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I noticed you like to play several toons and level them to the highest they can go.

In my opinion I'd max out a hunter and take on a gathering profession as my 1st toon. You'll be able to farm materials needed as you develope your other charactors with the ability to travel to almost anyplace needed to get mats necessary to progress your other toons crafting abilities. The hunters travel abilites with a gathering profession is a nice combination to have if you are going to play several charactors as you seem to do. It is nice to be able to go anywhere quickly to hunt down the creature needed to farm the mats needed. An added benefit the hunters tracking gives you an edge in finding the mobs you are seeking you can mine or gather wood while your waiting for spawns to pop.

Open up as many banking slots as you can as you progress. Pull down some information on what profession uses what to craft. In the begining create 4 other toons on the same server decide what professions each one will take on and as you gather stacks of crafting materials mail the crafting materials to the appropriate toon especially recipies. You'll be thankful when you need an item and realize you sold it to the NPC because you didn't know what it was for or out of room and had to sell. (Remember save recipies sell ones you have duplicates unless they are single use. Save single use recipies and use yourself sell or use the item if you don't need it.)

The Auction House(AH) is your friend learn to use it to your benefit buy low sell high. Some people want it "now", get to know the prices and set a reasonable price with a buy outs on all auctions. Once you have mastered a tier crafted weapons and armor that are made using the mastery skills available to each tier sell very well. I suggest mastering each tier before moving to the next level. Some of the lower level criticle items sell very well.

I play on brandywine there never seems to be enough healers with a shortage of guardians in the high end game. If you like playing a healer you'll have no trouble getting a group. The under 30 game you can do most anything without the core tank/healer however, as you progress you'll need both tank/healer to do harder quests and instances. There are plenty quests that can be accomplished solo or with 2 or 3 players.

End game:

The grind for reputation in my opinion is not worth the rewards but I'm sure more will come and the people that have maxed reputation will be glad they did the quests.

Crafting is not over complicated like EqII mats are easy to come by and items can be made following simple recipies that people want and will wear.

One can group or play solo. Having maxed one toon out (Lore Master) I've been very busy leveling other toons and maxining crafting on the other toons I created that have been storing crafting mats.

Hardest part for me is deciding who I want to play. Minstral, Hunter, Burgler, and Lore Master are what I have going. Fun to play when ya have farmed the matts and made all the equipment, weapons, and jewlrey items for each one of your toons.

I'll throw some FFXI skewed views your way. I played FFXI for about 5 years, still have my chars, and LOTRO is a diferent world.

Partying is not mandatory until you reach your late teens, and even then you cna likely get away with 2-3 man groups. But once you get into the 30s, plan on looking for groups to do most things. Unlike FFXI where the perfect party set up and the perfect strat was often needed, LOTRO actually allows a lot of flexibility and creativity in getting to the end of quests. You can have a group that your FFXI mindset should be telling you will never work, and have it dominate a quest in LOTRO. It's more balanace and forgiving.

Crafting, again, is a step up from what you're used to in FFXI and while some of the best end game gear is dropped, there's plenty of top notch, big buck, crafted gear to make.

End game is a wee bit sparse but what's there is pretty solid and a good deal of fun. Moreover much of the 'end game' quests and instances directly affect your character in terms of class specific quests and the like. It's well done and looks to only get better. Some choose to use PvP as a kind of end game and depending on you POV, it's almost an entirely seperate game unto itself.

Hope some of that helps. And if you're looking for a server and group to join feel free to check out Meneldor server and look me up.

I can totally relate to this thread, glad to see you admit you were addicted :)

I've played FFXI for 3.5 years, have 4 75 jobs and most others close to 37, almost max crafting, and 200+ days played. I was hopelessly addicted for a long time, sometimes playing for 18+ hours at once. Its disgusting to me now, and I can't even believe I got sucked in so badly at times. Its in the time-sink design of FFXI though, as others have said, examples:

1. Experience parties: It takes a perfect group of 6 to get good xp, most mismatched groups will either be slow or fail completely after a few pulls. Tanks, healers, and refresh jobs are basically required for xp 40+ or the experience will be slow. But wait! This isn't a guarantee for success - I can't count the number of times I've gotten a perfect setup and gotten to camp only to have the healer or tank go afk or d/c and then the party is essential screwed. Some would argue that the signet changes let you solo, duo, trio better and they do - but its nowhere near as effective as a 6/6 party.

2. 21-24 hour pop or lottery pop NM where you can waste months either not claiming or going 0/100 on a drop. Next time you're in Dragon's Aery for 3 hours only to lose claim, think about what you're actually doing for a second. REALLY think about it if the window is open and its a strange time - like 5am. REALLY, REALLY think about it if its 5am and you have work/school the next day. (I speak from experience ; ;)

3. Stupid travel time sinks like having to wait 10+ minutes staring at the screen waiting on an airship. You know, SE has done some things to remedy this lately but for years I was having to ride a chocobo to Sky for LS events, which would take 30+ minutes just to get there and gather.

4. Delay on events - 72 hour timer for Dynamis and Limbus, 1 Assault tag per day, etc. Only done to make you play longer until you can get your drops, has no actual bearing on strategy of the event.

Sorry if I sound bitter, but LOTRO is just so much better than FFXI. You will be making the right move Maliki. The time-sink stuff is still there (it wouldn't be an MMO if there wasn't) but its not the super-retarded stuff that serves no purpose other than to force you to play longer.

I got married 3 weeks ago and just had to quit FFXI because its a relationship killer. I always felt like I had to log on for events even if I didn't want to. The deal breaker was when I was still dating my wife and one Saturday night I had to miss events because she wanted to go to a movie and I got "in trouble" with the LS for not attending. For. a. video. game. Ridiculous. I still wanted an MMO to play occasionally when my wife is working, but only for 1-2 hours at a time. I love the ability to group but also to be able to solo and turn it off with a minutes warning. The only thing I miss is the job switch, where one character can be any job. I'm still a newbie myself, but nonetheless I'm really enjoying the game. I don't even miss FFXI except for a few friends.

Edited, Sep 29th 2007 11:27am by Loris

I can't speak for other servers, but Meneldor seems to be a pretty social server. Ask a question in OOC or the Advice channel and chances are someone's going to answer it. Grouping here is different than I've experienced in other games. Often, when you go somewhere to try to do a quest & see others around doing the same thing, people will form a short term fellowship for just that task, then all go their separate ways or stay together if people have the same rack of quests.

I think you could reach the top level without grouping, but the game mechanics and lore make that less attractive than a more cooperative approach. For the big stuff you're going to need a fellowship.

If you loved the movies, I'd strongly suggest that you read the books (and the Hobbit). There are many characters you'll meet in the game who you will know from the books, but didn't make an appearance in the movies (aside from the fact that they're great books).

Crafting is worth it and the craft system is pretty well designed. I'm an armourer, so I can make any type of armour, and I make crafting tools for all the crafters. I love gearing up in armour I made myself. Some of the best weapons and armour in the game are crafted. Don't worry about epic weapons eliminating the demand for crafted ones. Also, most (if not all) crafted items are bind on equip, so you don't have the problem of having your great crafted items getting handed around and around & eventually flooding the game world. There will be an ongoing need for replacements.

I'm just starting to see the end game content, and I'm more of a casual player than a hard core raider, so I'll leave others to answer that question, but I still have plenty to do.

Come on in, try a few different classes to see which fits. On our server we're always short of Guardians, Minstrels and Captains. These are pretty high demand classes so if you want lots of grouping that would be a good way to go.