It has been a while since our last news update for the Lord of the Rings Online, and today I bring special news to those who have yet to play Lotr: O. The latest Book, which are normally part of  Lotr:O’s periodic free updates, includes so great updates for new players or if you are like me and still haven’t reached 50, not to mention level 60. Turbine has restructured a lot of the beginning quests to help new players get into the game easier as well as totally restructured the experience system, to help speed up the progression from 1-60. Turbine has stated that players could see up to a 3 level increase, once the next update, date goes live!

A New Way of Thinking

When we carefully considered the experience that we needed to create for new players, 4 goals came to the forefront.

The gameplay should:

• Capture and engage players’ attention
• Provide interesting and varied questing and activities
• Introduce players to the game, rather than overwhelm them with detail
• Most importantly, be FUN!

With these four goals in mind we began playing through the new player experiences for each race to identify the high and low points of each race’s story.  Not surprisingly, a lot has changed in the almost two years since The Lord of the Rings Online was launched!  We found many places to enhance the early gameplay and story.

You can view the release notes for all the updates at lotro.com Keep in mind that these are subject to change as Book 7 is in the testing phase as we speak.