Thank god...news! I've done absolutely nothing of memorable note at all, online, in the last few days, so was all set to grind out a half-arsed opinion piece on that whole EVE Online Cheating Devs Fiasco, (of which I know nothing about, having not played EVE in a year, not been in any of the corps mentioned and never having owned a Tech 2 BPo), when Turbine obligingly lift the Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar Closed Beta NDA. Huzzah!

This signals the start of the main phase of the Traditional MMO Launch, as all us blogfolk start having something concrete we can talk about, and now the clanking rollercoaster car that is the MMO, leaves the platform, and methodically ascends to the top of the first rise on the track, launch day. I expect we'll see an Open Beta before long.

Here's the previews:

Kill Ten Rats: "solid game, well put together and fun"

potshot: "will buy this game and play it from day one"

Tobold: "constantly made me very happy"

The Common Sense Gamer: "would drop WoW for this"

And of course, more to come if/when open beta time comes around, but in general, I'm not seeing a bad word said about the game (Apart form some dissatisfaction about players being able to use magic here and there from the purists). Of course comparisons are being made with Vanguard, the most recently released 'other' fantasy MMO, but it seems that even barely out of closed beta, players are reporting LOTRO to be more complete, less gruelling on hardware, more interesting and fun than the supposedly finished and released Sigil offering. Comparisons are also being made with WoW, of course, but then that's just the age we live in these days - "Oh man, Tolkien totally stole Orcs from WoW!!1!", and also with 'Oblivion' regarding Graphical Lavishness.

I'm quite surprised it's going down this well to be honest, given Asheron's Call 2 and Dungeons & Dragons Online, Turbine's two previous offerings, neither of which is widely regarded as a stellar success, but the Tolkien Factor does seem to be helping expectations of this game across the potential fanbase, and perhaps, will grant Turbine considerable 'Indulgences' that an unrelated IP, like Vanguard's, might not enjoy so easily. Real nerds make themselves read not only The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit, but force themselves to wade through the quasi-biblical 'Book of Genesis' that is The Silmarillion too, so already have an unusually high tolerance for the tedious or painful, all of which means Turbine will have to do something really stupid to drive the majority of the interested fans away from Shadows of Angmar. The fact that it's sounding like quite a good game too, is just a bonus!

It does sound good. Of course how the Great Fantasy Epic Saga will stand the ravages thousands of petty powerlevelling smacktalkers all loitering about Rivendell bank, level one hobbit girls - dancing as naked as the game will allow, shouting ridiculous three-letter-acronyms and generally not getting into the spirit of the thing, remains to be seen. I expect Our People can crush even The Lord of the Rings beneath our metagaming heel without feeling too guilty.

I'm such a cynic, and indeed, it's been a long time since I've felt any real enthusiasm for an upcoming new title, instead meandering back and forth over several titles that have been out for years now, but this one does seem to be something that I might actually look forward to again. Anyway...watch the above links for more info...I know I will be.