When I've been asked what I think of LOTRO so far, I keep answering the same way:

"I love the attention to detail"

Turbine has put loving detail in everything, from the scenery to the emotes. I particularly appreciate it with the mobs. The AI is good and different mob types have distinctive animations to go with their special attacks.

I love this bear attack, where they get on their hind legs and roar with the full force of their bad breath and spittle:

The first time I had a bear do that to me, I almost fell out of my chair. It's hella intimidating.

When I first encountered the mobs in Atzel's Approach, I thought maybe their aggro was bugged, but now I'm not so sure. I think it's possible that their AI is a little too smart.

Perhaps the Atzel have worked it out that the best way to kill the players is to form up roaming squads that swarm players randomly. I'm being sarcastic of course, but quite a few times these mobs have tricked me into thinking they were players due to their odd behaviour.

Here are some things that have happened that I wish I'd thought of capturing on video:

• I hit a mob and he ran away. This has happened before, it generally means he's running to get help and he may run quite far. As expected, he came back with a half dozen companions. The odd part? Once they got to me, they ran away too! A few minutes later, I was murdered by a crowd of about 30 or so that caught up to me.
• Numerous times I've been fighting these same mobs and another player will walk by and end up with the aggro. Not from casting or fighting, just walking by. I've also adopted the aggro from others (see video below).
• One mob was doing laps around some tents. Literally. He ran and ran in this big circle like he was training for a marathon.
• I had to kill Atzel Watchers, I found a camp with a few in a convenient spot and got to work. After cleaning out the camp once, as each Watcher respawned, instead of fighting me it ran off up a hill. This went on for awhile, with every mob spawning, pausing a second, then running off. I assumed it was to some other battle somewhere. Later I discovered the possible cause and captured it on video below:

Trisco warned me not to destroy the wagon, so of course I had to. I was expecting mobs to spawn, not to come running from other points of the map, causing other players to gain aggro along the way. No wonder trains are commonplace on this map, I can't tell what's running around from unusual AI or what's just returning from some other player that was swarmed.

My best guess is that Funcom has been doing some experimenting with the AI in this place and that some of the behaviour piles up into... how can I put it... mixed results. It's certainly amusing, I've been having a great time, I just have to stay on my toes.

I'd love to hear some anecdotes from other players who've experienced some of the odd mob behaviour in Atzel's Approach.