'Persistent instancing' means that key, showstopping group encounters won't be repeatable by any individual, granting players the sense of personal influence and narrative coherence they're used to from offline adventuring.
Then there are Traits, a system of achievement medals that grant more than bragging rights, feeding back into your character with skill and crafting modifiers. It's a smart application of familiar mainstream design to the particular demands of MMOs (in this case, the need to individualise).
Above: Here's hoping the effects-laden engine will run on lower-spec machines
The same is true of the intriguing, but not yet demonstrated, 'conjunctions'. These are effectively quick-fire, button-hitting QTE combos that occur within group play, and that could bring immediacy to the occasionally obscure world of MMO group dynamics (helped by voice chat support as standard).
These may be little more than embellishments on a proven template, but in a market that has been slow to capitalise on WoW's success - following it with a slew of strange imports and niche experiments - LOTR Online's matured, formulaic approach is almost as strong an asset as that licence. Combined, they could quite plausibly make it the next - the second - truly massmarket western MMO.
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