is this game well populated thinking of buying : LOTRO - Discussions

as title says

from personal, almost daily playing of the game, if you mean are the north american severs well populated....

No, not like they were, plus the game seemed to change direction in its first expansion in Nov 2008 moving underground adding MAJOR time sink equipment changes

after its third expansion, in dec 2009, the game seems to again be focused on at least playing in the outdoors again but recent changes seem to indicate turbine is aware of the smaller player base:

instead of adding any more 12 or 24 man raids the game's basic group is mostly 3 man now where before it was 6 man

a new game mechanism: skirmishes while having 6-3-1 man options and now 2 man options is usually done solo to maximize the new in-game barter system skirmish marks which cannot be traded, each player has to earn his own to barter for gear/etc

the first book can now be soloed where in the past you did many of the quests solo then reaching a quest which HAD to be done by a group, these can now be done solo (or by any number)

there ARE a very small amount of new players (judging by the questions in ooc) but most lower level characters are storage/crafting alts/mules and now players wanting to do the new solo epic book line from scratch, these players rarely group as they are going for speed while

YOU want:

to savor the middle earth, walk in the shire where bilbo, frodo, and sam did, visit bag-end, then maybe the lands of the dwarves in ered luin, the elves in celendon...see strider, butterbur, nob at the prancing pony, get a bit bigger to see the spendor of the last homely house where elrond dwells

to read every word of every quest given and find the answer yourself (play with moron mode quest tracker OFF on first character)

and most of the people around you will not want to wait for you to do that....

but give the 10 day trial a shot: http://www.lotro.com/trial/

or buy a disc

Shadows of Angmar new $1 used .01
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000GR9P76/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

Mines of Moria new from $6 used from $4.10
http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Mines-Moria-Pc/dp/B001FS7FE0

the game is your basic quest driven mmorpg

killme x number of those

go to and fetch me that

for 65 levels with the epic quests being a bit harder in addition to killing or fetching you must keep X alive, (X = suicidal person, who will turn 2 feet from freedom to run 10 feet to throw them selves on a group of mobs wanting to destroy X, but whom had not noticed X until the suicide run)

lotro is a game where before you HAD to group, and when I did it yeah maybe 70% are just so so players, they helped you (and themselves do a MUST GROUP quest, maybe 25% are jerks the bane of a pug, but that last 5% might become really great friends and that's one of the only reasons I get on to say hey to 2-3 left out of almost 30 from the preceding years, they stopped logging on...

almost any entity that accepts advertising $ has given lotro an award, or the ones just requiring a vote had been begged for by the game moderators (and prob the alt posters they keep) so lotro has racked up a large number of awards

I forgot look at the new player forum at the turbine (main NA server forum)

new players/free trial forums
http://forums.lotro.com/forumdisplay.php?f=159

first impressions sub forum
http://forums.lotro.com/forumdisplay.php?f=120

since I might be jaded or biased (for example admin likes turbine, for me they are the only game maker beneath sony) check out what other new players have said

Id say it has a good community.

true but WE are the community:) those that risked it back in 2007 and gave them 199 for lifetime

all the people I talk with are lifetime they cant afford to go elsewhere and turbine cant seem to afford free updates like evendim, annuminus, tal bruinen, goblin town, forochel, eregion like they did in the past

march's update outside of crafting took 3 hours with no new lands and they STILL had to beta test that teeny update....