I met Abarsai a week or two into beta, and together we liked to try to get out of the designed game world. Out to where the turbines did not want us. Of course we just wanted to explore and let them know about the bugs. I did bug it them!

This all happened early in beta1 in late September 2006. We were both very low levels, He was 17 and i think I was 15. Neither of us had been very far into the game at that time so many sights were new to us and seen from a different perspective then they would be when we actually got there.

After trying mountains all around Archet and Combe we finally found a spot across the street from Constable underhill which allowed us to get up on the mountains which surround the game world.

We ran around above Archet and the Chetwood for a while. this is a shot from up there looking back towards Archet and combe (you can click on any of the shots to see a bigger version):

This is some of the rolling hills we encountered as we went further north and west:

As we got away from the game zone we started to see odd landscapes which looked like they had been shaped by the Valar, or maybe the devs: 

We finally reached the farthest we could get to the northwest when we arrived above Trestlebridge:

We then turned around and decided to head east. First stop was Lone-lands. We were on the northern edge of the lonelands heading east.

This was a cool screenshot of Amon Sul, or weathertop to you lowbrows. We even got right above the half-orc ruins in lone lands, but this was before i had been there for real. so i didn't know what i was looking at. We did aggro an orc or two, and walked on top of some of the highest walls.

As we went further east we came upon Agamaur. I remember being surprised by red water. and it didnt look nerely as dangerous from up here as it would when i later came upon this in game.

Just north of Agamaur we started runninginto a lot of weird terrain. IT appeared to be some kind of dev testign ground for terrain features. Here you see a red water plane floating above the ground, but not totally enclosed by the ground so you see its sharp edge. the high wall sto the right are the northern walls around Agamaur and Garth Agarwen. I remember thinking then, and still do now, that those northern walls are so straight and steep, they look unnatural. Almost like they were at the northern edge of the map and so couldn't let them flow more naturally or they would fall into the next map north of Lonelands.

We found some area which had all sorts of buildings and statues and ruins and a waterplane about 100 ft in the air. When you walked under the water plane you flew very quickly up to the plane and began swimming. Then when you swam off the edge you floated back down to the ground.

Super Abarsai!!!

A parting shot of the Dev Plaground as we headed further east and north. You cant see it very well at this resolution but this was a shot of the floating water Plane.

After that we tried to head north to angmar but hit an invisible wall that we could not get around. We also tried to cross the Bruinen to get into the Trollshaws, which was to open in a few weeks. We could get to the other side, and saw a few trees but hit another DevWall(TM). I tried to swim south but hit a DevWall(TM) in the water.

Abarsia died doing something in trollshaws and ended up in the bree spawn point i beleive. I went back up to the top of the hill on the north edge of agamaur and tried to stay on the hill to get closer to Trollshaws. I made a mistake and fell down into agamaur, not a great thing at level 15. I think i was right outside the Garth Agarwen instance which i did not know then of course. I died trying to run out of there and appeared in the stone cirlce just outside agamaur and ran all the way back home to bree.

All in all this was one of the best days i ever spent in LOTRO. IT did change my view of the Lonelands, though, when i got there for real. Getting to see it all from a safe height and study it will do that.

It was quite a liberating experience. I had not thought much about the game engine, but was pleased to see it was possible to have wide open areas where you were not in a below grade highway like driving through detroit.. or new jersey.

The other striking thing, was that there were no loading areas unlike older games like Anarchy Online. We just ran for ever and ever and changing zones was imperceptible.. till we hit the DevWalls(TM)....

And there was no need for small transition areas between zones. In beta you had a narrow "tunnel" to go from zone to zone. for instance, you could only get from bree to Lonelands through the wolf pass or on the road. The hills were all impassable. There used to be no far chetwood, and the weather hills area was much smaller.

But in our trip we traversed zones wherever we wished. It made me hope that they could open up the world more. And we did convince them to open it up some like the changes to Bree, Lonelands, Northdowns triple corner area.  And new areas they have built have gotten more and more open feeling.

Another example is the Bree to Shire transition. You used to be able to cross the bridge and swim across the river for a few hundered feet. But there was just a cliff on the northern edge of the road in Bree. Then they opened up the area north (with Svalfang et al) and made it feel much more open.