A Second Look at LotRO

[mven]

I typically start out playing most every game fairly casually at least in the sense that I don't really rush through it. I do however tend to invest a lot of time playing. Doing all of the quests, dicking around w/ tradeskills, standing around bullshitting with people rather than rush rush rushing to level, etc. I think my first 60 had something like 24 days played at that time? I did get into a bit of a hardcore playstyle in WoW for a few months just to try out the end game raiding bullshit but it really wasn't for me. It's not so much the requirements in terms of play time as it is the requirement to play at specific times.

Back to lotro... I decided the burglar would be a bit of a pain in the ass to solo with so I rolled up a loremaster. These start off insanely slow but look like they may pick up a bit by 20ish. I have this one up to 10 and am amusing myself running through some of the elf quests. My guardian is up to 13 nearly 14 but I am playing this one with some friends so keeping it at the same level as their characters. I have done some dicking around with the tradeskills etc but I get the feeling they will be more like WoW's where you are pretty much stuck at a certain level until you raise your "adventuring" level. So I don't think you can tradeskill as a side gig but I could be wrong.

Has anyone done much w/ the monster PvP that can kinda half ass explain how it works? I made a monster and ran around but I have no clue what I am actually supposed to be doing and whether or not you play as a monster fighting other player's characters or if you play as a monster fighting other monsters played by characters or how the hell it works. You can be a spider though which amuses me.

[Mordiceius]

In pvmp, it's basically like Alterac Valley.

PvMP is a side thing and even Turbine said that it was an afterthought because Tolkien Enterprises didn't want ANY pvp in the game. But players made it clear that if there is no PvP at all, the game would probably flop, so they added PvMP