Features// Lord of the Rings Online

The Shire is as idyllic on screen as it was in print. From your first moments wobbling towards destiny. the game drips atmosphere. Falling leaves, mournful winds, flocks of birds wheeling over rippling ponds - this is a game that knows how to inspire an adjective. Constellations stand out in skies filled with stars.

By day waterfalls glisten, fields are lush and verdant. Menageries of animals roam the hills, some ready to attack unwary travellers, others, skittish, flee when you pass near them. There are rabbits and wolves; there are deer and butterflies. The world is alive.

The Shire is Hobbit country. There are villages in every valley, and round wooden doors buried in every hillside. Villagers swap gossip as they pass each other in the streets. Some are hospitable. Some are suspicious. There are nosey Hobbits and greedy Hobbits. There are far too many lazy Hobbits who have me delivering pies and letters, and investigating missing cousins and strange artefacts found in the fields.

One quest had me running back and forth in search of fireworks for one of the uppity Sackville-Bagginses, who'd recently moved into Bilbo's vacated house in Bag-End. Others involved protecting vegetables at farms, and growing and harvesting wheat.

With grand adventure brewing in the west much of this to- and fro-ing seemed trivial, but as one particularly wise Hobbit informed me, "Our cares may seem of small importance to others - the delivery of mail, the tasting of fine foods, the lighting of fireworks - but you and I know they are worth protecting." As a country boy myself, I can empathise.

Alas, this rural idyllism might not last. Earlier in the year Turbine announced that The Lord of the Rings Online will be going free to play this autumn. In stark contradiction to Tolkien's opinions about the industrialisation and urbanification of the British countryside, the floodgates will be opened to every Tom, Dick and T-Bag4u92; turning them loose like Orc hordes upon the Shire, to scour its pastures and gank its dignity.

Okay, that's not likely to happen. LOTRO is a big game - a REALLY big game. It has the largest non-randomised playing area of any game, so you could unleash all the disgruntled twelve year-olds ever banned from Modern Warfare 2 upon it and there'd still be enough room for moonlit fishing, hilltop solitude, and all the tranquillity that makes the game so special. It's a tranquillity lacking in most modern games. Even in the heat of battle in LOTRO there's a certain serenity, a certain old-fashioned Tolkienesque sense of what is right and what's wrong. I mean, as a Minstrel I was singing monsters to death, playing them off with my lute like an anthropomorphic Keyboard Cat. That's something you aren't likely to find in most modern games, either.

I can't help worrying how going free-to-play will change The Lord of the Rings Online; or wondering if this really is the last chance to see Middle Earth as its developer intended it to be. But as Gollum's story illustrates, negativity is something that leads to hate, obsession, and terrible comb-overs. Perhaps this will be the kick up the backside the entire MMO industry needs. After all, with a product this polished is available for free, any developer running a subscription MMORPG is going to have to deliver something truly special to outshine this brightly gleaming Evenstar.

Only time will tell, I suppose. For now, let me gossip with the barman. Let me hurdle farm gates, till the land, plant potato seeds and cook the crop in a Coney Stew. Let me investigate mines overrun with arachnids, talk to big-folk with pet bears, find recipes in dusty libraries and get infeasibly, mind-bendingly, drop-to-your-knees-and-throw-your-guts-up drunk. Because I am a Hobbit.

And that's what we do.