With WoW down for its weekly maintenance, I took a small peek at the open beta for the MMORPG, Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar.

The races are human (male/female), hobbit (male/female), dwarf (male), and elf (male/female).

The classes are Burglar (debuffer), Champion (AoE, DOT'er), Captain, Guardian (tank), Lore-master (pets, spell dmg), Minstrel (healer), and Hunter (nuker).  The core classes seem the usual fare, for the most part, (i.e. the burglar sounds like the enchanter from Everquest for PS2, and the Champion sounds like a WoW Warlock without pets).

Sooo I tried out an elf lore-master, and proceeded through the tutorial level, making comparisons to WoW as I went, of course.

The first thing you'll notice is that melee combat is significantly slower than WoW, or at least I think it is.  The intro lvl is pretty painless, and one I remembered that I was a spellcaster, I was taking down stuff pretty easily, though not as fast as I'd like (though I admit, I am only lvl 1).

At the end of the tutorial a huge troll breaks through the gates and a pretty young looking Elrond appears and takes him down. (Bummer, I wanted to kill it, or at least be whacked by it.  Damn you , Elrond!)

From there, the game whisks you to some nearby ruins for a quest, but you dont have to stay there, if you follow the path, you'll quickly come across snow covered plains and a small camp , with quest givers and trainers, and the usual assortment of weaponsmiths, grocers, etc.

I think I'm going to try another class, maybe I can find one that can take stuff down a bit faster.  I dont really want to do hunter, even though it says nuker, I have a strong disdain for the class from WoW.  Silly me, I suppose.  Will definitely keep you guys updated on my progress though !