A Fork in the Road

Yep, that's one big fork. Thankfully, my fork isn't so huge. I think.

I've been giving much thought to the state of my blogging lately. Originally, Battle Priestess started as a World of Warcraft blog, and for the most part it has stayed a WoW blog, although over the past few months I've expanded it to be more of a general WoW/MMO/Gaming sort of blog. And honestly... that's not working so well. I need focus, and lately much of my focus has been taken by LotRO. Right now there's a weird sort of co-existence between LotRO and WoW on this blog. While I still enjoy playing both games and want to continue blogging about both of them, I don't care for trying to balance between them in a blog context. I would guess that it's also somewhat disorienting to my readers as well, especially if you're really only interested in one specific game.

So to that end, I'll be splitting off the LotRO content from this site. My new LotRO blog is at The Woodhall Post and I'll be moving most of my LotRO content there. So, if you're a LotRO player, please come visit! I'm really excited about the new blog and the opportunities that I'll have there to go more in-depth on LotRO and Tolkien's Middle Earth. I've also set up a new twitter feed to go with the LotR side of things as well: @WoodhallPost.

But, if you're not a LotRO player, never fear! Battle Priestess will remain here as a WoW blog, as well as a little bit of geekery and general gaming. Cataclysm is coming folks! ::cheer:: Of course, if you play (or are interested in) both games, by all means, please continue to follow both blogs.

Also, I have to say a big thank you to my readers (I know you're out there!) that have put up with my gaming schizophrenia all this time. :)

Onward!

The Path of the Fellowship: Part 1

For your weekend viewing pleasure and in honor of all the new players running through these areas as we speak...

Enjoy!

Video: Lunna The Burg
Soundtrack: Fathom

One Week In...

Well, it's been a week since the LotRO F2P Servers came up for the Headstart. Let's see what has happened in a week's time:

• Servers came up.
• New LotRO community site launched.
• Community site had issues.
• Servers nearly came to a crashing halt due to network problems.
• Server queues were in the hundreds and thousands while network problems were addressed.
  
• People complained because they didn't get their points immediately upon logging in.
  
• People complained because they didn't realize they had to re-purchase the original content as non-subscribers.
• People complained because items were disappearing from the new wardrobe and vault system. 
• People complained about the way the new vault system looks.
• People complained about the new Dynamic Layers.
  
• People complained because they couldn't get into the community site to complain.
  
• Veteran players lamented the introduction of "F2P Noobs" into LotRO.
• New players lamented the rude comments and treatment by veteran players.

And now?

Most of the chaos and turmoil has settled down. Of course there still is some complaining about various issues, and every day there is a new "I have to pay for content as a Premium player?" thread in the forums, but overall things are smoothing out. The technical issues were addressed and now the servers are running much faster and with minimal queues in the evenings. New players are settling in and finding kins to join. Old players have been helping new folks out, giving them food, potions, gear, weapons, and advice to get them started. On Landroval, there have been several Welcome Concerts hosted, to the great delight of new players who had never seen the equivalent of an interactive arena rock concert in an MMO before. The Advice and OOC channels are hopping in the starter areas, as well as Lone-Lands and North Downs, since there's actually new folks in those areas again. The RPers are figuring out ways to work around the new Dynamic Layering system.

The only really bad day was Saturday, when a faulty network switch caused major lag spikes and client crashes on all the servers. The queues are something new that many folks are still getting used to, but they've been fairly short and even on Landroval, I've not had to wait longer than 5 minutes or so as a VIP.

I'm also really enjoying the new LotRO store. I ended up with 5000 Turbine Points due to being a 3-year Lifetimer beta-tester. I bought a few cosmetics, plus upgraded my Wardrobe and Shared Storage as high as they would go. I have to say that I'm really liking the LotRO store, so much so that I bought the 6900-Points bundle that was on sale over the weekend. I don't mind spending the money, considering that at this point I'm basically "freeloading" on their servers as a Lifetimer.

Overall the launch wasn't the smoothest I've seen, but it's certainly far from the worst as well. I've also met a LOT of new and returning players to the game over the past week.  If the amount of new players that we're seeing is indicative of the game's future, I'd say it's looking very bright indeed.

From the WarCry LotRO Chat...

[13:19] Jalessa: We are not currently planning on adding new tiers of crafting at this time. However, each book cycle has tons of crafting love and we will continue to fully support crafting guilds and add new recipes to the game. We have some very nice things coming for crafting soon! Two letters: U and I.

 Hmm, interesting!

[13:32] katepaiz: isengard is tentatively slated for next year, and we'll be approaching the zone in the timeline in which saruman has already denuded the area, and has created his orc factory.

[13:32] katepaiz: players will likely have access to some of the underground areas, but obviously with saruman in the big tower, access to the upper regions is likely to be challenging :)

Sounds like possibly a Tower Raid?

[13:34] raskolnikov: Sort of, we're introducing new appearances for the Eagle, Sabercat, and Bog-guardian. We're also changing around how Lore-masters can change their pet appearances: instead of needing to equip a necklace to change the way your pet looks, you'll now get a new separate skill.

Yay for Lore-Masters!

 [13:35] sapience: PAX East is returning to Boston next year, and we'll definitely be out in force on the show floor. We'd love to get something put together for our fans, but that's it's own massive undertaking. So yes it's something we'd love to do, but we'll have to see what happens. Of course, if our fans put something together for PAX East, I'd show up!  Plague and all!

 This was in response to a question about a BlizzCon-styled Turbine Convention.

[13:36] Ransroth: You can definitely expect more fun minigames, particularly associated with festivals. I've seen some very neat specs lately.

 This was in response to a question about more mini-games such as chicken play, freeze tag, etc.

[13:38] Ransroth: The intent with Lua is to make it possible for players to create custom interfaces for information that's already available to them, not to give an actual advantage.

[13:39] Ransroth: Jwbarry is threatening bodily harm if we make addons that trivialize his content

No Deadly Boss Mods for you! ;)

[13:53] Jalessa: We took Radiance outside, tied it up to some railroad tracks, and...well...I think you saw the end of this in Red Dead Redemption. Look for this in the future - we will be removing Radiance from LOTRO.

And the peasants rejoiced!

LotRO F2P - Live Tomorrow!

As of 4am EST this morning, the LotRO servers came down to prepare for the launch to F2P. Most likely they'll be back up sometime tomorrow for the head-start folks. Everyone else will be able to start on September 10th. Even the LotRO website is down for maintenance, presumably to get the F2P shop set up and possibly incorporate some new features.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!

I've been playing LotRO for the past week, and it's been enjoyable. Mostly I've been leveling my minstrel a bit and catching up on deeds in the starter areas, North Downs, and Lone-Lands. Yes, I know I'll get Turbine Points for deeds finished after F2P launches, but I wanted to get those out of the way, and as a Founder/Lifer, I'll already be getting a large chunk of Turbine Points tomorrow, which will likely be spent on as much wardrobe space and vault space as I can get.

I also rolled a new Champion alt. Originally my champion was to be a human from Rohan, but the more I thought about it the more I like the idea of an elf Champion (from Lorien). They're a bit more unusual and the elf racial stealth skill should add an interesting element to the class.

Also, for anybody starting LotRO on the 10th: Paislea will be on Landroval, in the Shire, crafting up fresh organic fruits and veggies, cooking up some yummy buff and healing foods for the new folks, and answering questions in the /advice channel. If I have enough leathers I'll also be happy to craft up some light and medium armor sets, although I don't know how much better they'll be than the quest rewards. I hear that there will be other folks on hand in the various starter areas with music, armor, jewelry, food, and other goodies, so we hope to see you there!

Discontent

Warning: Incoming Whining! I'm very aware that I'm whining/ranting/venting a bit here, so take it with a grain of salt. :)

Lately I've been feeling a bit of... I'm not sure what to call it. Burnout isn't quite the right term. Maybe discontent is better. The past week I've been bouncing back and forth between WoW and LotRO, but I'm not so sure that has been a good idea. I'm noticing glaring issues with both games, and worse than that, I'm starting to feel a bit guilty for playing one when I could be playing the other. Yeesh.

WoW Rant-list:

• I've played the content for what seems like 12,567 times. I rolled a baby shammy alt to see if that would help the boredom, but it's slow going because I'm alt-tabbing out every 5 minutes. Cataclysm will take care of this I'm sure, but it's still a long way out.

• The community. While I'm in a fantastic guild and I love my guildies, the overall WoW community leaves a lot to be desired. I know there are other good, mature, kind-hearted people out there, but the rude ones are generally the most vocal.

• Piggy-backing on that... there's no real server community left anymore, since transfers and name changes are so easily had. Unless you count the trade chat trolls, there's some community there but it's not necessarily one I want to be a part of. :) 

• The focus on gear. WoW has always been a game about gear, to a certain extent, so I understand that. But these days between queues for random heroics & Gearscore, it seems that the focus is entirely on gear and fast heroics over all else. People kicking other people in a heroic because they just recently hit 80, people AFKing in heroics, DPS pulling mobs, tanks abusing healers, healers letting people die, requiring insane amounts of GS for lowbie raids because they don't want to "carry" noobs... when did it turn into this? When did people get so competitive that they can't take an extra 5 minutes in a heroic to help another player out?

It seems like increasing accessibility to epics has turned everyone, hardcore and casual alike, into raging gear elitists and has increased the e-peens to gargantuan levels. I don't feel like the servers are filled with other people any more, as much as they're filled with random avatars with numbers attached, if that makes sense.

LotRO Rant-list:

• It's complicated. Really complicated. This is going to sound silly... but I really don't know what half my skills actually do. Part of it is that all the icons look so much alike and really don't tell you anything about the skill. Part of it is that there's about a million different modifiers and skill descriptions, so many that it's hard to tell what exactly something does and how it interacts with your other skills. Part of it is that my hotbars are all full and I'm STILL getting new skills, when I barely use all the old ones. This bothers me, because I don't like just smashing buttons and hoping that something dies.

• Traits/Legendaries are also complicated. I get that there's room for a LOT of customization, way more customization than in WoW, and that's a good thing! At the same time, it's overwhelming. There's a ton of different traits to earn (regular traits, class traits, race traits, legendary traits) and trying to figure how they work together is a challenge. I just got my first Legendary Item this weekend, and even after reading the in-game tooltips and some out-of-game guides on how they work, I'm still having a really hard time wrapping my head around it.

• When you start getting up into the higher levels, claustrophobia sets in. You're going into more solo instances and outdoor dungeons, with more dread and quickly respawning mobs.

• The graphics aren't as stylized, and it can get depressing in certain areas. It's a darker game, for certain. Although I'm starting to appreciate their style of graphics more, at times it can be a little boring, visually.

So yeah... my yin and yang theory about WoW and LotRO seems to be correct. LotRO has a fantastic community, atmosphere, & cosmetic customization, WoW... not-so-much. WoW has great combat, skills, and build customization, LotRO... not-so-much.  They're about an even draw on graphics, depending on your preference and your mood.

Now if only I could stop bouncing between the two of them like an attention deficient squirrel on PCP.

LotRO F2P First Impressions

This afternoon, I decided to *finally* load up the LotRO F2P beta client and see what the hubbub is about. I had heard that they re-vamped the hobbit/man starter area, so I played through that to the end (where you actually go back to the shire, in the case of my hobbit). A few thoughts:

• Some folks are saying that it's streamlined. I don't think so. They have taken a few quests out (goodbye Ann's purse) and added new ones, plus changed small zone layout details and moved NPCs around. Actually I thought it took longer than the old version, but it's a much richer experience. 
• You see major lore-figures within the first 5 minutes of playtime. Good stuff, and it corresponds better to having Elrond and his sons in the elf starter experience.
• The training folks are in the training area now, as it should be.
• I really think the final "instance" portion of the starting experience has been made to be a bit of a pre-introduction to Skirmishes.
• The bad guys are more badass. The good guys are more naive. 
• I was happy to not have to fight through the spider path more than once. I almost thought they had taken the spiders out completely, but alas, it was not to be.
• Your character now has a new type of emote for examining dead bodies. For a moment I thought it was a bug, until I swung my camera around to view it from the front. It's much better than the old kneeling emote.
• The new tutorial windows are going to be a huge win for new players. They now have pictures and do a better job of hand-holding for folks that haven't played MMOs before.
• The store, at least from what I've seen thus far, isn't too in-your-face. There's a small LotRO store button that's been added to your hotbar at the bottom, but it's easily ignorable.
• I hope that they continue to polish the LotRO store design. It's kind of... blah.
• I didn't think about the implications of starting with only 3 bags. If nothing else, I'd guess that Turbine will get a decent amount of revenue from people purchasing those last 2 bags. Trying to play with just 3 bags would be horrendous.

Overall, I'm impressed. The experience was much richer in lore, much more clear for MMO newbies, and more fun in total. 

Alt-itis

I feel like I'm coming down with something, folks, and that something is Alt-itis.

Not that this is an acute or new condition... nay, I've had it before, so I'm pretty sure that it will always be with me. It always starts out innocently. I have one definite class that I want to have as my main, so I roll it up and start playing that. Then I think of one, maybe two other classes that sound interesting, and roll those up. Eventually when I hit a wall with my main, I move to one of the alts to give myself a break.

Then it gets crazy.

See, I can't just roll alts. Nope, my OCD requires that I have one of each race, unless a particular race is so abhorrent to me that I just can't tolerate them. In WoW, it's humans... for some reason, I just can't bring myself to play one. In LotRO, it's dwarves, since dwarves can't be distinctly female (I know, it's for lore reasons, I understand. Still not rolling one). Then, not only that, but they must all have different hair colors. And eye colors, if available. In a game like LotRO, I have to have the blondes/brunettes/redheads balanced in equal numbers, and keep a roughly equal amount of each race. Right now I'm up to 2 hobbits, 2 elves, and 2 humans. And, oh, their names should be at least semi-lore appropriate, the number of letters in their names should all be the same, and no two names should start with the same letter.

Then... THEN, it gets even worse: I assign professions to each one, according to lore or what I think fits with that class/race. If I play an alt and don't care for it, then that leaves me with an empty profession, which means that all of the other character's professions might have to be shifted to make up for it, costing me time and currency.

Yes, it's a sickness. I have a fever, send more cowbell.

For Real?

Tonight on Landroval...

Connection failed:
Server Full


I have to say that despite the inconvenience, that message actually makes me kind of happy. Landroval (and LotRO in general) seems to be picking up a lot of new players lately... assuming that it's not a hardware problem or an issue with the log-in servers, this might actually be a good sign for Turbine.

But can we at least get a queue system? Getting booted out to desktop is not exactly nice.

LotRO for WoW Players: Professions

Ah, professions. Some people love them, some people hate them. Some people tolerate them, since they might give them benefits like an extra 10 points of Stamina or a Uber-Trinket of the Hidden Temple. Professions in LotRO are set up a bit differently than what you're probably used to.

Professions in WoW are fairly straightforward. You can choose any two of eleven possible primary professions, plus you can take all three secondary professions. The primary professions are divided into Gathering Professions (Herbalism, Mining, Skinning) and Production Professions (Alchemy, Inscription, Blacksmithing, Engineering, Jewelcrafting, Leatherworking, Tailoring, Enchanting).

With me so far? I thought so.


In LotRO, you don't quite have the freedom to mix and match professions like you do in WoW, but they make up for that by giving you three professions instead of two. Professions are grouped into clusters called Vocations, and each character chooses one cluster:

Armsman: Prospecting, Weaponsmith, Woodworker
Armorer: Prospecting, Metalsmith, Tailor
Explorer: Prospecting, Forester, Tailor
Historian: Farmer, Scholar, Weaponsmith
Tinker: Prospector, Jeweler, Cook
Woodsman: Farmer, Forester, Woodworker
Yeoman: Farmer, Cook, Tailor

The professions listed in italics are gathering professions, the others are all production professions. Take note that each cluster has one gathering skill and one production skill that work well together: Farming + Cooking, Prospecting + Jewelcrafting, Forestry + Woodworking, and so on. Then they give you one additional skill that doesn't exactly mesh well with the other two, this is to encourage interdependency on others within the community. It's your option if you want to level the third profession up or not. Some players do, some players don't.

Professions in LotRO don't offer passive bonuses or crafter-only items like WoW does, so feel free to choose whatever profession interests you.

Tip: If it's your very first character and you want to make money, try the Explorer vocation. You'll be able to gather ore and wood, both of which sell well to other players. Hides drop off of enemies, and you can use those either to level Tailoring or to sell. If you don't have any interest in crafting at all, but don't mind gathering extra stuff to sell, then Explorer is for you!


Let's go through each profession briefly:

Cook: Produces food. Consumables are very useful in LotRO, either giving you a static buff (+12 Agility) for a certain amount of time or providing a benefit (+100 health and +100 power every 5 seconds) over time. Food is what will help get non-healing classes through tough encounters, and is necessary for instances and raids. Cooks need a Farmer to produce their raw produce.

Jeweller: Makes necklaces, rings, bracelets, etc, similar to the WoW Jewelcrafter. Relies upon a Prospector for ore and ingots.

Metalsmith: Makes heavy armor and shields. Relies upon a Prospector for ore and ingots.

Scholar: Makes potions, buff scrolls, clothing dyes, and housing paints. Scholars are unique in that they collect their own materials: relics found in ruins throughout Middle-Earth. You can buy them on the Auction House, but they tend to be very high-priced. They also use some of the byproducts from Farming to make paints and dyes.

Tailor: LotRO tailors make both light and medium armor. While anyone can collect hides, Tailors rely on a Forester to process/cure the hides before they are able to be used in Tailoring.

Weaponsmith: Makes melee weapons: swords, daggers, clubs, etc. Relies upon a Prospector for ore and ingots.

Woodworker: Makes ranged weapons: bows, staves, and spears. Relies upon a Forester for treated wood.

Prospecting: Mines ore nodes and processes them into ingots for Jewellers, Metalsmiths, and Weaponsmiths.

Forestry: Collects wood for Woodworkers, and cures hides for Tailors.

Farming: This deserves a little extra explanation: While this is technically a gathering profession, it's not gathering in the sense of farming stuff while you're out questing. Farming is similar to a production profession in that you have to actually go to the farm fields and sow your seeds, harvest them, and them process the harvest into usable crops. You can buy your seeds and soils from vendors quite cheaply, but you'll be investing your time into the profession and doing a lot of repeated clicking. If you enjoy taking a break from the action, doing repetitive actions in a farm field while chatting it up in the Shire regional chat, or if you like to multi-task while reading or studying, Farming might be a really good fit for you. If you're more action-oriented, limited on game time, or get bored easily, Farming might be just really frustrating. Cooks use the food that Farmers make, and Scholars are able to use some of the byproducts of Farming for dyes and paints.

Tip #2: If you have two characters that you want to level simultaneously, and you don't mind investing some time into crafting, try the Tinker + Historian vocations. They are very complimentary, as you'll have a Scholar for potions, a Jeweler for jewelry, a Weaponsmith for melee weapons, an ore collector to supply the Jeweler and Weaponsmith, and the Farmer can send raw materials to the Cook.

LotRO for WoW Players: Classes

With LotRO going Free-2-Play this fall, Turbine is preparing for an influx of new players. Of course, a good number of those players may be folks that have played, or are currently playing, World of Warcraft. For many of those players WoW was their first MMO, so I'd like to start a series of guides made to help make the transition a bit easier.

There's some differences in the class structure between the two games, and classes that seem like they might be similar on the surface, usually aren't. Here's a breakdown of LotRO classes, their possible counterparts in WoW, and an idea of the inspiration behind each type of character.


Guardian

The primary tank class. These guys charge into the fray and taunt the enemies away from the rest of their teammates, absorbing most of the damage (and relying on a great healer) so that the DPS classes can do their thing.

Armor: Heavy Armor

WoW Counterpart: Warrior. This is probably the closest match to a WoW class among any of the classes.

Tolkien Inspiration: Thorin Oakenshield, Eowyn

Races Available: Man, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit

Champion

Champions are a very strong melee damage class... they like to get up close and personal to their enemies. They also have excellent AoE (multiple enemy) damage and, if traited correctly, have the ability to be a secondary tank. They use a combo points system, similar to a WoW Rogue.

Armor: Heavy Armor

WoW Counterpart: Here's where it gets tricky. Since the Champion is high melee DPS and uses combo points, it's reminiscent of a Rogue, but without the saps, blinds, vanishes, and other tricky abilities. You could say that it's also similar to a fury or arms Warrior, since they wear heavy armor. Champs are also great at melee AoE, similar to a Death Knight.

Tolkien Inspiration: Gimli, Boromir

Races Available: Man, Elf, Dwarf

Burglar

Burglars are sneaky, sneaky fellows. They do melee DPS, but also provide valuable support to their party via tricks and opening conjunctions, which are special party maneuvers that provide extra damage, healing, or power to the team. Burglars tend to do less damage than, say, Champions, but their party support is very strong and useful. Solo, Burglars are able to walk away from almost any fight due to all the tricks they have at their disposal, and 6-man Burglar teams have been known to be very successful.

Armor: Medium Armor

WoW Counterpart: Rogue again, although they do less damage (comparatively) than a Rogue and they don't use combo points. However Rogues also don't have as many party support abilities and don't have the ability to start conjunctions, so it's not an exact fit.

Tolkien Inspiration: Bilbo Baggins, of course!

Races Available: Man, Hobbit

Captain

Yet another melee fighter! Captains are a jack-of-all-trades class. They can do melee damage, but their real strength is in the buffs and heals they provide for their party. The trademark of the captain is a herald, a pet (of sorts) that provides benefits to the Captain and the party. It's part DPS, part heals, part buffing, and part pet class. They could probably off-tank in a pinch as well.

Armor: Heavy Armor

WoW Counterpart: The Captain is about the closest you can get to a Paladin. However, you get a pet (or actually a sidekick) that follows you around all the time, wielding your banner, so that is unique to this class.

Tolkien Inspiration: Aragorn, Eomer

Races Available: Man Only

Hunter

This is probably one of the most common classes in MMOs. Hunters are a high-damage class that operates primarily at range from the enemy. You'll use your bow and arrow to kill enemies before they even knew what hit them, although you also have the ability to fight close-up if needed.

Armor: Medium Armor

WoW Counterpart: Hunter, but wait! Not so fast... LotRO Hunters do NOT have pets, so if you're looking for the primary pet class, Hunter isn't what you're looking for. They are also similar to the WoW Mage with their high DPS and ports for themselves and party members.

Tolkien Inspiration: Legolas, Legolas, Legolas

Races Available: Man, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit

Lore-Master

Here's your pet class! Lore-Masters wield a staff, have several pets to choose from, and use the power of ancient lore and knowledge to defeat foes and aid their party members. They can also heal and restore power to their teammates, and have good crowd control capabilities.

Armor: Light Armor

WoW Counterpart: They're similar to Hunters and Warlocks due to their pets, and Mages due to their use of magic. Since they also provide healing and power (mana) to their teammates, they are also a bit like Shadow Priests during the Burning Crusade days.

Tolkien Inspiration: Lore-Masters, along with Rune-Keepers, are about the closest thing to a magic-using class that you'll find in LotRO. Since magic-users are supposed to be few and far between, both Lore-Masters and Rune-Keepers tend to be a subject of debate among lore purists. Considering their love of animals and usage of ancient lore, the closest match to a character from Tolkien's works would probably be Radagast the Brown.

Races Available: Man, Elf

Minstrel

Minstrels are primarily a healing class, but they can be powerful damage-dealers as well thanks to an ability called Warspeech. They're known for healing allies and defeating enemies with the power of wicked riffs and stirring melodies on their instruments. There's a number of different instruments that a Minstrel can choose from, from the lute to the drums to the bagpipes to a cowbell. I'm not kidding, there is a cowbell.

Armor: Light Armor by default, Medium Armor can be added via a class trait.

WoW Counterpart: Priest, considering their healing style. They're also able to go into Warspeech mode for damage, which corresponds to the Shadow tree for Priests.

Tolkien Inspiration: It's hard to pin down a specific character for the minstrel. In Tolkien's universe, the power of song is mentioned from the beginning of the universe to Elrond's songs in Rivendell and Galadriel's songs in Lothlorien. Elves are certainly known for their songs, and judging from the scene at the Party Tree and later in Bree, the hobbits know how to boogie as well.

Races Available: Man, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit

Rune-Keeper

Rune-Keepers are one of two advanced classes that were introduced with the Mines of Moria expansion. They're a mix of healing and damage and have an interesting mechanic: The more you cast a particular type of spell (healing vs. damage), the more powerful those spells become. However as you cast more damage spells, your healing abilities become inactive, and vice versa. They're very good at either role, but have a difficult time switching between damage and healing in combat.

Armor: Light Armor

WoW Counterpart: No class in WoW has a system quite like the Rune-Keeper. However, most of the Rune-Keeper's spells are effective over time, reminiscent of a Restoration or Balance Druid. Also, the spells that a Rune-Keeper casts are lightning, fire, and frost based, so if you like the flash and sizzle of the Mage or Elemental Shaman, the Rune-Keeper might be a good fit.

Tolkien Inspiration: Honestly, there's not really a precedent for Rune-Keepers within the lore. While it's certainly true that runes and words of power exist, specific wielders of those runes are never mentioned. Chalk this one up to creative license from Turbine... but it's a darn fun class.

Races Available: Elf, Dwarf

Warden

The Warden is the other advanced class that was introduced during the Mines of Moria expansion. Wardens are probably the most difficult class to play in LotRO but amazing when played well. They are considered a tank class, and use a number of basic abilities to form combos, or gambits, that unleash their real class abilities. They can heal themselves, dish out a good amount of DPS, and can survive almost anything.

Armor: Medium Armor

WoW Counterpart: None really. I guess you could say they're similar to a Bear Druid tank since they are a tank class with medium armor, but that's about where the similarities stop.

Tolkien Inspiration: I'm going to go out on a limb and say Strider and the roaming Dunedain. While Aragorn seems more like a Captain later in the trilogy, I see him as being more Warden-like while patrolling the ancient kingdom of Arnor.

Races: Man, Hobbit

So, in conclusion:

Warrior: Guardian
Paladin: Captain
Rogue: Champion, Burglar
Mage: Lore-Master, Rune-Keeper, Hunter
Warlock: Lore-Master
Hunter: Hunter, Lore-Master
Priest: Minstrel
Shaman: Rune-Keeper, Champion
Death Knight: Champion, Guardian
Bear Druid: Warden, Guardian, Champion
Balance Druid: Rune-Keeper
Resto Druid: Rune-Keeper, Minstrel
Kitty Druid: Champion

Which class is best? There's really no good answer to that. Every class has it's strengths and weaknesses, has it's own unique playstyle, and is valuable in a group. It's all a matter of personal preference, so try a few different classes until you find the one that's a good fit for you.