Over the past six years we've fallen in and out of love with Lord of the Rings Online enough times to realize that Turbine knows what they're doing with Tolkien's fantasy universe. That's a statement that would make Captain Obvious blush, but it's true. While other MMORPGs have sprung up and quickly died, LOTRO has managed to remain popular enough for Turbine to evolve their work with worthwhile additions like mounted combat, new locations ripped right out of Tolkien's books and enough visual and tonal variety in their game world to successfully communicate the other worldly scope this fantasy fiction demands.
What's most impressive about Turbine's strategy is that they've managed to accomplish all this, without digging into the ‘A' material of Tolkien's universe - namely the point when the combined forces of Middle earth actually begin to do anything other than die pitifully against the forces of Saruman and Sauron.
LOTRO Gameplay 2015
Last year's Riders of Rohan expansion was the beginning of that content, placed right at the beginning of The Two Towers in the LOTRO chronology. With the next expansion Helm's Deep teased but not yet dated, it would be easy to presume that LOTRO's latest free update titled Treachery of the White Hand would feed directly into that content, but during a recent hands-on tour of the new content Turbine were careful not to discuss anything big battle related. Instead they wanted to talk up the carefully constructed new region of Wildermore.
In the plainest terms, this region in East Rohan consists of five locales: Writhendowns, The Fallows, Whitshaws, High Knolls and Balewood, all of which are blighted by blistery conditions orchestrated by a corrupted Stone Giant named Núrzum, granted unnatural power by Saruman. What's interesting about this content is that Turbine is telling the entire story arc of this character in this single update – a path rarely trodden by the Boston studio. If we didn't know otherwise, it'd be easy to assume that Núrzum is a Tolkien creation, as his massive strength and form certainly fits in this universe, but he's actually Turbine's own design.
Interspliced between quests telling the story of this antagonist's emergence there's also a tale involving a sleepy Ent, a pregnant widow shunned by fellow survivors in a dark, dank cave, and a peculiar 25-player fishing contest requiring competitors to cast out nets to catch fish while on horseback. There's also new mead halls to explore, 13 new roaming War Bands to eliminate, multiple new single-player instances, and some awe-inspiring landscapes to discover. Basically the kind of content you'd expect from one of the more regular LOTRO updates, only in more generous supply. All of this new story content is automatically available to all pay monthly VIP players for no extra cost, whereas free and Premium players have to pay a one-time fee.
Along with this new story content, general improvements are also being made to LOTRO such as free Hobbit presents sent to all players on a daily basis and more streamlined mounted combat with the three-pronged skill-tree scaled back to just two components, Attack and Defense. Now all skills associated with the now-redundant Movement tree are allocated to all steeds automatically, allowing more reactive mounted combat.
All in all, LOTRO is evolving at a nice pace thanks to updates like White Hand, and even though there's a distinct feeling that Turbine are saving the best features for the looming Helm's Deep expansion, it's good to know that there's new content ready whenever we happen to log on next. Turbine's latest update hasn't quite tempted us to jump back into Middle-earth quite yet, but with big plans on the horizon there's an increasingly powerful feeling that our hairy little Hobbit tootsies will trek back into LOTRO soon. Next stop Helm's Deep!
