The Lord of the Rings Online Previews

GamersInfo.net and LotroSource.com have both kicked up their own hands-on previews of Turbine’s The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. A snip from GamersInfo’s article:

Gameplay is straight forward with the use of the mouse and keyboard. When you have something targeted, a nice feature is that there is a small dotted line to indicate which direction your target is at. This saves you from rotating the camera in a full circle to figure it out. The menus on the screen can be moved around and placed wherever it is most convenient. Your inventory is quite large, and with an accessible bank, mule-characters shouldn’t be needed. There is the ability to craft once you gain a few levels. Depending on the craft, you will need to go to the specific areas for your craft, such as find the oven for baking, the forge for. forging. Combat involves clicking on the enemy and it’s as simple as that. Special abilities line the bottom of your screen that take up stamina when used. There seemed to be a good variety of enemies to encounter, but at the beginning it was wolves and hogs. Different colored bars indicate whether or not the enemy is neutral or aggressive to help you determine how close you want to get. In the presence of (pure evil) your vision starts to distort, putting you in a state called dread. If you stay in this state for long, you will start to lose health and your character begins to get weary. However, there are no penalties for dying, a feature I particularly like. Not that I continuously go out and get myself killed, but, well, accidents happen.

And a snip from LotroSource’s article:

More quests than one could ever hope for await. Turbine’s Middle-earth flows very smoothly. Along with your characters main story arc, the quests around you are all aimed at your level and the level of the tasks in the area to be completed. Finishing these quests opens more quests that gradually get harder as your character progresses in level. Eventually, you will be given a task that will lead you to another area of the map where you will find many more quests, now geared for your higher level and the level of the new area. This method of progression is repeated over and over in the game.