>>44
I think there's loads of potential for RPGs, especially if you keep them action-lite, but there is plenty of potential for grand strategy.
>>63
>>64
Lorewise, it stretches it about as far as the movies do, although it's more a matter of farming barrow-wights, dwarves actively reconquering Moria, The Watcher in the Water being a raid boss, and you being present at all these major events from the books, although in the background of it all. The graphics aged poorly, but it's still pretty enjoyable, or was last I played - they started pushing more p2w. Environments were quite nice. I remember it with special fondness because it was my first true MMO, I picked it up my freshman year in college right after it went f2p, and rolled on the unofficial NA RP server. Had some good times. Played a bard, and would transcribe MIDI files to .abc so I could play songs in-game.
I don't think I ever hit level cap, to be honest. I was generally slow about buying expansions, and I had as much fun exploring and hanging out with my dorf bros as I did actually leveling. I did get to the Rohan content, I've never seen an MMO handle mounted combat so beautifully.
One major plus is that there is an absolute ton of content, although you need to start paying for expansions when you hit level 50, because the free zones aren't enough to level on without some really painfully slow mob grinding. Last I played, not many of the old raids were really run anymore because they were at old level caps and never scaled up, so the loot wasn't worth the effort, but even in the main game world, the amount of content was quite fantastic.
The legendary weapons system was also incredible, you'd get a special weapon sometime around Moria with legacies and runes and whatnot that would improve stats or specific abilities, and your weapon would level with you, although as a rule things like base DPS didn't increase. So once you'd outgrown it entirely, you'd buy or make a new one and deconstruct the old, and you'd get crafting mats for legendary weapons, runes that carried over XP from your previous weapons, and could select a couple of legacies to carry over. So even at endgame, you could be using parts and XP that you've had ever since Moria, 40 levels ago. It was just a great system, and I'd love to see others like it in other MMOs.
Pics related, I think these were all from my dwarven champion I made when I switched to the European RP server after US-EU merged. I'd grown generally disgusted with the quality of RP, and was taking the game a bit more seriously and moving towards endgame.
>>77
There's actually a fantastic mod for Medieval II: Total War that you should look into, it has all of Middle-Earth contained in the map, uses racial composition instead of religion (and cultural buildings instead of religious), has a bunch of factions all with their own units, and is overall really well done.