You see, this is why I've always avoided online gaming. It's such a pain. I've waited ages for the game to install and I've loaded it and now it needs updating, Fair enough, I was expecting it, but the instructions about getting a standalone updater were odd, when I followed the link it talked about an auto-updater for the LOTRO beta, and then it linked off to FilePlanet which requires registration to download a file.

Thankfully, the game doesn't need to use the standalone updater because it has a built-in updater, so I just continued and allowed the game to update itself. It does make it sound unnecessarily complicated though.

The game is installing away, and I've just created my "COG" account, which I've realised stands for Codemasters Online Gaming. The registration process is pretty easy, though I'm a bit peeved that I had to give them my credit cards details in order to complete the account. Given that I have 30 days free play with the game, I don't see why I should enter them up front.

It reminds me a bit of the old days when ISP trials got you to sign up front so that you had to remember to cancel them when your 30 days were up.

Still, I'd guess it's pretty standard for MMOs to work this way. At least your game won't interrupted because you've forgotten to do it.

You have to remember your COG name because you need it to log into the game, and it's from in there that you can name your character(s).

OK, I've still not installed it, because I've been reading the manual through. The manual tries to be quite accessible, but it already talks about buffs and "Role: Tank". Now for people absolutely new to MMOs, I don't see this helping. While I've not played much MMO, I do have a friend who talks about WoW non-stop, so at least I understand the gameplay.

So, I haven't made it as far as installation yet, because I've just opened the packaging and discovered that I only have the choice of four races in The Lord of the Rings Online: Man, Dwarf, Elf and Hobbit (to me always considered to be slightly akin to Luke Skywalker – essential to the plot, but ultimately more than a tad annoying).