Lord of the Rings Online Executive Producer Jeffery Steefel has posted a holiday message for all the LotRO fans out there.

Whew! It’s been an unbelievable year for LOTRO – seeing Middle-earth coming alive before our eyes has made all the years of development worthwhile! It’s hard to believe that less than a year ago we were deep in Beta, preparing the game for a huge launch!

As the holiday seasons are upon us I wanted to take a moment to express the team’s gratitude to all of you for making LOTRO a success and helping us to keep making it better and better. With Books 9, 10 and 11, we’ve grown the size and functionality of the game a great deal and tried to improve the things and places most important to our players. The past seven months (yup-it’s only been that long) have been a blast and we’ve just gotten started. We have some huge plans for 2008 and we’ll have more to say on that subject after the first of the year. Suffice it to say that while 2007 was a big year for LOTRO, 2008 is going to be even cooler!

Read more here.

lol

let's see how cool 2008 will be for lotro when age of conan is released in march :D

and let's see how many subscribers will remain when those who have used lotro as a time-cut for something better begin to leave the game ;)

the cookie-cutter world of warcraft clone aera will end in 2008 and it will take games like lord of the rings online and vanguard - saga of fanbois with him...

I think your signature applies to you more than you realise...

Originally posted by TheChronic

lol

let's see how cool 2008 will be for lotro when age of conan is released in march :D

and let's see how many subscribers will remain when those who have used lotro as a time-cut for something better begin to leave the game ;)

the cookie-cutter world of warcraft clone aera will end in 2008 and it will take games like lord of the rings online and vanguard - saga of fanbois with him...

Or the demographic that plays LOTRO is not the same Demographic as Conan. Just a thought.

Originally posted by VIOL@TION

I think your signature applies to you more than you realise...

QFT

LOTRO is a better WoW clone than WoW is

Originally posted by Sovrath

Or the demographic that plays LOTRO is not the same Demographic as Conan. Just a thought.

WoW has more to worry about in losing subscribers than LOTRO.

Just go on, enjoy yourself  while playing the ELF on line! Come on everybody!

Just come back to Lord Of The Rings Online: Angmar after 6 months off. although it had many attractive game features* (and looks stunning on my 210" screen) it is as they say a cookie-cutter of the same tiresome ilk as World Of Warcraft.

However I have come back to the game and in taking a 2nd opinion conclude that it is probably the best release in 2007. Why? The community is the best I have personally come across and after years of online gaming that is now the most important element of the game to me  - this could be more of a comment on the evolution of social codes and growing sophistication of the audience - what ever the reasons (and I have to agree that Conan could alter the current landscape) for fantasy mmorpg LOTRO is the yardstick with which future games will need to be measured against (and not WOW despite its hegemony).

* Not here to big up the features but in brief this homage to the ethos and mythology created by Tolkien balances casual play with an undercurrent of real depth and passion...

Yep Age of Conan is being well overhyped. The big release of 2008 is going to be Warhammer. It's unlikley both games will overtake LoTRO next year.

LOTRO is not geared toward all MMORPGs...unlike WOW...it does not try to be the one game for everyone(though who knows whats in store for the future)...WAR and AoC are geared toward the PvP and RvR Crowd...something that LOTRO decided not go after...I would say WOW has more to worry about those than LOTRO...LOTRO will continue to grab the PvE crowd and the lite PvP crowd...Each book keeps making LOTRO better and better...Book 12 is going to add character customization similar to EQ2...It's just going to get better and better...

Originally posted by TheChronic

lol

let's see how cool 2008 will be for lotro when age of conan is released in march :D

and let's see how many subscribers will remain when those who have used lotro as a time-cut for something better begin to leave the game ;)

the cookie-cutter world of warcraft clone aera will end in 2008 and it will take games like lord of the rings online and vanguard - saga of fanbois with him...

LOL - Conana is the next 'Vangaurd' - they are making all the same mistakes and all the same poor assumptions about the MMORPG community in general.  They shoul dlearn from Vangaurd's MANY mistakes, but intead they're cheerfully repeating every single one of them, and overhyping the game to boot.  It might be a great game for some, but there's no way a hyper-violent all-PVP world is going to bring in as many players as LOTRO - it's the exact OPPOSITE game of what the majority of LOTRO players are interested in....

Originally posted by Endemondia

The community is the best I have personally come across

(because the adult minded crowd can appreciate that the game is an)

homage to the ethos and mythology created by Tolkien (which) balances casual play with an undercurrent of real depth and passion...

See this is what the vast majority of people want,  depth and passion and ethos and mythos and epic sagas and story arcs and events and a real living world, not some pvp gank-fest.

btw if AoC focuses too much on PvP they will have missed the intent of Robert E. Howards Conan.  Read the stories, only a tiny % of them has anything to do with bewbs and lopping off heads.  The books are all about Adventure.