Probable epic win for Turbine

So for the past 30 minutes or so I have been looking over the LOTRO my.lotro.com social networking site beta and I am extremely impressed.

First I want to say that I am impressed with the job they did with organization and presentation. Being able to see time stamps for completing quests and achieving levels is a good way to advertise qualities about yourself that will help you find people to play with. I think the blog function is a clever addition and can foresee many of my fellow Landrovalians utilizing this feature to its fullest.

I think the thing I am most impressed about this whole my.lotro.com affair is that the site is built out of friggin WordPress! I know there are some pretty amazing WordPress hacks floating around, but I think this has to take the cake (and pie as well) of all of them.

So as basically my.lotro.com is a stripped down and heavily modded WordPress-mu installation it allows you to do many things a normal wordpress blog will let you - like potentially change the theme of your blog! The option is available though there is only the default design as a choice.

And so far I've noticed two mods: an events calendar and a character list - which is awesomely hooked to the game database to provide information automatically.

I am predicting that LOTRO players who are familiar with WordPress will no doubt be attracted to this new site like moths to a big flaming eye. It isn't readily apparent right now, but when you log in use your forum name and password.