Well, those non-disclosure agreements are annoying. I would love to tell you how great the beta test version of Lord of the Rings Online is, but I can't go into any details. My only previous experience in MMORPGs is Star Wars Galaxies, which was fun but which I gave up on fairly quickly, and World of Warcraft, which gave me a fun 10 day free trial period but couldn't convince me to bite the bullet and join after that ran out. (Too cartoony and an unfamiliar world.) LOTR: Online takes all of the elements that were good about WOW and puts it into the massive and detailed world of Middle-Earth that we all know and love. Unlike the other two I have tried, LOTRO never once feels like I am grinding up a ladder just to get experience. In fact, most of the times I have leveled up, I have hardly noticed because I am actually having fun playing the game and not sitting there killing by a spawn point just to get XP. (The only bummer is that my character just got reset to zero after an update. And I was just getting strong enough to consider heading out through the Trollshaws towards Rivendell.)
When the official game kicks off next spring, I will be first in line to pay my monthly fee and play this one for a long time. Just the initial Eriador section should keep me busy for a while, but when they add possible expansions in the future (Moria, Rohan, Gondor, Mirkwood, etc.), I will be playing this forever. Things like visiting the party tree at Bag End or meeting Strider in the Prancing Pony, or even just seeing Ted Sandyman outside his mill or Bill Ferny outside Bree, make this a lot of fun if you have read the book countless times like I have, and know what to look for in your explorations. The more familiar you are with the book, the more at home you will feel when you play the game. There are also tons of things for you to do other than fight, which makes the game a lot more interesting and well rounded.