So dead around here!

[septor]

I really think the livelihood of this website suffers because of the limits in the UI customization allowed. Skinning a UI is very nice, but it's purely cosmetic and I would guess isn't really worth the time of many users to bother with.

I also believe that the lack of skins is partly due to the lack of working tutorials on how to create the skins. While a certain degree of difficulty is there, it's not anywhere near the difficulty of creating an addon for WoW, as that requires knowledge of a programming language (I personally do not define XML as a programming language due to it's simplistic nature (obviously it can be extremely complex, but the basis is rather easy)). I did notice a tool on here to view and possibly edit (?) skins, but I couldn't get it to work and I believe there were comments saying it wasn't compatible with the latest version of LOTRO.

I purchased LOTRO when it first came out (I was even in the beta for the final few weeks) and I can say that, despite the semi-lack of a playerbase, it is still running just fine (imo). I see far more people in the beginning areas than I ever see in the beginning areas of WoW (save the capital cities). Coupled with the huge difference in maturity level (terrible reason to disown or favor an MMO, imo) it, regardless of size, is a far better experience.

As Cairenn hinted, and I'm going to stake money on (not really) I think the F2P change will ultimately increase the playerbase while not really effecting the overall maturity level. Sure there's going to be the few idiots that try and be witty and annoying, but they will pass when they realize how linear (not saying this in a bad way) the game really is and they'll either stick with it and realize their childish garbage that seems to be cool on their previous game, is completely ignored here and they'll shape up.