I enjoy the irony of people saying the world should be huge to show how long it would take to go from the Shire to Mount Doom. But the fact is, even Tolkien abbreviated their trip. He did not write every step they took. So for anyone upset about shortcutting a trip, remember even Tolkien did it for the sake of entertainment.

“And we talked a lot on this one because there is a strong desire from everyone to see the biggest moment of the fiction, to be there at Mount Doom, or to be there at Helms Deep, or at all of these cool places that we know about from the books. But the opposite constraint is for us – we could not give up on the persistent, attached belief that quality is the most important thing. So out of the desire to make a high-quality experience, we looked at the reality.

We had two choices – we can make a very small Middle Earth that’s very high quality, but it’s got to be small because of how much time we have to make the game. Or we could do what the books did. Which is take the first book and create a high-fidelity, high-quality experience around that northwest section of the map of the Middle Earth. And then with expansions and additional content we can add in places like Mirkwood, or Moria, Isengard and Rohan, and Mordor, right?

We thought that the second idea offered the better outcome. So instead of trying to shrink the world down so it all fits, or to chop it into little pieces and teleport people around, we went with the high-quality, high-fidelity first book rolled out at launch and then with the expectation that -.Turbine’s done a great job of providing a constant stream of updates, constant content – what we are talking about is chapters as the game progresses.”
– Jeff Anderson Interview
http://lotrovault.ign.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=27

(for reference, I consider Oblivion shoeboxy myself, right or wrong as that might be)

I’ll probably check Lord of the Rings out in the summer when the Burning Crusade starts getting old. I am hoping that not having to balance pvp will allow the developers to introduce more classes and advancement options. I’m already hearing about getting traits for completing questlines which you can equip for small buffs.

Hurry uppppppp….i want to plaaaaaay youuuuuuuuu.

2. Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit and Man. There is also monster play.

3. Not exactly sure what you mean. It’s like most any other MMO. You get quests, level up, and move about the land. You will occasionally interact with some of the main characters from the books.