Today, Turbine celebrates the 2nd anniversary of Lord of the Rings Online. In a press conference to mark the event, EP Jeffrey Steefel discussed the game's past two years and revealed some of what we can expect in the upcoming Book 8 and further into the future of the game.

Two years ago today, players had their first official chance to log into J.R.R.Tolkien's Middle-Earth when Turbine launched Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. To commemorate the event, Turbine held a press conference to talk about where the game has been, and where it's headed.

As you might expect, Turbine has taken this opportunity not only to celebrate their own achievement, but also to give something back to their players. From April 24th until June 30th when someone buys LotRO through Turbine's E-Store, they get it for $9.99. Also, players who purchase game time are able to do so at a discounted price. If they buy in three, six or 12 month increments, then it only costs an average of $9.99 per month. It's also Welcome Back Week for former players who can now log back into the game and play for free with a 25% bonus to experience. At the end of the promotion (June 30th) all active subscribers will be given an in-game item called the writ of passage that makes stable master travel 20% cheaper.

Read Two Years, Book 8 and Beyond

Finally some news about book 8!

looks good - shame the European servers arent able to provide the 2nd tear return freeplay for 10 day to entice people back.  Wish I'd played on a US server now - DOH.

I cannot say that I am thrilled to hear that the level cap is going up again, but I suppose it was inevitable. Other than that, sounds good.

Another level cap increase?  :(

Level cap increases are the opiate of the MMO masses and the bane of casual players.  Maybe some day an MMO will figure out how to keep the endgame fun long-term, without endlessly raising the level cap!  ...prolonging the Everlasting Lowbie Syndrome for those of us who don't want another job or who enjoy alts a lot.  ...and further spreading out the relative levels of potential groupmates making grouping with friends less likely.

yeah when lotro launched and a few books into it, it was cool

then moria came out and brought legendary weapons and started to make the game feel more like wow

fuck lotro now :(

What is a mmo ? , what makes it intresting ?

Mankind has always been colleting things achive goals and when they reasched the goal and collected all that can be collcted in that certain aspect , they move along to a new collectleble thing , and when you reached you goal , you whant to go higher and higher until you reached the top , then you move a long to another goal. thats pretty much it.

When it comes to MMO ,and in this case LOTO you complain about a new lvl cap, thats acording to me is a great choice they made.

For me its sounds like a wow player that says ohh no not another lvl cap , why ? prolly becouse they have the finest armor the coolest sword and everything is at tip top . and they have something to brag about , but as for me that gives a danm about my shiny armor and my fancy sword, id like to progress eaven more so a new lvl cap is just great , cuss than you will have new quest to achive and new instances to master and get eaven a new better sword.

There are just a small % or less that whants no lvl cap, in there game and proffetion, as for the others new raise of lvl cap , couldent be better since we like new goals and colleteble things to collect.

So go out there and achive !!   =)

/S

Originally posted by lukeborgman

Another level cap increase?  :(

Level cap increases are the opiate of the MMO masses and the bane of casual players.  Maybe some day an MMO will figure out how to keep the endgame fun long-term, without endlessly raising the level cap!  ...prolonging the Everlasting Lowbie Syndrome for those of us who don't want another job or who enjoy alts a lot.  ...and further spreading out the relative levels of potential groupmates making grouping with friends less likely.

Your saying this as if they just woke up and said "You know what, screw adding more content, lets just raise the level cap!!"

Even thought all the info is contrary to that. Do you know large Mirkwood is? Did you read the part about all that content being free, THEN the level cap coming with the expansion?

See the green forest under the word Rhovanion? Yeah... Thats mirkwood.

Now, if we zoom into Rhivanion.....

Reading the article has got me reinstalling this client after a long time, damn it

I'm very very happy with the news overall, I'm especially glad that they are doing well enough to be shooting for the long run and I love their expansion model.

However, I still don't like them raising the level cap again...why? Because it means retooling soo much earlier content and really doesn't add anything to the game for me...I'd be playing just for the story, the joy of exploring new areas, deeds and new trinkets without needing another 10 levels that (judging by Moria) I'll just pick up on the way anyways.

there catering to the level grinders  and creating a  high speed highway  sacraficing quality to feed the beast  fatal mistake.

moria felt repetative and grindy with very little innovative or creative thought.

im a founder and im beginning to loose respect for you guys.

no new crafts?  no improvment to housing areas?  no public works projects?

what are you doing? outsourcing to SONY?

New expansion every year = VERY interested

Releasing a raid or 6 man instance once in awhile and stringing us out 2.5 years between expansions = NOT interested at all.

Turbine is doing the right thing.

That is all.

Originally posted by lukeborgman

Another level cap increase?  :(

Level cap increases are the opiate of the MMO masses and the bane of casual players.  Maybe some day an MMO will figure out how to keep the endgame fun long-term, without endlessly raising the level cap!  ...prolonging the Everlasting Lowbie Syndrome for those of us who don't want another job or who enjoy alts a lot.  ...and further spreading out the relative levels of potential groupmates making grouping with friends less likely.

Casuals should be playing for the fun of leveling then............

Originally posted by Ztekan

For me its sounds like a wow player that says ohh no not another lvl cap , why ? prolly becouse they have the finest armor the coolest sword and everything is at tip top . and they have something to brag about ,

No.  I don't even have a character to level 60 yet.  The thought of another level cap raise fills me with dread. (no pun intended.)  Raising the level cap is a lazy way to "add more content" and keeps people on the treadmill instead of finding creative ways to keep them interested in your game.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by lukeborgman

Another level cap increase?  :(

Level cap increases are the opiate of the MMO masses and the bane of casual players.  Maybe some day an MMO will figure out how to keep the endgame fun long-term, without endlessly raising the level cap!  ...prolonging the Everlasting Lowbie Syndrome for those of us who don't want another job or who enjoy alts a lot.  ...and further spreading out the relative levels of potential groupmates making grouping with friends less likely.

 

 

Your saying this as if they just woke up and said "You know what, screw adding more content, lets just raise the level cap!!"

 

Even thought all the info is contrary to that. Do you know large Mirkwood is? Did you read the part about all that content being free, THEN the level cap coming with the expansion?

 

 

See the green forest under the word Rhovanion? Yeah... Thats mirkwood.

 

Now, if we zoom into Rhivanion.....

 

 

You don't need a level cap increase to explore Mirkwood.  I'd be happy to do it with my level 50 character. Level cap increases are there to keep you grinding away, it has nothing to do with exploring new content.

Originally posted by laephis

Originally posted by Ztekan

For me its sounds like a wow player that says ohh no not another lvl cap , why ? prolly becouse they have the finest armor the coolest sword and everything is at tip top . and they have something to brag about ,

 

No.  I don't even have a character to level 60 yet.  The thought of another level cap raise fills me with dread. (no pun intended.)  Raising the level cap is a lazy way to "add more content" and keeps people on the treadmill instead of finding creative ways to keep them interested in your game.

Something I've yet to understand, why do people all feel left out if they don't get to max level? This seems to be true in every game out there, why is the focus on being max level and being done? Enjoy the content don't whine about there being more levels to do now, instead enjoy the fact that you have more content you will be going through and more to achieve. So you're slow at leveling (even a casual player can hit max fairly quickly if that's what they're after) don't be upset that you don't have a max character, you shouldn't even care.

The I am a have not and hate the haves attitude in MMOs is getting old fast.

Yeah I'm playing it and enjoying it, but I would have killed for a little more sandbox-y type Middle Earth MMO rather than LotR MMO.  Hate having the map parcelled out over years.  Its silly that when all is said and done, and Gondor is released (assuming) Bree will still be the center of action because later areas will probably be off limits to lower  levels due to the restrictions of the storyline.

Interesting that no one is up in arms over the announcement of Henchmen.

The best thing about LOTRO is the graphics and then the story, the other elements such as combat are good too but overall, this game is getting dated. Everything that matters is instanced and this has no effect on the game in general.

I'm real tired of the company saying that players are fighting for the survival of Middle Earth. No were not, all we're doing is repeating a story that's already happened! At least with Tabula Rasa , they tried and failed at having real skirnishes happen in the game, not in some unrelated instanced space.  It's probably too late for LOTRO to redefine the game but to move forward, they have to create non-instance combat that truly matters.

Turbine so far has done nothing but impress me with their handling of the game.In the time the game has been out the amount of content added has rivaled any mmo I can think of especially considering the relatively stable release they had I personally have no problem with a level cap increase because I don't concern myself with "endgame" as much as most players seem to for me it's a way to progress my toon and does in fact give you the ability to learn new skills etc.

I do wish or should say hope they do have more in store as far as housing,crafting,rp tools etc. but in all they are doing an awesome job.

Meh. There's been very little "free" content since Moria came out.

And frankly, the problem with the game as is, there's too many levels, not enough content.  The game has 60 levels and about 2400 quests (the lorebook lists more, but some are things just for horses, flags for leveling up, etc).  WoW as 70 levels and about 7500 quests.

Even that wouldn't be so bad, if probably half the quests weren't either for 1-15 and 50-60. The rest of the game is just barren.

The keep having these welcome back weekends with xp bonuses to try to get people pass the barren spots (as well as their tweaking of the advancement rate in Book 7), but those aren't real fixes, they need to add more quests. A lot more.

Originally posted by trancejeremy

Meh. There's been very little "free" content since Moria came out.

And frankly, the problem with the game as is, there's too many levels, not enough content.  The game has 60 levels and about 2400 quests (the lorebook lists more, but some are things just for horses, flags for leveling up, etc).  WoW as 70 levels and about 7500 quests.

Even that wouldn't be so bad, if probably half the quests weren't either for 1-15 and 50-60. The rest of the game is just barren.

The keep having these welcome back weekends with xp bonuses to try to get people pass the barren spots (as well as their tweaking of the advancement rate in Book 7), but those aren't real fixes, they need to add more quests. A lot more.

The gist of your message is something I agree with, though I'd just like to point out that there are indeed 80 levels in WoW. You hit the nail on the head though. In WoW, you have quests for every level range to the point that there are so many that I usually do not complete all the content in one area before moving on. That is a good thing for a quest heavy game like WoW. I felt that content began to ran out for certain level ranges in LotRO.

One thing I thought odd in the posted article is about Turbine claiming to be a leader in the field. Er... leader of what exactly? What has LotRO done, what previous records has it broken, what innovations has it brought to the industry? I don't think it is a leader of anything at all.

Great game. Too bad of the lack of PVP in the open world. I really missed that when I played it. If they would add fully playable evil races and world-pvp servers, I would be back within a heartbeat. That will probably never happen, sadly.

Originally posted by todeswulf

Interesting that no one is up in arms over the announcement of Henchmen.

Maybe because there was no such announcement?

And I think its wierd that people think raising the leveling cap is lazy... Level 50-60 is probably the most impresive and ambitiouse part of LotrO and any other MMO Ive played. And it even more wierd that people think that its bad for casual players, the more "hardcore" players (using the term loosely since there are no hardcore players in LotrO) would be happy stay at 60 just getting new instances and raids to get gear from. So the level cap gets raised for the casual players.

Originally posted by OoMpAlOmPaZ

yeah when lotro launched and a few books into it, it was cool

then moria came out and brought legendary weapons and started to make the game feel more like wow

fuck lotro now :(

Ageed, put a fork in it.