Archive for the ‘ Lord of the Rings Online ’ Category

Turbine has announced that the Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria beta is entering its final stages. Interested players can sign-up for a chance to test the anticipated expansion. Registering is available for all Lord of the Rings Online players from Europe and North-America, but not all of them will receive an invitation.

The Mines of Moria expansion is expected to be released on October 15, granting players new areas, classes and storyline to explore, as well as increasing the level cap by ten. Turbine will be selecting players between now and the release of the expansion, so don’t worry if you don’t make it right away.

IGN’s LotRO Vault has tipped us off that Turbine has made the Book 14 update available either by direct download or BitTorrent.  Be sure to grab the update now so you’ve got it as soon as the official servers are updated!

There’s an update on the Lord of the Rings Online Developer Diary talking about the work they put in to moving the Fellowship.  There’s a Q&A at the end, so take a look!

The WarCry Network has a review up of their hands-on demo of Lord of the Rings Online: Book 14.  Go take a look at their thoughts on this final content update before Mines of Moria.

Codemasters have just released a batch of screenshots depicting the upcoming free content update named, Book 14: The Ring Forges of Eregion.

Book 14 is set to bring a wide range of changes for players and monster players. It will include Erigion where the rings of power were crafted. It will also allow players to continue the epic quest line and begin to prepare for the upcoming expansion, LOTRO: Mines of Moria.

The screenshots do not reveal much, but do show various new stunning scenery, a new monster and of course the ring forges.

Book 14: The Ring Forges of Eregion is scheduled for release extremely soon. For a full list of patch notes, please click here.

Gamespy has released another article regarding the upcoming update to Lord of the Rings: Online, The Mines of Moria. MoM will bring along Legendary Items(Not unlike Sting and other iconic weapons), Two new classes, Three New Regions(Eregion, Moria& Lorien), Introducing Volume 2 of LotrO, and much more.

Lotro’s Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel talks about some of the problems Turbine encountered while trying to remake this iconic location.

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Gamespy has recently released an article regarding the two new classes coming to Lotro, The Runekeep & Warden. The Runekeeper is a spell-caster class, much like the Loremaster, but instead of using nature as the source of magic, they use themselves. The Warden on the other hand in a Medium Armor Tank, featuring a new system to pull off combo attacks. (more…)

Turbine is looking to produce a console version of the Lord of the Rings Online. The developer is searching for console developers and already has rights to produce a Lord of the Rings MMO on consoles.

Even though MMO’s have always been one of the games that didn’t really go cross-platform, Turbine is keen to go where no-one has gone before. “We have the Lord of the Rings license for use on all platforms, and we’re determined to use it.” Turbine’s Jeffrey Steefel told Tweakers.net, a Dutch hardware site.

Although Steefel is positive about the challenges that a console version would bring, he is also aware of the lingering control issues; “Other developers have developed MMO’s for consoles before us, and not one of those games have been succesful. There’s a definite challenge there. We will also need to design a completely new interface. As opposed to a fully equiped keyboard and mouse on the PC, consoles only have controllers with a few buttons.”

Steefel didn’t answer the question if, or when a console version of LotRO would be announced or go into developement.

The Lord of the Rings Online on the PC is currently gearing towards the launch of the next free content update ‘The Ring-forge of the Elven rings” as well as its first full retail expansion pack “Mines of Moria”. Both are expected later this year.

Turbine if offering all past players of Lord of the Rings Online, who live in North America the chance to play for free from May 8th to May 12th. This is in celebration of their one year anniversary and will give players who no longer play a chance to check out the recent updates and decide if they want to come back and play.

Turbine has released a statement regarding the implementation of book 13, which is to take place tomorrow. Book 13 introduces the new region Forochel to the game, as well as a new Monster-play class, the Hobbies system and much much more.

The stand-alone installer can be found here.

Codemasters has not yet released word on when they will launch Book 13 for European customers. We’ll keep you up-to-date!