topnotch

One word Hollow, thats what sums it up best, lots of hype all sorts of text to advertise it, but when you look deeper there is nothing there. Big Battles are the exact opposite of Epic, they are dull, slow, tedious and clunky, not to mention severely bugged. If you rolled a support, healer, tank class dont bother with them you havent been catered for its all dps and non induction dps as well, so sorry LMs your flat out of luck, they are so poorly designed and feebly implemented its shocking to see them charge full price for it. And whats worse is not only do you have to endure them once, its probably the biggest grind the game has ever had, its unbearable. Class Changes, While not strictly part of HD, they have changed the game hugely with this expac, and not for the better, unless you like 1 dimensional, linear gameplay with no variety or flexibility that is, but they have managed to overcome the dullness of it all by making every classes dps so stupidly high that you only need 2 skills to kill anything anyway, unless you are a LM then just stick your pet on aggressive and go drink tea. The trees are the most restrictive trees in any MMO out there and you even are forced to buy new content just to get all your points. You are actually penalised double points should you desire to try and give your build some variety by speccing into a second line. Raiding, Dead, no other words for it, Big Battles is all you will get and thats it apart from old content being scaled again, raiding if not already dead is completely finished in lotro now, and I dont see any way back for it. PvP, Just as bad condition, the balance right now is abysmal, Freeps arent even balanced right yet and they have just guessed how to balance creeps and it will take forever to restore it if they ever manage it at all, and they are still stuck in the same old tired zone with the same old tired classes. Landscape content, The story and scenery is great again, but the challenge from landscape mobs is so small there is no need for it to be there, honestly I dont know why they even put mobs on landscape now it puts up such a a pitiful fight. Nothing lasts more than 2 shots on foot and on a warsteed its even worse. if it carries on in this vein It will be a casual stroll into mordor. Bugs, Quite frankly appaling, the level of bugs that have been realised is unforgivable, landscape BBs, quests, Items you name it its broken. Side quests in BBs cant often be finished, mobs run through brick walls, stand in unreachable locations, kill count bars dont tick over despite your kills, NPCs that are quest vital cant be interacted with, quest items cant be interacted with, mobs that need to be killed cant be targetted, a quest will pop up telling you to go do x,y,z but neither x,y or z will appear, its basically a lie beta test right now that people are paying to be part of. Overall, Wonderful scenery and good story and thats it, everything else is dire. Lotro has become a sight seeing tour and nothing more, if you love tolkien and want to wander about middle earth great, if you want anything else from an mmo, your out of luck and will be better served going elsewhere. I will give it a 1 as the guys who do the landscape deserve a bit of recognition, as for the rest of the development team you get exactly what you deserve, nothing.