As has been mentioned elsewhere, I'm not enjoying the adrenaline rushes with FPSs at the moment, so tried WoW again, got bored, saw the LOTRO 7-day trial, downloaded the 8GB hi-res version and installed. And what great fun it's been.

It's also been mentioned many times I'm not a fan of the films, and don't know a lot about the lore, although place-names and character names ring bells when I see them in-game. Read The Hobbit at school, played the text adventure on the Speccy (was it on the Speccy? memory blurs with age, it seems), thought Jackson did a good job with the movies but was left feeling a bit... bleh about it all.

So, why am I still playing this?

Well, it plays beautifully. For a gamer totally bored with the WoW formula "Hi, I'm a random NPC that you won't care about. Can you go kill 20 Floobles for me so I can give you some money or this lump of coal?" questing, the first moments of LOTRO were dubious times. Reviews on the web had whined it was the same as WoW; kill 20 things, take a parcel here, escort a person there. Well, strictly speaking, it is. But the delivery is different - the delivery is... fun.

The reason for WoW's success and accessibility was it's linear quest paths. You start in a town. You get quests for the area around the town. When you've done all these, somebody in the town will say "Over yonder mountains is my cousin, can you take this to him?". Go to new town. Start quests for that town. Etc etc. This was OK most of the time, but after the tedium of running up and down Stranglethorn Vale, and the later quest requirements of "spend the next 30 minutes travelling across the game world to deliver the bag of fruit to my aunt in Place X", the bubble burst for me pretty quickly. Plus raiding wasn't my cup of tea (want to PvP? play an FPS FFS!!!).

I'm looking to enjoy my gaming time - relax, have some sense of achievement, and just get lost in the game I'm playing. I don't want to spend a 30 minute CoD4 match being embarrassed about the drunk clan leader fucking up which map is next (that was pitiful); I enjoy CoD4 banter on the public servers, but the same-old same-old day after day is beginning to lose interest - I know how to play it, how to get a high score - and the custom maps are available but the servers are few and far between. 2142 rocks, but so totally terrified of the adrenaline rushes after last years "glitch in the Ebow Matrix" that I am keen not to confirm that digital battle-fatigue was a contributing factor.

LOTRO meets my gaming criteria very well. While the quest aspects are similiar to WoW, they are not the same IMHO, and the path I'm taking through the game world doesn't feel forced or linear. I started my ickle hobbit in The Shire, I'm level 32, and I still get quests for The Shire.

LOTRO has a sense of story that WoW only really had on a town-by-town basis, and Star Wars Galaxies only had if you enjoyed the films and dressed up as Boba Fett for fancy-dress parties. I know the overall premise is a bunch of small people and a beardy dude and some chaps with pointy ears all doing something about some ring that will be Very Bad if some special effect or crusty old Hammer vampire get hold of. Or something. Whatever - it doesn't actually matter whether you know any of this or not - the game takes place before the movie Fellowship set off on their adventure, so the movie timeline has yet to happen. What you're left with is the environment and the people, the lands that the books created, and a blank canvas that Turbine have painted their own tale onto.

I think. *shrug*. The point is there are not times where you wonder:

"WTF is Luke doing hiding here?"
"Why haven't the stormtroopers arrested that scoundrel?"
"Why is C3-PO directing traffic between starports?"
"WTF is a gorram spaceship doing in WoW?"

As a non-fan, this works for me. I am becoming interested in the lore at my own pace, in my own way, without having anyone in chat screaming "that never happened". I'm learning about the races, the conflicts, the places - on my own, and with very few pre-conceptions. This makes the journey as much fun as whatever destination I'm aiming for.

LOTRO looks great. I do get some glitches when my card overheats with everything maxed out, but turning one off the post-processing glow effects off for a few minutes resolves this (maybe I should de-crust my PC fan?). The day-night cycle is 2 hours long, so most sessions you'll get a beautiful sunset or sunrise as well as some time wondering "I really hope this forest isn't this scary during the day... maybe I'll come back then". The uber-water effects are beautiful. The music is very very well done - combat-initiated stuff in some areas, zone-related stuff in others. The music alone would have kept me in Rivendell for a long time - enjoying it so much I've made the city my home, just to hear the music when I login.

It is not a heavily populated world - last night about 6pm was the busiest I've seen Bree, one of the main towns, and as today's POTD indicates, I've made it to Rivendell - where I saw maybe 7 or 8 other players. For me this is very cool, as it keeps the shite in the chat channels to a minimum. Last night I found myself sitting on top of one of the stables in Bree just reading the out of character chat channel as what sounded like regular players discussed the pros and cons of recent patches, had a laugh, were respectful of each other. Can't remember that ever happening in WoW or SWG.

It isn't perfect - groups can be annoying, as always; the combat requires only identifying your bestest attacks and then spamming them on the targets, pulling mobs from groups if you have to; the interface is HUGE, and while stuff can be repositioned, resizing it makes the text in the XP bar unreadable; the icons for items are shite - still have to mouseover them all to figure out what's what.

But these are niggles, small gripes. I've got used to the graphics issue (which is my system, not the game), I'm avoiding groups, I've reskinned the interface so it feels like a clunky GUI that must be worked with, and the combat and item "issues" aren't a problem because... I'm just so relaxed when I'm playing it.

More than any other MMO I've put my subs into, this one feels like a single player game. And for me, right now, this is what I want to be playing. If you want to relax, are not a die-hard fanboy and can put the time in, I recommend it.