The DVD pre-order copy of Lord of the Rings online installed easily enough.
I launched the application (it’s icon is that of the “one ring,” a motif that I imagine I am going to tire of before long in this game.) and it first patched the patcher application, then gave me an alert that the application needed to be restarted. Once I did that, it then began patching the actual game.
The count was 5840 files to be downloaded. I let that run and went off to watch TV.
One episode of Law & Order later, I came back and found the patcher apparently stuck.
It wasn’t, actually, but it looked like it was. When the screen saver kicked in on my machine, the UI stopped updating, so while the patching was complete the progress bar still said 6%. I restarted the launcher application and it passed through all of the updates and went to the log on screen.
I put in the account I had setup for the beta and I was in the game.