised that with the release of their next big update coming very soon the addition of two more 12 man raids a new instance cluster of 4 - 6 six man instances a whole new set of 3 man instances lots of new solo instances a new region many bug fixes and enhancements.

As for money sinks there are not that many money sinks but saying that its not exactly extremely easy to accumulate large quantities of cash.

Hope you get a little bit of info out of what I have said.

Hope to see you around Middle Earth :)

I play on the big E and I have noticed a large influx of players to the game, everything is bussling. The content is good although some things are buggy. At the moment there are a fair number of exploits in the instances but they are all getting fixed with bk 7.

There is a lot more to do with the new expansion too which is good and they are also bringing out a boat load of new content with the book 7 update.
Over all I'm very pleased with the X-pac as I feel it has enhanced the game rather than destroy them *cough*TBC*cough*

What keeps me in lotro is the quality of the content and the player base. The content just feel so much more polished and feels like it was made with love. I also run a hardcore raiding kinship filled with the best on the server not only on a skill level but also personalities. I believe that is what keeps me there. Not to mention all the free content that is constantly released + the very high quality patches and bug fixes, and the dev's ability to respond to the player base and give them things that they want to see in the game. Its all the little things.

If i wasn't in such a good kin or the content was not as polished I would be out of there in a instant. Its just something feels right about LOTRO I just cant place my finger on it.

I remember the good old days of wow. I remember being in the Beta and alpha and all the changes. It was a fantastic game untill TBC changed everything and it all went down the toliet. Was a great game till all the expansions, I wish they brought out a server that was just old school wow before all the expansions. Now that would be fantastic.