The Lord of the Rings Online is spinning up its preview server this week to give players a glimpse at the upcoming class, the Mariner. The new class is part of the upcoming Umbar expansion, slated to release sometime this year.
In a post on the Lord of the Rings Online forums, community manager Cardovan announced that while press and content creators will have a preview starting tomorrow, the public will be able to rush in and check out the new class starting on Wednesday and being playable through Friday.
"On Tuesday evening, from 6pm Eastern (-4 GMT) to 7am Eastern (-4 GMT) we will have Bullroarer closed to the public but open for an invitation-only preview of the Mariner for press and select content creators! On Wednesday afternoon we expect to open Bullroarer to the general public for the first Mariner preview, and we'll keep Bullroarer open until mid-afternoon Eastern time on Friday. We'll have more information soon!"
The Mariner class is the latest to be added to the sixteen-year-old MMO, the most recent being the Brawler before in 2021. With Umbar being closely associated with the sea (thanks to the fact that it's on the Bay of Belfalas south of Gondor), it makes sense that a new class would have something to do with the sea itself. Inspired by Earendil, who himself was a Mariner, it's going to be interesting to see how the Standing Stone Games team translates a sea-faring class to a game that takes place, pretty much exclusively, on land.
You can download the Bullroarer server from the Lord of the Rings Online website to prep for the Mariner opening up on Wednesday. Personally, I'm pretty psyched about going to Umbar myself, as it's one of the lesser-known areas in Middle-earth. We know of the Corsairs that hail from Umbar, but I feel the Standing Stone Games team is at their strongest when helping to build out the world Tolkien created, not simply repurposing it.
