Some interesting changes are coming to raids and instances in the upcoming Book 8 update to The Lord of the Rings Online, as revealed in this latest dev journal on the official LOTRO website.

Developer Jared "Amlug" Hall-Dugas spills the beans on a number of new instances and raids coming in Book 8, as well as some changes to existing raids and the availability of the items within them.

Instance and Raid Changes Coming in Book 8:

* New instances and raids:

•  The Mirror Halls of Lumul-nar - a three-man instance located in Zirak-zigil (contains a hard mode)
•  The Water Wheels: Nala-Dum - another three-man level 60 instance located in the Flooded Deeps (contains a hard mode)
•  Halls of Crafting - a six-man instance located next to the entrances of the Forges of Khazad-Dum and Fil Ghashan (contains a hard mode)
•  Dar Narbugud - a twelve-person raid that contains 6 bosses with First Age Legendary Item token drops and the new Tier 2 class set
•  A ton of new quests for the instances and raids - opportunities to gain Galadhrim reputation, Rare Drops, and Legendary Item XP.

* Changes to existing raids:

• The Vile Maw is now a little bit easier than the 2.0 current version. Think of it as new version 1.5 with a slower transition from stage 2 to 3, slower pile-ups of corruptions, etc.
• The Vile Maw and Turtle Raids can now be run 2 times a week
• Vile Maw gloom went down to 140 from 150. This will allow people to fight in 30 gloom when using the full radiance set
• Hope buffs from Helegrod and The Rift have become a Radiance Buff that lasts 3 hours even if you disconnect or log out of the game. These buffs have been also been adjusted from +3 Hope to +10 Radiance.

* Changes to Item drops for instances and raids:

• All First Age Legendary Items are now dropping only in raids via a token system. We’ll get into the hows and whys of this system but suffice it to say, you now can pick your First Age once you get enough tokens instead of hoping the random number gods are in your favor
• All 3 Moria raids will be dropping First Age tokens at varying rates — it is up to you to figure out where the best place to get tokens is!
•  A new barter system for the hard modes of the 3 new non-raid instances. Every player will be able to loot 1 barter token from the chests if they achieved hard mode and will be able to collect and trade these tokens in for a +15 radiance piece of a 3-piece set or Legendary Item XP tokens
•  All of the previous instances are dropping more Second Age items per instance!
•  Tier 2 class set is now a 5-set bonus max rather than a 6-set bonus max so that players can now mix and match that sixth piece to their heart’s content.

For more information, check out the full dev journal here.

This sounds great but when will it go live? There is nothing on the offical fourm and all we keep hearing is how great this book 8 is =))

Not sure who is calling all the new stuff "Raids", you or turbine. But there is only one new raid in book 8. The rest is full group, or small group content, each with two difficulty's.

Wow here it is 3 months along when I read this and only a few posts?  Shows how much of a yawner LotRO has become, I guess.  Placing all this additional emphasis on raids and instances trying to woo WoW- style raid fans is collaterally disenfranchising long-time LotRO players who were never interested in raids and were hoping for the minimal instances after the disaster the introduction of such instances caused in MoM.

Sad to say, with this direction LotRO is taking, it's pretty clear, if this direction doesn't change, especially with all the great MMOs due to release in the next year or so, there will continue to be a lot more people jumping out of LotRO than Raid Fanatics jumping in.