The animations in this game seem half done most of the time. Particularly the jumping, nothing like seeing a hobbit clear a fence without even bending his knees when the fence is just as tall if not taller than him. I also found that there isn\'t a strafing motion when you\'re running forward; you just kind of magically glide left and right, which I found irrationally annoying. I could no longer move in diagonals unless I physically turned that way. A good portion of the special attack animations I didn\'t see as all that well done either. All in all, I\'d say the animations are this games biggest weak point well, okay, second. I\'ll get to the first one right now.

The sound, ugh, this can be your best friend or worst nightmare in this game. While I did enjoy some of the music, I had to enjoy it while I wasn\'t moving, because the sound for walking was just grating and annoying in places. Road and some dirt/rocky areas just sounded horrible, kind of like a child playing the single highest note on a piano over and over again. Now image that for 5 minutes as you travel to the next town. I often found myself jumping when moving, on purpose, to avoid this sound. Other times I ran along fences, tables, or even the dirt and grass areas I knew wouldn\'t do this.

Crafting isn\'t too shabby either. It is the same old find resource out in the world, refine said item, and then add it with a few others to make something. Sometimes you can make these other items yourself, or you could buy them from a shop, or you might have to seek out another player to have the item made.

When you decide what you want to craft, you get sets that you get to choose from rather than deciding which types of things you get to create on your own. These sets make perfect sense too, so you very well might not get all of the crafting skills you\'d want. Explorers may be able to make bows and some weapons, but they can\'t plant items like farmers can, and so on. These sets of crafting skills are the types of skills those people would indeed have. This adds a sense of realism to the game, and forces you to look beyond your skills to others in the game, which is what MMO\'s are all about. Interacting with other people.

If you don\'t feel like actually asking someone for something, you sure could just go over to the auction house, located in major cities, and buy it on there. It\'s really handy and a staple item in MMO\'s now a days, but the one in LotRO gold was easy to use and manage, pretty simple. I was able to get on the auction house and get a few things I needed for quests I couldn\'t do myself, which is nice. You\'re also able to put things up there for sale yourself as well, and that\'s how most people will go about making their money in the game from what I can see. As of right now, the economy is trying to find a nice stable area, things seemed overly expensive still. Over time the auction house will find a nice staple point and it won\'t seem like such a dark abode.