Yeah, that's a pretty bad time to do maintenance, hah.
Dude, Monster Play is insane! I thought it was just going to be some tacked on feature that didn't amount to much, but it's actually deep and interesting. I made a spider. I love it so far, but it's very challenging. I died close to 10 times in the hour or 2 I spent with it. I did manage to do a few quests and rank up a bit, though, so maybe it will start to get easier. I also jumped right into a raid, and wow, was that fun. I was running around with 15 other players killing free peoples and whatever was in our path. That was a blast. My first official raid too. But yeah, pretty awesome game mode. I will definitely spend more time with it.
With that said, I'm going to be taking a LOTRO break for the next week or so while I review Mars: War Logs for the site. Once I come back I will give Monster Play more of a look. The only problem I see happening is the Ettenmoors becoming boring after awhile since it's the only zone you can PvP in. What would be awesome would be to allow monsters to travel to other zones, and match their level to the zone they are in. That would be pretty nuts, but I'm sure it would be a hard thing to manage. But just imagine quest hubs for monsters in all the orc/monster encampments throughout Middle Earth. That would practically be an entirely new game...
Anyway, do any of you guys who play/played have a Monster Play character? Pretty fun stuff...