Lord of the Rings Online Announces Volume 2: Mines of Moria at Connect '08!
Gird your loins intrepid adventurers, you’re about to be plunged into the deepest, darkest parts of Middle-Earth and only the strongest characters will come out alive! At this year’s Connect ’08, the developers at Turbine decided to create the climax of the party by dropping an absolute bombshell of an announcement. According to Ten Ton Hammer’s executive editor, Jeff Woleslagle, Turbine and Codemasters are hard at work on a full-blown expansion to Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar, and it is called Volume 2: Mines of Moria. Although the details are still coming in, we've posted everything we know thus far.
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For all of you that are racing through the end-game in the first volume of LOTRO, you’ll soon have more experience to earn and muster through. 10 more levels are being plopped into the game, making even the most extreme adventurer earn their new place in the lore of Middle-Earth. And of course, you can’t simply add new levels onto a game without a bevy of new content to go along with them.
I can't count the folks that have been waiting for this. I know from my own experience alone I have read countless posts and threads highly anticipating the Mines of Moria dungeon. I have no doubts this will be a popular expansion and likely bring even more players to LotRO.
__________________ The Tuk
Ten Ton Hammer Main Site Writer
I just wish they'd introduce an alternative to the forced grouping the epic quest chain requires. I tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to jump into the game last fall, and since nearly the entire player population seemingly moved far beyond the starting areas I could never get beyond 10 or 12 steps into the quest chain on any of my characters. I was essentially left with the option of killing hundreds of boars rather than feeling I had any part in the events of Middle Earth which helped push me away from the game unfortunately.
I'd never go so far as to say they should scale the entire epic chain to allow solo play, but any alternative to get beyond sticking points would be helpful. Perhaps a system where each character gets a set number of 'credits' that could be used for a given step in the chain to soften the difficulty and allow them to continue. Really, anything would be welcome.
That was really my main issue with what I think is an otherwise solid gaming experience. But combining forced grouping with extremely low population starting areas (not to mention my tendency to play at odd times off peak for my server) equals a situation where players either spend literally hours trying to find groups to advance the main quest arc, or are forced to abandon it once all the boars in the area become trivial.
Perhaps with the inclusion of two new classes will see an influx of players into those starting areas so grouping will be a lesser issue when the expansion first launches, making that a good time to jump into the game (or give it another try as in my case). The rest of the new content sounds great of course, but if I can never feel like my characters will ever advance that far I'm not sure if it's enough to draw me back into the game.
Unfortunately, I don't expect to see Turbine change the amount of grouping required for epic quests.
I don't really see that happening either, but thought I'd throw that out there either way. Like I said, I think it's a great game otherwise and from what I've read on the new content the expansion will bring I'm sure it'll not only be successful with current players, but would also be a great time for bringing new players in as well. Hopefully they'll see a bit of both!
Lord of the Rings Online Announces Volume 2: Mines of Moria at Connect '08!
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