Today is the last day of the LOTRO (Lord of the Rings Online) closed beta and it will be a deadly day for all the characters. All current characters will be deleted tomorrow. At 7PM Eastern time today the developers will drop high level monsters in towns all over the place. My level 28 minstrel will die a glorious death while healing as many people as I can. It’s been fun and I haven’t even touched half of this game.
I participated in a pub run from one side of the world to rivendell which is a deadly place for low levels like me. I made it through because I was in a group of 10 people all running with some high level hunters for protection. We stopped at the pubs throughout the world to drink beer. Yes when a character drinks beer they get drunk and the world gets very blurry. Put your graphic setings to medium or higher to see these effects. At lower levels you will see little difference.
I also joined up with fellowships to finish some hard quests with success and some failures. Some of these quests which are labeled for low levels are very hard. Any quest in the Great Barrows should not be done at levels under 20. Also the quest to retake weathertop needs a high level group to finish it.
The open beta starts on the 30th for all people who have pre-ordered the game. A week later the open beta will be opened for everyone else who can get the game cd. I think they will have them in a certain magazine. I’ll find out more before it all begins and post about it. Only pre-ordered people will have their characters moved to the live game.