Midway’s Gamer Day was filled with games of all sorts including the MMORPG set in Tolkien’s fantasy universe, The Lord of the Rings Online. The game is looking better than the last time we had hands-on with the title and we had the opportunity to see a couple of new things including the Monster Play PvP area, mounts, and smaller features like musical instruments.

The biggest of all of the features we hadn’t seen before was undoubtedly the PvP Monster Play area which allows players the opportunity to let their evil sides loose, which isn’t normally an option in the rest of the PvE experience. There are enough people that like giving the bad side a try in MMOs that it definitely needed to be included. Developer Turbine came up with a PvP area solution because they didn’t feel the evil races had enough personality to really build a large campaign around their presence in Eriador.

Monster Play lets players either use their own character created out of the good race templates, or choose an evil character for this specific area. Any time the area is entered by a player, they have the option to choose what type of character they’re going to play. While players could potentially run into the zone as a good character, see what people are up to, run back out and switch to evil in order to warn the other side, Turbine finds this possibility pretty unlikely due to the size of the zone and how long it would take players to run around the area gathering information. They didn’t want to restrict players to playing one side or the other at any time.

Once players are in the Monster Play zone, the fun begins as both sides begin to attempt to capture various keeps spread around the play area. These keeps are large buildings that house a lot of defending NPCs, which vary depending on the side holding the keep. Players will have to fight their way through all of these defenders along with player characters that are also defending. One of the big challenges will be that dead NPCs will slowly re-spawn. Both teams will be able to re-spawn as well at various locations spread around the map and have to run back to the fight as quickly as possible.

The goal of attacking players is to kill the boss character at the top. Once that boss is dead, the keep will change hands and new NPCs of the other side’s type will fill out the halls. Along with that, the entire area will change in appearance. We were shown a keep changing from good to evil and the sky in the immediate area darkened and a swirling vortex of clouds appeared as well. Lastly, when the keep changes over, new quests will become available to the conquering side.

Inside this zone, players will be able to gain destiny points that can be used to purchase new skills, traits, and appearances. For instance, we were shown the area using an evil type of character. In this case it was a giant spider. Several of the destiny point purchases were unlocked for demo purposes and the spider was able to adopt several different skins, some of which were dramatically different from the standard skin.

While PvP was the main thrust of the demonstration, we did get a chance to sit down and play with the game a bit ourselves. We had the chance to ride around on some of the game’s horses and explore one of the instanced zone quests at Weathertop. This particular quest was to provide support to a ranger looking to get to the top of the ancient place. Along the way were scattered more than just a smattering of Uruk guards. The character we were provided with was quite a bit more powerful than any of the creatures we fought against, but it’s easy to see how this would require a few players to complete as the friendly ranger NPC needed to be protected the entire way up and mobs of bad guys always came in multiples.

Combat itself works in a fashion that will be very familiar to MMO players. Skills sit at the bottom of the screen and can be used at any time by clicking on them or hitting the appropriate number key. This demo offered up at the event didn’t provide the opportunity for group play, but Fellowship features such as specific skills that can be used in combination with other players certainly bode well for organized group play. Lord of the Rings Online will also offer plenty of advantages to players that do decide to specialize. As skills are used over and over, players will unlock new skills in that specific area. For instance, if a melee character has blocked a certain amount of times, they may unlock a specific defensive skill or a better block. Allowing players to gather up these specialty skills and then slot them however they like should provide more individuality as well as variety when putting a group together.

Finally, Turbine is making sure that players will feel a little more ownership of their characters and the world. For one, they’re allowing players to create their own music using a simple system. After equipping a musical instrument, players can hit the number keys to create musical notes. Holding down the shift and ctrl keys and hitting a number key allows for even more notes. Apparently there are members of the beta that have already figured out how to put together some Guns ‘n’ Roses songs and there are likely to be many more to come. With the number of instruments available, players should be able to rock out with their friends in a band while spectators use the same type of system to dance freestyle.

Crafting new items isn’t going to be disregarded in this arena either. A whole bevy of crafting skills will be available as would be expected. Players that put the time into mastering each level of a craft will be rewarded by having their names attached to any master crafted goods as well as a stat bonus attached to those items. It should be pretty cool for crafting gurus to see their items spread around the world and gain reputation as quality goods.

Lord of the Rings Online is currently undergoing testing and will continue testing for at least a couple of months still. There is a release date set for April 24th, but MMOs have a way of slipping. If Turbine does manage to keep on schedule, fans of Middle-earth will have their chance to step in to the world and make their own adventures.