Since the summer of 2006 select players have been grinding away in Middle-earth, through the various testing phases of The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. We got a chance to talk to the folks from Turbine today about some of the higher level content, PvP Monster Play, and conjunction battle system. If you’re curious how the game starts off, IGN Australia has put up a detailed article describing their experience so far with a few of the game’s classes and races.

Turbine’s MMORPG is mostly PvE (player versus environment), except for one area located within the game’s setting of Eriador. In the Ettenmoors, a large expanse of land dotted with forests and carved with rivers, players get the chance to play as either a monster or hero and battle against each other, as well as complete a number of PvE quests. If you choose to enter the Ettenmoors as a hero by importing your main character, you’re going to have to wait until level 40. Playing as a monster, however, can be accomplished much sooner. As soon as you arrive in the town of Bree, you’ll find a portal through which you can select a monster type and dive into the PvP realm.

Five different monster classes will be available, including Weaver spiders (ranged area of effect damage as well as over time), Warg stalkers (burglar or rogue-type class), Orc reavers (dual-wielding damage class), Uruk Blackarrows (ranged damage), and an Uruk Warleader (fighter, buffer, debuffer). Every monster type has its own statistics and abilities, but they all start out at level 50, the level cap, as soon as you start playing with them. Despite their level being at maximum, you can still advance your monster through 15 ranks to allow them to fully reach their potential.

While traveling across the Ettenmoors completing PvE and PvP focused quests, two types of reward points are available to further customize your character. The first type is infamy, if playing as a monster, or renown if using a hero, which are earned through killing enemy players and can be spent like a currency. The second type, known as destiny points, is tied to your account rather than the PvP character. This means the points act as a pool for all your characters, not just the PvP monster. With them, you could buy perks for your PvE character, such as one that accelerates your experience accumulation. Within the Ettenmoors, the renown or infamy points can be used to buy new traits, body upgrades that alter appearance, or skills.

Outside of PvP, players will get a number of instances to divert their attention for the overworld questing. According to Turbine, a little less than ten percent of the game is instanced. Up to 6 players can group together into what’s known as a Fellowship to battle through, and some dungeons allow for 24 player raids. To defeat the enemies within instances, Fellowships can enact what are known as conjunction attacks. These involve everyone in the group, and are kicked off by one player stunning, confusing, or otherwise temporary disabling the target enemy. A selection of four colors then appears on screen, and a different attack is initiated based on which combination is selected by those involved.

If everyone picks red, for instance, it will initiate a powerful attack known as Ent’s Strength, which calls in one of the colossal tree-like beings to crush the target. If all green is selected, the party will instead spark a mass heal. From there, more intricate maneuvers can be enacted, like having two players select blue, one yellow, and one red for different effects. In addition to each of the game’s seven classes having a wide range of abilities, it’s good to know there are more unique feats that can be accomplished when playing with others.

While fighting more difficult enemies, it’s inevitable that you’ll eventually die. Shadows of Angmar handles death by resetting a player to the nearest circle of stones if killed in the overworld of Eriador, or outside the gate of an instance if you were smashing at things within. Depending on where you were killed, you may amass what is known as Dread. As Dread ranks up, you’ll see the corners of your screen start to blur and burn (with virtual flames), your minimap becomes unusable as it morphs into the Eye of Sauron, and your overall health, gets docked until the Dread eventually wears off. If you die in a hopeful area like the Shire, the Dread accumulation can be counterbalanced. Within the game particular objects and enemies, like the Nazgul, spark your Dread rating to rank up if you get too close.

In addition to the combat, there’s a large focus on the social aspects of the game. By completing various tasks like killing a certain amount of creatures in an area, killing a particular monster, or eating a lot of breakfasts, you can earn what are known as titles. These appear after a comma next to your character’s name and are visible to other players in Eriador, and act simply as a bragging right. With over 400 titles, there should certainly be quite a bit of superfluous accomplishments to pursue. Players also get the ability to “adopt” each other as sons, daughters or other familial positions to fill in their family tree. Again, these have no actual effect on gameplay, but rather act as a community building tool. You may have also heard of Shadows of Angmar’s music system, where players purchase instruments in-game and are able to use their keyboard to produce melodies with others.

To further build community, Turbine is planning on supporting a system where players can create a web page reflecting their game character, make blog entries, and browse the profiles of others. In other words, LotRO MySpace, it seems. They’re also planning on implementing item and quest databases into the game, which are governed by Turbine and updated by players. This means players won’t have to keep exiting or minimizing the program to consult database sites that exist outside of the game, though whether the system will be quite as useful as some of the sites out there remains to be seen.

Turbine went on to give us a few details on how the crafting professions progress. Each of the five crafting tiers, apprentice, journeyman, expert, artisan, and master, have a specific number of points you must achieve by making items at each level before you’re bumped to the next. At each level, there’s a chance for mastery with each craftable item, which means might make a particlularly high quality version of the selected item of. Once you advance through the tiers, going back and making a lower tier item will give you a higher chance for mastery. Some professions produce raw materials for other professions to use to craft things useful for all players, like weapons and armor. All players can drop these onto an auction, which lets you set a buy out price, organize by item category, and do all the other things you’d expect from an MMO auction house, including putting items up for only Kinship (guild) members.

Right now the game is still in closed beta, but come March 30 the beta will open up to everyone. Unfortunately for closed beta members, the advent of the open beta means their previous characters will be wiped. If the game is preordered, however, Turbine is implementing the crafty gimmick of allowing players to carry over their open beta characters to final, though during the beta there’ll be a level cap of 15. Lord of the Rings Online is also offering a $199 (USD) lifetime fee for preorder customers. After release, Turbine is planning on releasing sizable patches and updates that should include new content as well as bug fixes. While we couldn’t get any specific details on what kinds of expansions to expect as the rest of Middle-earth is filled in, we’re curious to see how PvP will be handled once the game’s scope expands into more sinister lands surrounding Isengard and Mordor. Currently Shadows of Angmar is scheduled to ship on April 24. We’ll have more from Middle-earth as the testing phases continue.