Lord of the Rings Online moved into Open Beta yesterday afternoon.

Lo, and it was good… so sayeth the Brasse.

There was nary a hitch as all seven servers went online, and thousands of eager pre-order folks dove in in the frenzy to get their favorite avatar name registered on their chosen server. I was saved the task of having to hunt down and annihilate someone by “Brasse” being available, and immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

While some of our members are already in their TEENS (no lifers!), Wren, Alluvian and I are going to level MUCH slower, as we are collecting quest and game info for the site.

As I wandered Middle Earth over the past 24 hours, I had to remind myself several times that we were in fact still in a BETA game; the world is beautiful, stable and very full featured. It is only in the niggling details that I recalled that Turbine still has a month to go before retail release. Believe me when I say that I have never seen an MMO launch as bug free as this Beta.
Well done, Turbine! Well done, indeed!

Oddly enough, I saw relatively few bad names yesterday. There were inevitable names like Leggollaas, and Bobbysmom and Toasteroven, but they were few enough that my lip did not do nearly as much involuntary curling as expected. I am keen to contrast this with the Million Hobbit March on April 6th, hehe.

Another very curious thing was the absence of rudeness in the areas that I'd expect to see contested. For example, the Frostmantle spawn in Thorin's Gate prequel… he is a large Auroch required for a quest in the area, and there were a LOT of people who needed his hide, but did not necessarily want to fellowship (group) with strangers. I approached with trepidation, and then stayed for quite some time, watching. Everyone helped kill the beastie numerous times, and eventually all got to tag it. I helped on 4 or 5 kills, tagged it on the 6th, and then stayed to help for an additional several kills (as well as picking off some pesky goblins) before moving on. The very few people who spoke tersely on the spot were quickly reassured by the rest that the process works, to stay and have fun playing whack-a-cow for a while.

This sort of friendly cooperation made an auld Dwarf like me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Needed a beer right away, lest my normal dour and jaded view on life be clouded! I blame the nearby Elfink influence.

Gladden was the server we went to… me, Wren and the rest of the rag-tag bunch of ne'erdowells known as the InnMates. While we've been together for close to a decade now, we felt it best to join a well-organized kinship and leave the organizational hassles to them this time around.

The large kinship we hope to join (Old Timer's Guild) is based on Gladden, and in the meantime, we have our own InnMates kinship up and running, to provide us a means for communication while we wait for the OTG's application process to open up again. It is good to be with the old crew in the interim - in this day and age of so many MMOGs, we tend to disperse far and wide, but the lure of a good game like LOTRO is pretty hard to resist, so long-lost friends are resurfacing once more.

Although we chose Gladden largely based on the presence of OTG, I can tell you the servers we avoided:
- Elendilmir (a typically impossible to spell Elfink name - bleh! This is the home to the majority of the guilds from Closed Beta and therefore, I expect, crowded);
- Brandywine (with a name that famous, I predict it will be the most overpopulated - any care to take a bet on that?);
- Windfola (who wants to be named after a horse that ran away, leaving Eowyn and Pippin stranded? Windfola = Elfink for “cowardly horse”);
- Landroval (the “unofficial RP server”, even though it was obviously named after a Jeep. While I love RP, most of my closest gaming buddies simply do not, and we didn't want the hassle of having to disarm the dedicated RP crowd should one of our lot be caught out of character.)

I will now await a lambasting by those who will defend the honor of their server name to the death! Mwa-ha-haaaaa - bring it on!

All the best to those embroiled in the struggles within Middle Earth; both the players and the many Devs who are creating the world we so enjoy!
[raises her foaming mug in salute]

~Brasse