Lord of the Rings Online: Helms Deep

[CeeKay]

coming this fall.  10 more levels added plus the obvious addition of the Battle of Helms Deep, which should be epic.  I was planning on dabbling with LotRO again this summer, but now I think I'll wait a bit longer

surely Minas Tirith cannot be far off now!

[Crawley]

I'm in. I did enjoy the Rohan expansion and the horse combat once I got over the learning curve. But the end game content of building up a town didn't really hold my interest. So more levels, more zones, and more horse combat means I'm in.

The one thing they didn't mention which I hope they do is a UI revamp. It was a bit clunky when it came out and compared to today's UIs its really clunky.

[Arclight]

I liked LoTro when I first played. I left when the first or second expansion was up for sale. I think something else was out around that time. 

If I were to pick this game up again, would I have anything other than the original cd to pay for?
Was there any kind of graphical update put out after the CD?

Is the community at a healthy level?

I guess I could retrieve any characters I left behind, considering I've forgotten my account info.

[Crawley]

The CD probably won't do you any good as there have been a bunch of updates that you'll probably have to download anyways. So I would just download the client from their website and go at it that way.

There's been graphical updates (DX10 support) and this game does look fantastic. The UI however is archaic and will take a bit of getting used to again - its not always intuitive and doesn't look that great.

I am not sure of the communities health level. On the server I was on (name escapes me) there were people running around but nowhere near the levels that WOW gets. And that was kinda nice as when you quest you weren't waiting for something to spawn and when you came across people on the road or on your destination it was kinda special. The main hub towns are where you will run across most people running around, and when there are the holiday events that's when you'll see large crowds of people. There are plenty of guilds looking to recruit. The one I joined had about 200 members listed but really only about 15-20 people on during peak but off-peak I would typically see 0-3 people.

The game is also free to play and you can get around fine for the first 15 or so levels without paying a cent.

[Scraper]

I liked LoTro when I first played. I left when the first or second expansion was up for sale. I think something else was out around that time. 

If I were to pick this game up again, would I have anything other than the original cd to pay for?
Was there any kind of graphical update put out after the CD?

Is the community at a healthy level?

As Crawley said the game went free to play a couple of years ago and most of the early level content really is free. But the game has added a TON of content since its launch and most of that will cost you either in game earned currency or real life money. It is possible to play the game for free and unlock a lot of the content just by playing, but that is the long hard road. Your best bet would be to buy the content packs that group a bunch of the content areas together.

By content I mean questing zones. Once you unlock a quest zone you unlock most of the content in that zone.

Also, there is a healthy player base still, but some servers are definitely busier than others.

[Crawley]

Keep an eye out for starter pack sales. Gamestop has the Mithril Edition starter pack which was the shit. Get a mount, quest packs for several key zones, and 2,000 turbine points to spend quest packs or whatever, all for $10. It looks like that's gone up to $20 now. Still a decent deal. Steam also swaps out different starter packs and puts those on sales from time to time. The current one "Steely Dawn" looks like crap though: An armor set, a quest pack (although a good one), a bunch of XP boosts (useless), and a measly 500 turbine points.

You can also just go the subscription route when you hit a wall with the F2P stuff and you pay like a regular MMO but get 500 Turbine points to spend each month.

I stuck with the F2P route and basically have all content unlocked. I would purchase a bunch of Turbine Points when they went on sale (often) and then buy content when that went on sale (often). Still probably spent over $100 in Turbine points but that's spread over several years so it didn't even sting. I get the sense I'm making out better this way than if I went the subscription route at this point.

But I wouldn't worry about any of this until you hit your wall in the game.