As promised I put Parallels and LOTRO through their paces on my MacBook over the last weekend. For the record I have a late 2008 model aluminum MacBook with 2Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, and 2GB of RAM. I started with Windows XP fully patched and installed in a 15GB partition under BootCamp, along with a patched copy of LOTRO.
First the good news, LOTRO ran flawlessly under Parallels Desktop 4. I did not need to do anything more than tell Parallels where the BootCamp partition was, wait some time for stuff to be installed and then reactivate Windows. Once Windows booted inside Parallels I was able to double click on the LOTRO icon and I was in game! I played for some time in a number of areas, with no crashes, oddness, or problems. This is at first a great way to play LOTRO on a Mac, no rebooting required, and no user created launcher.
So now the bad news. (Booo!) The frame rate is rather jumpy, and at times low. I was able to play in a small fellowship in low graphics and a sensible frame rate (around 20-30 fps). This was in the Giants area in the Trollshaws, I was also generally OK running around Echad Mirobel although I got a lot of stuttering running around the ruins. Lastly I visited the Shadows Concert at the Party Tree, where the frame rate was unacceptably low, in very low graphics. So I would not recommend going near areas where there are many players.
So is it playable? Yes, but be prepared for a serious slow down, if you are looking for a play session, BootCamp is still your best friend.
You can still get Parallels in the MUPromo bundle for the next 10 days.