It's a shame OP felt they had to delete.

The epic battles were an absolutely miserable experience (though MT was actually more fun/epic than pelargir was). Got through them the first time duoing with my wife but still very miserable. We stubbornly got through them but hated pelargir's battle. Was nice to DO the battle, I've always wanted to see that part, but still hated it. Minas Tirith was MUCH better.

OP you might want to check out FF14. Story starts off a bit slow, but it's very solo friendly (almost all the story instances can be done with an AI group now and the ones that can't are very simple to queue up for and get done). There are also solo duties, which are like the solo epic book instances in Lotro, only if you fail one you get the option of trying again at a much lower difficulty. Same goes for the class quests (every single class has its own unique and often compelling story separate from the main campaign.) Best of all, the free trial gets you through the first expansion so you get a taste of everything. And people are always running the lower level stuff due (even OG endgame stuff) to how the game is set up.

I also find the game is much better at showing a story than Lotro is. And I say that loving Lotro's story (and at higher levels lotro got a lot better at presentation)