in my opinion, the game will be a competition to World of Warcraft. It has that potential. In all honesty for the concept of Lord of the Rings Online: The Shadow of Angmar, it has most of the features that World of Warcraft carries. For example, mounts, interface, configuration, instances. But this doesn't stop you from trying it out because the game itself is promising. Not only the game but the developers.

One feature that doesn't seem to be in World of Warcraft (not sure) is how people level compare to Lord of the Rings: The Shadow of Angmar... the leveling in this is based on questing. Now quite often, there's a huge percentage of MMORPGs that base their leveling on killing lots and lots of monsters for your level. Well, questing on this online game is important for people to continue further into the game, there are hundreds of quest from each city and in with the quests is a great storyline. It's not just one story... there's many chapters from stories.

In the quests, there's a range to do. There's instances, soloable missions and normal epic missions. Each type are enjoyable and well worth trying for. My favourite is doing instances. As it gives the action and tense moments as you run in trying to complete a complex quest with a party that you have to work well together to succeed. No co-ordination and you're basically gone...

From viewing the map when I was playing in Closed Beta, it seemed very huge. It wasn't just one huge map that you would look at normally, instead it was set out from city to land to countries. Honestly, it is the biggest map I've ever seen, I wonder what new features will appear in future to fill up them spaces...

Also, the graphics and looks of the game. It's absolutely amazing, check out the ultra graphics and you will be drooling. However, most people recognise the game as too cartoony for the books and films. They are wanting the full detail and realism without seeing any cartoony effect on it but in my opinion, it's fine. The interface of the game isn't too confusing and hard, it's actually well laid out and you can customise the skill bars etc to fit your standards.

As you can tell the game is heavily concentrated on the original book itself, but thats what makes the game exciting. Experiencing new challenges and chapters.

Well, you may think that this game requires you to be a big fan of LOTR. But to me it isn't. Just from this game, you will practically know the whole story but in a slower and exciting way of achieving it. I will be paying for this game in future just so I can experience the full outcome that it will bring towards the MMORPG society and I know it will be fantastic.