Yes, I also noticed and appreciated greatly the full set of bags from the get-go. And the Deeds and titles thing seemed nice.

But I’m tired of games where your character swings mindlessly at your target doing base damage while you’re waiting for your little skill icons to light up again so you can do an attack for base damage plus. And I’m tired of games where the only differentiation between your character’s abilities and the abilities of another member of your class is how much money you had when it came time to buy up your next round of skills (and of course that small difference will be rectified after a couple more quests and you have enough cash to buy the rest of your skills).

No, I didn’t even get to the level cap during the World Tour beta. So maybe I haven’t seen all it has to offer (the monster play, for example). But it didn’t snag me in the first seven levels. It didn’t show me anything in my initial experience with it to make me care enough to give it more of my time (not to mention my money).

I love Tolkein’s world as much as the next 2nd level Tolkein Nerd, but the license didn’t do anything for me. The whole “fetch this, kill that” game-play model felt particularly jarring to me, set as it was in Tolkein’s epic creation. And Tolkein’s fantasy world has been so heavily borrowed from by every other fantasy game ever that nothing in LoTRO felt new to me. It all felt very much like I’d seen it all a hundred times before.

Several members of my regular gaming crew have hopped on board this title, and that still wasn’t enough to convince me. I let the 10 bucks a month ship sail, so that means I’m never, ever picking it up. Ah well. It looks like interesting things are on the horizon. I can wait. Tell us some more about the Gods & Heroes and the Warhammer, Uncle Zonky!