MMORPG.com is pleased to announce the winner of the 2008 Reader's Choice Award for Best Expansion of 2008.

In the voting for Best Expansion, 3627 votes were cast. The editorial nominees were: Empyrean Age (EVE Online), Mines of Moria (Lord of the Rings Online), Seeds of Destruction (EverQuest), The Shadow Odyssey (EverQuest II), Wrath of the Lich King (World of Warcraft)

Another impressive win for the Lord of the Rings team over at Turbine, with 48% of the vote, the winner of the Best new Expansion of 2008 was Turbine's Mines of Moria, the first expansion for their hit game, Lord of the Rings Online.

Read more here.

Grats again Turbine!

MoM was awesome

Grats Turbine. Your community really apreciates it. Specially not having to wait at midnight to buy the expansion since it was already download and sitting confortably in my PC at launch time.

*waits for other fanboys who have never got a character with enought level to venture into Moria to come ranting how the frozen king was alot better*

*flame jacket on*

Congrats to Turbine!

This expansion was really well done and the fact that there will be steady Books (mini expansions) to compliment it make it all the more exciting. 

Turbine has handled this franchise remarkably well.  From first launch of LOTRO, their free expansion, and now this one and just about everything with this game has gone very smoothly.  Of course you'll  have the D&D online crybabies, some of the AC fringe, and the others that saw the movies and think they could do better at designing and creating an MMO with the Middle Earth whining or bashing Turbine.

Congrats to Turbine!   The visual world they created is par excellance and they maintained the basic storyline through Moria (and beyond).  Just one clarification - Shadows of Angmar did have a balrog already, so having one in Moria, while cool, was not a truly new achievement.  Now the Watcher in the Water - that is cool!

Originally posted by firithnorm

Congrats to Turbine!   The visual world they created is par excellance and they maintained the basic storyline through Moria (and beyond).  Just one clarification - Shadows of Angmar did have a balrog already, so having one in Moria, while cool, was not a truly new achievement.  Now the Watcher in the Water - that is cool!

Aye, but some people, like me, never got a chance to see in SoA.  I'm glad they made it "accessible" to everyone.  I think that in itself is a thumbs up...giving everyone the chance to at least see one.

Grats Turbine.  But I hate you!  I hate that you have me hooked on your game and that it taunts me in my sleep, waking me in a cold sweat.  The Eye, ever watchful, haunts me at every turn.  I hate it.  Thank you!

P.S.: Glad I could post a comment before the haters come and complain.

Mines of Moria is indeed a very good expansion! I really hope the first content update fixes some of the current issues thou!

Keep up the good work Turbine, it will be interesting to see what their new expansion will be and include!

Congrats turbine pioneers of the horizontal expansion! Masters of free content! Kings of polish!

MoM is the best example of expanding your game, FOR ALL LEVELS and player types, not just dumping things on at the end! They know how to expand their game so well, even blizzard copies it! (looking at you barbershops, achievements, and 3-5 man instances!)

Gratz MoM players. I wish Blizzard would learn from this and make their expansions more like MoM, more content for ALL levels!

 I was under the impression that the Moria content was 50+. Is there a new area that was added that I don't know about?

Originally posted by skai

 I was under the impression that the Moria content was 50+. Is there a new area that was added that I don't know about?

They added two new classes which can be accessed by anyone with the expansion (as well as two character slots to accomodate those who have full character slots).

Originally posted by skai

 I was under the impression that the Moria content was 50+. Is there a new area that was added that I don't know about?

Um, 2 new classes, one zone before 50, that doesn't even require the expansion to go to, crafting guilds, a completely revamped and expanded trait system, an ass ton of new items and quests......

Content does not only mean zone. B ut on that note, last year alone the added 4 new, entire zones to the game... FREE.

 Ah ok, I've been casually leveling a warden (couple hours a week at most) using pre-expansion content.  So I knew about most of those.  Aren't the crafting guilds for high-level crafters only? They wouldn't let me join.  Also curious about which zone was added.

Reason I asked was mostly due to the comparisons made to Blizzard expansions which made me wonder if I had been misinformed.

Originally posted by skai

 Ah ok, I've been casually leveling a warden (couple hours a week at most) using pre-expansion content.  So I knew about most of those.  Aren't the crafting guilds for high-level crafters only? They wouldn't let me join.  Also curious about which zone was added.

 

Reason I asked was mostly due to the comparisons made to Blizzard expansions which made me wonder if I had been misinformed.

 

 

Crafting guilds are about mid-level crafting wise (based on your crafting level, not adventure).  New zone that came with the expansion is Eregion, it does not require the expansion to go to.

Expect about 2-4 new zones, and 2-4 new features to be added this year, free.

Lets also not forget, if you buy mines of moria, you do not need to have, or buy, the original game. Its included in the new box, for an old user, or a completely new one.
 

 Congrats Turbine.  Another well deserved award...by another landslide. 

I expect to see another mmorpg.com award early next week. 

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by skai

 I was under the impression that the Moria content was 50+. Is there a new area that was added that I don't know about?

 

Um, 2 new classes, one zone before 50, that doesn't even require the expansion to go to, crafting guilds, a completely revamped and expanded trait system, an ass ton of new items and quests......

Content does not only mean zone. B ut on that note, last year alone the added 4 new, entire zones to the game... FREE.

Moria is an okay expansion but it is being overly hyped here. I dislike World of Warcraft but they did in their last expansion provide a new starting area and new races, so they too provided a little content that was not all at the top .. just as lotro did. lotro did provide about the same amount or maybe less. You have to remember also lotro is a tiny game compared to EQ and WoW in size. It is also very very casual with no end game except for one raid boss which is a little tiny raid size.

I think the expansion was okay but they really lack at least one big long raid. They really didn't provide that much content compared to other MMORPGs, it looks like a lot it being a smaller game though. I do think they have taken a step in the wrong direction with these new class line traits .. a copy of WoW's broken talent tree system that allows you to modify you role to some degree. I dislike this, lotro had solid class definitions now they have went to muddying them like WoW. This is my unbias feelings, I play neither of these games at this time but have experienced both. I am waiting on an EQ group based game but I think I will be waiting a long time. :P

With just under 4k votes casts for this award, it shows how little read this website is by the majority of MMO players in the genre. I mean hell, 4k people is almost what DAoC has active on a daily basis.

So I take these awards with a grain of salt, because these rewards don't represent what the majority think or what professionals think like most serious awards.

I honestly though mmorpg.com was read by a much wider playerbase than it really is, but I guess we all can't be right all the time. It's a good thing I'm trying to only come here for updates on MMO's in general now, because that's something the mmorpg.com staff is pretty good at keeping us up-to-date on.

I really apologize to those who will read my post and get bent out of shape over it, but look at this from my point of view. I looked forward to these awards to see what the majority of MMO player out there thought about the game. I've viewed these awards for a few years now. Only now I've noticed that less than .01 % of all MMO players out there actually voted on these rewards. Knowing that less than .01% of the MMO population voted for the rewards, how special do these nominations really mean to people now?

I have a lifetime account, and I have to dissagree.

Mom was an expansion that I gave a "C" to.  It offered 2 new zones and a very small 3rd zone.  The crafting guilds were something a bit different..  However there were all around nerf's were handed out especially to the mini class.  Yes two new classes were handed out.  Another nerf was to those of us who already had mounts.  Guess what they don't work in the mines so now you got to get rep to get a new mount.  This new mount is a hideous goat, looks like a badly created thing that resembles a  waun-ton from star wars with 4 legs.  The new legendary weapons have totally ruined weapon crafting. The economy in game has been out of wack ever since.  We crash almost daily now in certain areas of the mines.  Last night 2800 folks had to wait for an hour before logging in.  There have been many problems with the new expansion they are still trying to fix.

I did not vote in this selection as there was a none of the above option listed.

I know a lot of folks were happy about mom, I am probably one of the few who felt let down by it, I have the lifetime account so I still play. 

This expansion felt to me the way that CU felt in SWG, and we have watched a lot of the mini class type players quit due to the fact of the nerf's.

Originally posted by JK-Kanosi

With just under 4k votes casts for this award, it shows how little read this website is by the majority of MMO players in the genre. I mean hell, 4k people is almost what DAoC has active on a daily basis.

So I take these awards with a grain of salt, because these rewards don't represent what the majority think or what professionals think like most serious awards.

I honestly though mmorpg.com was read by a much wider playerbase than it really is, but I guess we all can't be right all the time. It's a good thing I'm trying to only come here for updates on MMO's in general now, because that's something the mmorpg.com staff is pretty good at keeping us up-to-date on.

I really apologize to those who will read my post and get bent out of shape over it, but look at this from my point of view. I looked forward to these awards to see what the majority of MMO player out there thought about the game. I've viewed these awards for a few years now. Only now I've noticed that less than .01 % of all MMO players out there actually voted on these rewards. Knowing that less than .01% of the MMO population voted for the rewards, how special do these nominations really mean to people now?

 

Out of the 4k of voters, the majority thought that MoM was the best expansion.

Somehow, I think your response would have been vastly different if Lich King would have won. ;)