Over the past couple of weeks I've downloaded and played a couple of MMORPG games that I have wanted to play for quite a while. These being Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. Downloading the games takes quite a while, days for me where I live and at my connection speeds, so I'd leave the laptop to download while off at work. But after waiting for that and the installation I had the game & could start playing. Both games are free to play now (they used to be pay to play-but now they had a store where you buy upgrades and expansions. Basically, to get the full game experience you need to play them some cash-otherwise certain features are unavailable, such as items, areas of the game and the highest levels your characters can achieve.)
Dungeons & Dragons Online was my favorite of the two from my short experience playing. Here you are thrown into a dungeon within the first couple minutes of play and afterward you arrive in a village where you can do repeatable adventures leading into instances all around the village and island. Gameplay was fast paced and enjoyable. The only part I found a bit annoying was the slow leveling-I'm used to leveling my characters fast, as in WOW. I about 3 days playing I'd only gotten my dwarf cleric to about 5th level. The game is made to take longer however, so I guess that it must be accepted to be this way.
Lord of the Rings Online is a very enjoyable game as well, but it seems to be played for the most part outdoors, in cities or in the countryside. There was little underground/dungeon activity, though I did see a few in the short time I've played. Leveling is faster than in D&DO, I suppose because it works a bit more like most other MMORPGs (EQ & WOW to name a couple, where leveling is fairly quick). I saw little resemblance to the books/movies except for map locations and playable races. You do hear people talking a bit (NPC quest givers/narrators) but none are the actors from the movies. I guess they didn't think that that was desired by the players.
One major drawback I found & saw on forum boards that others found this annoying too, was the lack of bag space in your inventory. And you cannot craft or find more bags-with the exception of rune-stones and maybe crafting supplies. There were no normal bags you could craft or buy, and this to me is a major problem. You get 3 bags in both games, that's all. I did see a good bit of room in the bank vault of LOTRO, though they limited you to I think about 30 items to deposit (unless you pay to get more). Both games are free to play & I'm sure that many people just play them for free-but to really get the best play experience paying to at least be a VIP is recommended. Though I don't think I will-I just don't have the money or time for that-I'd play WOW if I did as it's a better game than these.
Overall, they are worth playing for a free fun distraction & to burn a few hours every once in a while. I don't recommend becoming a pay to play player though as I'm not sure paying would make them all that much more worth it in the long run.
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