f13.net

I played a few of the classes in the beta, but not for very long.. specifically the Captain and Champion. If I wanted to play LotRO, which I do, what classes are overpopulated or underpopulated currently? The last thing I want to do is roll another Rogue and run into a content block because I can't find a group.

It turns out that Burglars are pretty useful in groups -- I had a group fall apart last night because we couldn't find a burglar.  Minstrels, however, seem to be the most in demand -- as long as there's an instance that requires heavy healing.  Guardians are also pretty in demand.  I play a hunter as my main and don't have much problem finding groups.

As best I can tell: You can't go wrong with Burglars. Good CC, good DPS, and can reliably start conjunctions. Every group wants once, but they're not required. (I don't think any class is really required for a group -- but burglars are just nice).

Minstrels have a surprisingly large number of players, but they're also healers so you probably won't have much of a problem finding a group.

There's a LOT of champions. That's probably the most likely class to have a "Sorry, we already have a champion" there -- that and hunters.

Loremasters just aren't worth it yet. The class needs some changes to make it worthwhile.

Frankly, I'd just avoid champion, hunter, and loremaster if you're really that worried about grouping. However, I don't think any class will really gate you like that for content.

Champion is the single most played class and is about to be beat with the nerf stick like nobody's business after which it will probably still be overpowered. They are everywhere. But nobody really minds because they're so good.

Hunters are also insanely popular.

Guardian and minstrel are in the middle. Both are always in demand, but honestly, there's a lot of both hanging around if one looks.

Captain, burglar, and loremaster are the least played classes. Captain is a little weak, but I get the impression it's a viable class even if people hate the herald. Loremaster is next to useless and their best use in a group is to twitch the cleric give power to the minstrel. I can't for my life understand why people don't play burglar (other than the picture of the hamburglar in ones mind), they add so much to a group with conjunctions and crowd control and I haven't heard anyone in my kinship complain about their soloability.

Heh, they've been that way since Alpha.

My wife and I duo with a burglar/minstrel combo. I wish I could get her to actually stay back and heal instead of wading in sometimes. On the other hand, they're both viable as solo classes so it works out.

I sure hope you're not one of those people complaining about about diku mmos and the holy trinity...

My loremaster is 26 now, and I swear it's getting harder to play.  I thought it would get beefier and better by now, but LM is pretty weak.  I hope they boost LMs.  I don't know why I'm sticking to it.

Hunters seem to be a dime a dozen.  Champs too.

Oddly enough, during my failed attempt to get a group together for Retake Weathertop the other night, the biggest fly in the ointment was that we didn't have either a loremaster and/or a burglar to provide CC and/or power regen for the group.  Apparently our minstrel had been killed in many attempts at the quest and wasn't about to go in without his "ideal group."  Having never done it, I can't speak to how tough it is, but apparently it's a lv 20 quest that is tough even for people in their mid 20s.

No -- there's just been a close call or two that didn't need to be, because she was wailing on the mob and not paying attention to our respective health.

Reports from near the end of Beta said Weathertop was really tough. Never done it myself, but willing to take guild folks word for it.

As to classes, Champ rocks solo. Which is likely why it is so popular.. at least until the stick hits.. June?

Burgy is a very fun class, although a bit slow out of the gate. It takes a bit to learn.. a good thing from my point of view.

Never done LM.. can't say.. never really got behind pet classes.

On a side node, RL intrudes and I have canceled for the time being. We will see how May plays out.

Ya'll have fun! hear?    :-)

I like to have a captain in the group myself, great buffs. Also as a minstrel I love the power boosts I get from a lore master but they seem to be rare and not all that popular. If you want to group a lot though, roll a minstrel or a guardian, both solo well also.

What are they going to do to Champions come June?

After the farming nerf that broke farming completely, I don't have much faith in Turbine to actually fix things correctly.  My champ was my #2 alt, but I may play Guardian or Burglar instead, if LM becomes more painful.

The really weird thing is that my Loremaster spells get resisted a hell of a lot more now at 26 than they did ten levels ago - which would be fine if there was some corresponding strength, something that has gotten better to make up for it, but no, there's nothing that's gotten better.  Everything has grown worse.  I'm hoping things improve soon, or it's going on the shelf.

Sounds like Burglar would be a good choice, then? It's probably not played enough because it sounds like a petty criminal instead of something heroic. :P

I think he's guessing June as a nerf date. Hard to say really, because the champion got heavily nerfed in beta.

Turbine is a bit baffling. I'm really starting to wonder if they have anyone there capable of sorting out the economy and trade skills. They sure don't seem to have a "vision" for that aspect of the game at all. Why bother putting the horse routes in the game when no one can really afford to take a horse? Why have the huge hit to your cash supply on L20+ skills. If this is intentional it seems that "punish the player" is alive and well at Turbine, if it's not, why haven't they fixed it. They nerfed the cash gain as you leveled after I stopped playing my guardian in beta but I don't remember rolling in money prior to it. I had enough that I could take the occasional horse ride and buy all my 20 skills but why is that a bad thing?

Actually, while I can see how there's a crunch for some players, I've done really well just killing junk for titles and traits and quests.  I also go after animals for hides, so I get a ton of vendor trash that way.  Heck, I've not really done squat in the AH, and am currently stockpiling wood (raw and treated) to see how that sells. 

I think I'm sitting on about 500s right now and am at lv 24.  I also ride the horse a lot -- the run from Bree to Forsaken Inn (and sometimes F.I. to Ost Guruth) is a PITA to me, so I take that a good deal.

ETA -- I guess my point is ultimately that hunting random mobs (for me, it's for hides) works really well.  It's also smart to always get the spider-based traits, they have many valuable parts.

I just hit 28 and have 3g.  I'm a historian, and ignoring weaponsmithing.  I have only sold a few potions and scrolls that I levelled on.

Mostly I have just been getting the money from quests and vendor trash, selling the occasional recipe for 10s or 20s.  Recipes drop a lot off goblins and orcs, and going after those traits is a good way to get a lot of recipes.

I've also spent a few hundred on a couple of scholar recipes.

Money started to flow post-20.  North Downs particularly.

Burglars are a great class but I actually quit my burglar to play a minstrel, as I found it hard to get a group. Perhaps I didn't give it long enough as he was only level 22 (and I levelled quickly with the pre-order pack, so perhaps other players were still figuring things out).

People still want the holy trinity as a rule - tank (guardian obviously), healer (minstrel) and firepower (hunters and champs). Crowd control is kind of hard as champs like to use their aoe and guardians seem to like using theirs too. I haven't played one but I don't think they have an AOE taunt that doesn't do damage too.

That's not to say burglars aren't good as they really are, but they are harder to understand than some other classes and not everyone realises what they can do.

I played quite a few classes in beta (champ, hunter, minstrel and loremaster), and found that loremasters were the best for soloing by far. I don't see why people say they are underpowered. It's the only class I played with which I was able to take on camps of 3 or 4 whites or yellows. It can kill elites of roughly the same level - I wouldn't even think of trying that with my minstrel.

The bears have "steal aggro" and "stun mob" skills (assuming it hasn't changed since beta) while the loremaster gets a weak heal. The bears also have pretty good health - not like a guardian of course but they can take some punishment, and every so often you can heal them. Throw in creditable DPS from the loremaster himself and mez skills and it's a good combination especially for soloing.

Bears were nerfed early March.  They were called "pocket guardians" pre-nerf.

I cannot kill a same-level elite mob.  I tried to kill a 25 auroch alone twice (I was level 27) and it chewed through my bear and then chewed through me.  I couldn't get my debuffs and whatnot off fast enough or heal fast enough - couldn't do anything fast enough, I just went down fast.  I could probably kill an elite that's 4-5 levels below.

LMs are very weak against undead - mez doesn't work on them, and they seem very resistant to other spells.

I like my LM, I just wish I didn't die so much, that mobs didn't resist so much, and wish that I was a little more useful in a group.  Maybe later groups will actually need my debuffs or power battery.  For now though, when I group, I feel like dead weight.

At least your repair costs are low?  :D

Oh bugger. Now I don't know whether to bother with my loremaster alt.

LM fits my playstyle - I tend to solo mostly.  It's a decent solo class, as long as I ignore the undead quests and don't take on mobs much above my level (while I _can_ kill mobs a level or three above me but it's not time-efficient and I die more).

I wish the dps was a little higher or the mobs not as resistant.  Yesterday at 29 I fought a level 22 wolf-type (my pet was not out).  It resisted 2 mezzes and 1 fire-embers in a row.  7 levels below me and 3 resists?  Either a run of bad luck or something is screwy.  I vote for the latter, because resists seem higher than they should be, particularly against same- or lower- level mobs.

Don't roll a LM if you want one of those titles for not dying.

[Edited to add: ]

This official thread mentions that LMs will be getting some love after a month, and also offers tips on how to play an LM.
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=40341 (http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=40341)

The tips are interesting because that's how I always played it anyway - swopping aggro between myself and the pet, using all the debuffs. Once burning embers wore off I  also used to mez the mob every so often to step back a couple of paces and then send the bear in again, just to get a few free hits in as the mob ran at me. (They didn't regen health when mezzed if you stayed reasonably close, I hope that hasn't changed).

Thing is, the games new. FOTM classes, gimp classes, are all gona change as the months go by.

Whats crap now, could well be fotm in a few months time :)

I'm messing about with a minstrel, its quite fun. :)

Pocket Review of the Classes

Champion-Heavily played.  Godly.  The only thing that can stop them is the nerf bat.  They think they can tank.
Hunter-Heavily played.  By assholes. 
Captain-Uncommon.  Skills are a huge power hog. A melee jack of all trades.
Lore Master-Rare.  A magic jack of all trades.  Class needs a boost, their pets can't tank like WoW pets.
Minstrel-Uncommon.  Great healing, easy to find groups, solo is a mite slow.  This is what I play and I like it.
Guardian-Uncommon.  The good ones are rare.  The Minstrel's best friend he is an effective tank.
Burglar-Ultra Rare.  Seems to be good for groups.  Hardly see any to form any more of an opinion.

At least on my server, the Shire is full of burglars. I started a minstrel simply because of all the burglars. Not sure is there are many non-hobbit burglars though, seems like they all choose hobbit. I also started a Lore-master as our kinship didn't have a single one. I agree, most people seem to be champions or hunters. I really have been enjoying the minstrel so far.

Agree with this general summary so far...haven't dealt with that many "asshole" rangers, but I have had a few tag mobs that I was obviously going after.

I tried rolling up a Hobbit Burglar myslef lastnight, to finally try out burglar....but I really dislike that character models for them.  The torso's on the Hobbits seem to be overly elongnated (my assumption is that it is easier for gear to fit on that model - as it is close to the size of the human torso?).

Well, to effectively hunt solo, it takes a few seconds of prep time before firing the first shot.  It could simply be that you were targeting a hunter's target...the one he was "obviously" going after.  ;)

You must be one of those asshole rangers  :-P I kid, I kid.

I've had that happen with my WoW hunter. It sucks, but there's not much you can do. I try to keep an eye on the ranged wusses around me in LoTRO to see where they're actually hunting.

Did you know that durability goes down on my armor when i cast healing spells on other people. So i end up with repair costs after a whole night of not getting hit.

Sounds fair to me.  (And yep, I knew that, played a LM in closed beta)  My gear takes damage for a wide range of reasons.  My joke was really about how light armor costs less to repair after death -- not whether LMs don't take  gear damage at all.

Actually, that's not fair at all. It's pretty freakin' stupid. Damage gets hit, it gets damaged. Offset that by lowering the cost to repair for certain classes by giving them innate faction or something. This solution is capricious.

I played a burglar into the 30's in beta and found the class to be fairly uninteresting.  I can see this class being useful to a dedicated group, but for a part-time grouper/soloer as my playstyle was, there were certainly better class choices.  If I were to play the game with a set group and gaming night, I'd enjoy the class.  Lacking a steady group, I don't find the class has much to offer... apparently others agree.

I have a burglar that I need to play past level 15.  I'm really enjoying my main, so I've been neglecting my alts.

My main gripe about the burglar is that one of its best skills is group-only.  That's great when you're in a fellowship and need to start some conjunctions.  Certainly, I can see the utility of having a burglar in places like the Great Barrows and on Weathertop.  It' s just too bad that you can't do that solo.

Sure, you get some nifty powers that, when chained together, can generate crits on top of crits, but I can't really think of many other classes that have those kinds of group-only abilities.  Perhaps there's a buff somewhere that only buffs others and not yourself, but I've not seen it yet.

I do think that the burglar is quite fun to play solo, at least up to level 15.  I'll see how I feel after moving my burglar over to Bree-land to do those quests.  I like the CC abilities like riddle, I like that I can debuff something then remove that debuff and get a heal out of it.  It's also satisfying to see a steal ability that works rather well. 

I should really shelve the hunter for a while and work on that burglar.  I was hoping to get a main to 35 before really working any of my alts, but I can see how having my burglar and minstrel somewhat caught up to my main can be useful.

We've been doing all the content with only 3 players (guardian, minstrel, champion). So far, the toughest fight in the whole game has been the final boss in Greater Barrows (we did it with 3 at 25 i think). Seriously, if we could add any 3rd player in our group, it would be a burglar, simply because being able to choose when you want to refill the tank/healer with mana makes every encounters trivial.

People don't really realize their class abilities because the content is extremely easy when done with 6 people. When you really stretch your ressources thin by playing with less than what it was designed for, you get to see the real use of each classes.

Please don't tell me:

a) no one is over level 40 so no one knows
b) you don't get any new skill after level 40

As a champion I am pretty worried as my trainer doesn't have any new active skill for me after level 40 and just a couple of boring passives. What's the deal, seriously. No new skills after level 40?

Hate to break it to you but you don't get any new skills after 40, just upgrades to Parry, Evade and Accuracy.

Also your class is getting 'looked at' and will be changed coming with the June 'Shores of Evendim' patch.

Enjoy!  :hello_kitty:

I don't mind a nerf. We surely need one.

It just feels boring not to have any new skill/attack between level 40 and 50.

Well there will be some Traits and Deeds to chase after.  I'm completely obsessed with them now.  :-D

I heard about some "light blue scrolls" that are supposed to grant new skills after level 40.
Does any of you know anything about this?

I think there are some rare drops that are skill books that give you new abilities.

Leveling in the Dwarf/Elf area is stupid.

I did an instanced quest yesterday, and it was me (Guardian), a Champion, and 4 Hunters.

Jesus christ.

I am so happy I am not leveling a DPS class.

Once in awhile as I look at this game, I wonder if there is a super sekrit Gandalfesque wizard class that is only unlockable through random soul-sucking metrics.  And Turbine, unlike SWG, just KEPT IT A SECRET. 

Oddly enough, there's an NPC related to the main storyline who is one of the wizards.  He says something to the effect of, "Yes, I'm a loremaster, but I am also a wizard."  I'm not 100% sure how that's supposed to shake out within the lore, but then again, I can't think of a single example of a loremaster from the books unless you somehow count Elrond since, you know, he knows a ton of shit.

My understanding is that the Tolkien estate wouldn't allow the Wizard class, since there are specifically 5 of them.  So Turbine, thru the books, found and made the Lore Master.

 

Yeah the wizards are sorta like gods in Tolkien. Regular mages are stuck talking to birds and getting rejected by PUGs. That's why you never see them in the books... nobody wants to party with them.

There were a few people described as "lore masters" in the books.  Denethor, Elrond.  Gandalf mentions discussing the ring with loremasters in Gondor.  It's an interesting way to slip in a pseudo-caster.

I honestly think you're going to see some love in the healing lines for both LM and Captains.  Just too few minstrels out there,  and lots of folks are getting stuck in the content.

You know, I've seen Minstrels playing, and the class actually looks kind of fun at lower levels. They have a ranged pull ability, can heal, and seem to be able to hold their own in small fights.

Those I know who play minstrels are quite taken with them.  Seems to me there are more minstrels in game than captains or LMs.

Funny, every time I wander into Bree its full of Heralds and Bears. 

The problem isn't that there aren't enough minstrels, is that the quest/killing XP thing very strongly favors not repeating instances or quests. I basically get nothing out of it as a minstrel, so there's no way I'm going to pick up a PUG the way I grabbed random PUGs for elite XP in WOW instances.

So you have a lot of minstrels out there soloing quests painfully while a lot of groups are shouting for us to join them in an instance we'd rather be in than soloing.

But just as no minstrel wants to repeat an instance, neither does any champ, guard, LM, or anyone else.  Theres nothing special about being a minstrel that makes re-runs unpopular. So why the lack of healers?   

Put another way: Minstrel A joins Champ A, Hunter A, and Guardian A and runs through, say, Avert a War.  Later on, Champ B, Hunter B and Guardian B want to do the same instance.  Of course Minstrel A isn't interested - he's run it.  But where is Minstrel B?

Actually, the difference is that the minstrel looking for group for a certain quest won't have to wait to find a group and get inside the instance, while the rest of the classes will be sitting there waiting on the next free minstrel who needs the quest.

Honestly, the healing mecanism is incredibly boring in LOTRO. You basically have an amazing group hp regen song as a tier 4 (so you either need to chorus to tier3-4 to buff the group or cast without resists your tier1-2 songs to get to that point without letting anybody die in the process), you have a fast heal that costs around 60 mana for 200 hp and a big heal that costs around 60 mana for 600 hp (depends on the level obviously, but the concept remains the same). After that, you have a group heal that costs around 180 mana for 200 hp on everyone, which means that the group heal is more efficient than the small heal as long as more than 3 people need it. In terms of total healing, the group heal cannot be more efficient than 3 big heals. Other than that, you have an instant group heal (700 hp i think) that brings in a lot of aggro, but it is on a 15 minutes timer, so it's basically as if you had nothing.

So in terms of healing, you have a song on a 3 mins timer that you put on whenever you have a big fight, a fast heal, a big heal and a crappy heal. To be efficient, you need to use only the big heal. You're forced to use the small one when the tank doesn't have aggro on everything obviously.

With healing that boring, not much decisions to make, looking at 6 bunches of health bars (with mana bars in the middle) + all the bars for the awful pets, being the heal-bot is pretty much the worst thing you can have to do. Therefore, you don't have a lot of healers in game. Minstrel prefere soloing/duoing because they can use their other skills instead of just watching 8-9 healthbars all fight long. Add the fact that most group have terrible tanks and that healers will eat the dust with crappy tanks, and you have a mix where you'd have to pay me to group with pickup groups when they are asking for minstrels for 2 hours.

The difference is that at level 30 I've never seen anything I needed any class other than a minstrel to take on. A champ can tank quite fine. I've done quests that absolutely needed a minstrel where we had burlgars tanking.

It's a matter of taste and playstyle.  Healing isn't too hard in LoTR in combat and I like standing back healing while others fight for my xp and loots. 

Also the class is very fun for me to solo.  A bit slow but pretty safe with heals and a Cry of the Valar to chase off enemies if it gets too rough.

Grouping.  Many times I am the last to join a group since Minstrels are so in demand.  This means there is no downtime while the group is formed.  My new vow is not to join a group that doesn't have a Guardian.  Guardians make my life much easier; healing is easier and I don't die as much from over-healing aggro.

I'd like to make a macro to play my songs in order.  Yes I am THAT lazy.

This is a factor in ANY game that has a specialized healing class with defined class skills.  It's far more efficient to have your healer concentrate on healing than doing anything else, so the player base forces the healers to play that way.  This is also why hybrid classes inevitably suck in these games.  It's better to be really, really good at one thing than mediocre at many.

DAoC, you had main healers (druid and cleric) that were efficient in combat.  The players were up in arms.  Albion players got their own main healer's damage line nerfed into the ground,  while Hibernia players just ostercized their nature druids.

Players will min/max the hell out of everything,  even if it makes the play experience less fun.  Insert old f13/waterthread truism "people are broken" or "can't have good things" or whatever.

In DAOC, Midgard's healers had nothing in terms of combat.  Healing and cc.  Great for groups but boy, did it suck to level up solo.

I've since learned not to play classes that cannot solo decently, since my playstyle tends to be more solo.

Unfortunately gravdiggr is right on the money. The healing is static and basically free from action, mainly because you have no option to heal "smarter" (as far as that is possible) so you end up spamming only your largest heal. The faster heal is half as efficient (half the amount, same cost) and got a cooldown, making it just as slow (if not slower, incorporating network and UI latency) as the large heal when chain cast. It's purely used as an emergency heal, and seriously, how often are you in the kind of hurry that a second actually matters? It's a bit like a tank being shot from behind - you probably screwed up long before the problem arose. Nor is there any natural way of restoring mana, you have to rely on potions or skills with cooldown to do that (or a lore-master, if you manage to find either of the two in existance), hence you can't develop a good rhytm of healing and resting as there's no point in not healing. The problem isn't strictly the ability to heal through encounters, it's that you become bored even during boss fights.

Secondly, the tiering system makes sense for a while, but it grows old very fast, since the lower tiers got nothing remotely useful in a group scenario - you just use whatever skill you can to open the next tier of abilities. Another issue is that the group buffs given from the songs last 15 or 30 seconds, meaning you have to consistently keep singing the same crap songs just to access a few decent one in tier 3 and 4. It looks clever on paper, but it's tedious and unengaging in an instance, which should be about action, even for the healer. Healing is defensive, but it can be enjoyable and thrilling in its own right, as shown by other games. Supposedly Turbine wanted you to DPS aswell, but DPSing with a third of the DPS of a Champion or a Hunter feels wasted and not fun.

I'm actually slightly puzzled with the decision to make the Minstrel a seemingly subpar healer, considering how Guardians, Hunters and Champions slot nearly perfectly into the tried-and-tested tank'n'spank mechanics. Guardians are awesome, I hear.

My biggest problem with the healing is the real lack of choices.
We did a fight yesterday which was 50% awesome (because we won) and 50% retarded (because i wouldn't redo that ever again).

The mob in question is called grimbark, level 32 nemesis tree in the elite instance of the red maid. The tree in question has a pretty bad ass health regen. We were a 33 minstrel, a 33 guardian and a 33 champion. Even though i optimized my mana a lot and i have 2.6 in combat mana regen (which gives me 16-18 mana per tick instead of 8-10), it still took me 14 greater mana potion to get through the fight. The god damn tree died i had 26 mana left. I'm not sure wether the reuse time on the potions is 3,4 or 5 minutes, but it gives you an idea of how long the fight lasted. Reminded me of EQluclin to a certain extent.

It was fun for the fact i never thought we'd kill him with our group, but it was the biggest example of how little choices you have in terms of healing. There's a limit to how much you can min-max your efficiency when you only have 1 heal spell to bring to the table.

That fight does sound like it sucked, but is that really a flaw in the class design or in how your group approached it? High regen mobs are defeated through high DPS or attrition. Attrition is usually more reliable but it is also boring as hell. Maybe as a trio you had no choice but attrition. I don't know LotRO at all, but it seems like this fight didn't need to painful unlike Luclin raids where there was no other option since changing a few classes out of 40 doesn't make a huge difference at the margin when a mob has a billion hit points.

Yes, we could have brought more people, but honestly, if we're able to do fights with only 3 level appropriate people, can you just imagine how trivial the whole game becomes when you bring 6 like you're supposed to ?

The point i was trying to make is that i was able to keep on healing for more than 40 consecutive minutes by only using 1 spell, waiting on potions timers and having good in-combat mana regen.

I usually play healers (or support like the bard in FFXI) and i can tell you that a system where you have a fast super innefficient heal, a big efficient heal and an horrendous group heal is pretty much the worst healing system a mmo has ever had.

Actually, it reminds me of eq1, kunark-velious era, where the only spell worth mentioning for efficiency was CompleteHeal.

I wonder if this is going to be like WoW. Relatively easy until endgame and then soul-crushing raids?

I wilted when I heard they were putting in raids.

"Raid" better still mean 6 people.  If The Fellowship of the Ring was able drop said ring into Mount Doom with two Hobbits, theres no reason to require 20+ people to do anything.

And 2 hobbits defended Helm's Deep?

Never play City of Heroes, then, I think you might explode from fury.

--GF

Wouldn't that be an example of a Monster Play battle?  :P

Raids in LotRO can take up to 4 fellowships, i.e. 24 people. From the looks of the June update, raids will, as mentioned, center around battles rather than dungeoncrawling. Although, I'm pretty sure we'll see a Moria raid sooner or later, battling the Balrog as a final encounter. Other than that, raids were a late addition to the game, so it's hard to say where they intend to go with them, considering they seemingly added them to be competetive with WoW.

However, Turbine is putting a great deal of effort in to retain a rough feel of Middle-earth, almost to the point where it seems to cripple game design decisions, so on the other hand we might never see the typical raid encounters in LotRO. Personally I'd like to see the real, legendary bad guys remain alive. Middle-earth is meant to be dangerous and with entities powerful enough to withstand armies, let alone a shoddy bunch of adventurers.

On the patch: http://www.lotro.com/article/327
On raids: http://www.lotro.com/article/130

I'm holding my judgement on the raids but I'm not a big fan of them. Raids are the #1 reason I left WOW.

I think raiding (as in massive scale) does have a place, but there has to be alternatives, viable alternatives. I'd prefer raiding in LotRO as something fairly casual that wasn't the only mean to progess in the endgame, but rather a kind of massive scale dungeon/event to do with your whole kinship. Simply something to do a night when alot of people are online, not to plan your life around. Raids don't have to be prestigeous.

Back on topic anyhow. From what I can tell, class popularity goes something like this;

Champion/hunter
Guardian/minstrel
Captain
Burglar
Lore-master

Although, should be noted that minstrels seem to have a heinous drop-off at level 25 or so, the first "wall" for them in the soloing. I don't think martyrdom in MMOs counts towards karma, so I understand them.  :-P

Turbine is smart to put this effort in.  They need to find niche that differentiates their game from everyone elses,  especially since we're in the catch up to Blizzard stage of MMOs.

DAoC and EVE - pvp and large scale pvp

EVE - setting

Guildwars - sport pvp

WoW - raiding and polish

etc.

I play LOTRO because of well-done world and lore,  and pretty good story based quests/play.  As someone said, it has the feel of a good solo rpg with the benefit of being able to play with your friends.

Regular roll outs of new zones and story based quests as they advance the timeline along to the War of the Ring is pretty much my ideal end game.