We've previewed the Minstrel, Burglar, and Champion classes so far, but what about the rest of The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar's combatants? While we've yet to touch the Guardian, LotRO's tank class, and the Lore-Master, a ranged spell blaster, we have managed to build a Hunter to 15 and a Captain to 10. Playing around with these types gave us some experience with pets for the first time, a prominent feature of the Captain. At this point we've logged a substantial number of hours wading through the introductory content for this game, and have yet to get sick of it. It's a much more user-friendly MMO than those many longtime veterans have been playing for years. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the quest descriptions, which give extremely specific navigation directions for finding objectives. The current level cap of 15 prevents us from bringing you details of how the classes fare against higher level content or how complex this game gets later on, but that limit should be alleviated when the game moves to final release on April 24.

One strange effect of the low level cap has people treating level 15 as an end-game growth limitation. Instead of stopping play once they hit 15, we've seen many players continuing to quest for powerful rare items even though they're getting no experience. It seems like a waste to us, since they could have done the same quests after the retail launch and likely gained a few levels in the process. Even with such powerful level 15 gear, it's likely such equipment will be quickly rendered useless in a short while, given how easy it is to level in this game. Since questing for additional equipment after reaching maximum level is an entrenched MMO mentality, such occurrences aren't entirely unexpected, but why not create another character instead?

Like the other classes, Hunters skills work in tandem for increased effectiveness. His Barbed Arrow shot, which decreases enemy run speed and does a minor amount of damage over time, is a good way to start off a fight. Setting up a trap before the fight lets you ensnare the aggroed mob and get off a few more shots before they close for melee. We've so far been using Swift Bow, which unleashes two arrows after a charge time of about three seconds, and Quick Bow, which shoots an extra single shot. The aforementioned special bow shots add focus points to a bar at the bottom of the screen and can be consumed to pull off a Penetrating Shot, a single arrow attack with a large amount of bonus damage.