For today’s Beta Journal, we asked our Beta participants to discuss their first impressions on LOTRO’s monster play system.

Join The Lord of the Rings^TM: Shadows of Angmar^TM World Tour, and see LOTRO for yourself beginning April 6, or pre-order for even earlier access and character carryover! European players, visit the Codemasters LOTRO site at http://www.lotro-europe.com for Beta and pre-order details.

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My tale takes place during monster play, a titanic battle I will always remember.

With me as an Uruk-blackarrow (the Uruk archer class in monster play), I set out in the Ettenmoors to hunt, joining in with a few people to kill hobbits down in the south. It was a wicked kind of fun to kill those little hobbitses as they ran around and eventually fought back.

But soon enough, a call of alarm went out. Free Peoples! They were fighting outside their base against my fellow Uruks! My group joined the battle shortly after, and helped fight at the gates, but we were pushed back and regrouped at Tirith Rhaw, a fortress just north of the gates. Warg players were scouting out in the forest trying to find the enemy, spiders were crawling on rocks for a nice position, and Uruks were enjoying a game of ‘bash each other on the head’, but soon, it started again. And so a few battles raged along the south wall before the enemy heaved and caused us to fall back slowly.

It started with the men by the south wall, the Uruk-reavers began to die, and the Blackarrows were pushed back to the gate. The two patrolling trolls by the south gate had died already, and the gate guards were soon to follow.

It was a constant fall back action, the gate guards were killed, the troll patrolling the halls was dead, and they were fighting the interior guards with Uruk players mixed in. My fellow Blackarrows and I kept moving backwards as our Reavers, Spiders, Warleaders, and Wargs died or retreated back towards us. Eventually, we were fighting on a stairway, it lasted only 30 seconds before we retreated to the last bastion of the keep.

The top floor became the scene of an intense battle. Guards and the keep boss ran out to fight, many free people died, but many more Uruks died first. During the battle, I found myself targeted by three Hunters, and quickly abandoned the defense of the fortress to what I thought were the doomed Uruks. I jumped out the wall and hit the ground with my morale low. What was I going to do?

And then, I saw the 2nd wave of Uruks arrive. We fought our way back into the fortress, and destroyed the Free People in a somewhat pincer move. We had won the day, but many had died.

The Free People’s next attacks were not as strong as that one. They continued to fight us at the South Wall, and once at the lumber camp. Before long, the battle for the moment was done, and I left to do…Uruk things.

The battle was beautiful, there was just pure greatness. It was refreshing to be an Uruk, and to play out one of many battles that could have happened in Middle-earth.

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