The "What are you playing?" topic.

[Meneldil]

Well, there are actually 2 MMO that stand out, World of Warcraft, for it's polished world and gameplay, and Eve Online, for its gameplay.

Eve Online is not a fantasy, hack n' slash MMORPG, but a space trading and fighting one.
WoW offers the most content, the more class diversity, and overall, the more things to do among fantasy settings MMO (even if a large part of it is dumb farming, and even if it lacks things such as housing or a real trade system).
Furthermore, while pretty hardcore at first, it's more and more casual friendly, so you can start out now, and still have fun/loots. Eve OTOH is absolutely hardcore.

Now, LotRO. Well. LotRO is by many standards similar to WoW. Trading system seems at first more varied, but it's not actually. The character personalisation is not done simply by gaining levels, but also by fullfilling various objectives, such as exploring, killing x number of orcs, and so on.
Playing in the Middle-Earth is also quite entertaining, obviously.
But there are a few problems:
- Firstly, there's not much people playing. While WoW euro forums have thousands of message posted everyday, LotRO ones barely have a few hundreds. You'll hardly meet someone before you reach the Moria part, and even then, the world is basically empty.
- You cannot PvP openly, which by all means, sucks (and I don't really enjiy PvP). Having to roll an orc character that you cannot play for anything but PvP blows.
- The whole end game part lies on an armor set that you have to farm in 6 people instances before being able to raid. Atm, finding these armor sets is quite a pain and prevent a whole lot of people from raiding in the Moria.

Warhammer Online is also a decent game. I've only played through the beta, and despite it's rather blank aspect, it has a few good ideas, like public quests, widespread PvP. The world seemed quite big, and the latest patch added the Tomb Kings. Ancient Egypt like undeads, pretty cool in my book. But then, apparently, the game is also quite empty, and couldn't rival with WoW and its 10 million subscribers.
I couldn't say about the character personalisation, as it was pretty much non existent during the beta, but back then the devs were saying that you could add trophy and stuff on your armor, as well as use a wide variety of skills.
Gameplay is also pretty basic. All in all, WoW, LotRO and WAR Online have pretty similar gameplay. You gain new skills, put them in your hotkey bar, and bash them whenever the cooldown is ready. Learning it is easy, mastering it is much harder.

There is also Age of Conan, which is - I think - the only fantasy MMO other than WoW that makes some money. The game is pretty cool at first, and the original world and great voice acting really help. The gameplay is quite originial. You push buttons to use different combos against your oponents. Something like < < ^ > to cut a head directly. Finish moves are cool too. But the whole thing gets pretty boring once you've been through every combo half a thousand times.
Then, when I played, the game was quite unbalanced, as in long ranged class could wtfpwn pretty much everything. Seeing my lvl 15 barbarian unable to even hit a level 7 archer and die stupidly after running after a faster foe for 5 mins made me go 'What the hell?'. Furthermore, the game didn't have any openess, which is terrible for a MMO. You pretty much cannot go out of the path made by the designers. A 5 feet tall hill or a small wall was enough to stop your character from going any further. The corridor syndrom kind of ruins the game for me (just like it ruined some RPGs like Final Fantasy 10 and 12).

As for the hardcore/casual thingy,
- EVE is pretty hardcore
- WoW is hardcore, but becomes more and more casual friendly with each patch (some people think it sucks, some think it's great, I think it has pro's and con's)
- WAR is middle ground. Since it's mostly PvP, you don't have to play a lot to do stuff, but you can do it if you feel like it.
- LotRO is regarded as the most casual friendly MMO. I only went through the free trial (10 or 15 days) without ever dying, even in an instance, playing with people who apparently had no clue.
- I have no idea as to Age of Conan rating.

WoW offers a larger community, obviously with much more idiots and no-life teenagers who think they're cool because they have some 'skills' and make witty/stupid jokes. But it's also much easier to do something that requires are group, or to find buddies. People in other MMO's tend to be generally more mature, but since you hardly meet anyone in most of those, well, things are even in the end.

In any case, LotRO, WAR and WoW have free trials available. So if you cannot make up your mind, you can try each of those for a few days and take what you prefer.