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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Since monster play was introduced, I have played more there than on my main character! One of the best things I have noticed so far is that monsters tend to work better together than people do. In chat the other day there was a monster player who said they had been pinned in by a group of players and there were not enough monsters in their group to break out. I saw at least two responses from other monster players who said they were on their way to help with their groups. This is the most fun PvP adaptation I have seen - for you WoW players; imagine an Alterac Valley that has no end, more quests and less dependence on a group. You can upgrade your monster through quests and player kills. There is tons to do, quests, keeps and “towns” to capture, and little surprises here and there to find.There are also some pretty fun skills that a few monsters have, the spider has a great one but I won’t give it away. I spend a lot of monster play-time questing for upgrade ‘points’ and exploring, and when there is a rally call in open chat to help defend one of our monster outposts, I’ll head over and get into the fray! An un-upgraded monster is much weaker that an equally leveled player, but in my opinion, that makes it more fun. It creates an atmosphere of cooperation and assistance. Monsters may be competing for a quest item in a particular area, but if one of those dirty humans or bearded barbarians shows up, every monster suddenly has one goal and one goal only: kill that guy! They all rush over and get to business, then it’s back to questing.

I have played each of the monster types available and have already picked two favorites that I play regularly; the warg and the Orc Reaver. The orc looks great, has decent armor and damage and has some great skill upgrade - the Sundering Blow can be pretty devastating on a cloth wearer! The warg is the best of them all in my opinion. Fast, steady damage, Sprint to get out of trouble and Throat Rip to keep those nasty minstrels from healing their party. Wargs can stealth as well, so if you get a coordinated group together you can really do some damage if you flank the player group or surprise them from behind their lines.

The other day I was headed down to the hobbit village for breakfast (and you thought a Hobbiton omelette meant it was made IN Hobbiton). In the general chat channel there were scouting reports coming in about a group of players headed to one of our outposts, and it was only defended by the NPC’s, no monster players were there yet. Raid teams begin forming quickly and many many monsters started heading over for defense. I was in a group that got there before most of the other players, so I went inside and stealthed to wait for the attack.
More monsters began showing up, it looked like maybe 20-30 of us were inside waiting. Then, the attack began!

The players are smart and know their strengths, they pulled the melee guards one by one while using the well armored fighters to keep our archer guards busy. The monsters would rally whenever they got close to the entrance of the keep and we’d push them back a little, but there never seemed to be enough of us to kill them all. We had to hold out till reinforcements came. It was great fun when they did too, we made a push and drove them from the door, and we saw a large group of monsters attacking them from behind, and we met in the middle among the bodies. This keep was ours, for a little longer at least!

Monster Tip (this one’s free) - Make friends early, and don’t get caught alone (those dirty freeps hunt in packs).

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We hope you enjoyed this week’s Beta Journal! Check back next Wednesday for more!