The Warden is my favourite class in Lord of the Rings Online. I've almost always leaned to melee classes in fantasy MMOs for a number of reasons. I find toe to toe combat more involving than ranged casting and kiting, and for me the classic fantasy heroic archetype is defined by a sword, not a staff.
It also doesn't hurt that tanky sword and shield classes are also a lot more forgiving when a habitual soloist like myself takes on content intended for groups. What I lose in kill speed I usually make up for in survivability.
If there's a downside it's that too much survivability can get a bit boring, and 20 hours into LOTRO it's the issue I had with WoW all over again – almost nothing can kill me.
Is the Warden one of these overpowered cash shop classes we hear so much about in the MMOsphere? Maybe. They certainly bring a nice range of versatility that maybe some of the other classes lack, but I'd like to think that if Wardens were OP when they were new then they'd have been balanced out in the decade or so since the release of Mines of Moria.
I've bypassed most of the early quest hubs in the Lone Lands, following the epic story to Ost Guruth as soon as I could. Fighting enemies 4 or 5 levels higher than me isn't notably harder, and the level difference shows mostly in that it takes slightly longer to kill individual mobs, but not so long that it feels like a slog.
So if I am feeling a touch of that WoW ennui it is at least not so pronounced. I put that down to the realisation that I enjoy the experience of being in Middle-Earth more than I enjoy Azeroth, and since I'm more focused on being in the world itself I'm less inclined to dwell on the game as a game.
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