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Arbalister

Well, here it comes, the new expansion for LOTRO has been announced.  The biggest surprise so far is that it was *not* "Riders of Rohan."  Turbine has decided, instead, to take us east, into the southwestern "bulge" of Mirkwood Forest.  This should be an excellent, if smaller then expected expansion pack.  Mirkwood itself encompasses nearly as much geographical area as the existing Zones in the game, including in it's expanse the stronghold of Dol Guldur - where Sauron fled to recover his strength, later putting it in the charge of the second most powerful of the Nazgul.  During the War of the Ring, several assaults were launched from Dol Guldur against one or the other of Lothlorien to the West or Thranduil's woodland stronghold of Silvan Elves far to the Northeast.  Also nestled into the edge of the forests western edge, not far to the northeast of Dol Guldur, is Rhosgobel - the home of Gandalf's "cousin" Radagast the Brown.

Mirkwood has the potential to be a very interesting addition to the game.

Tags: LOTRO

Arbalister

I'm appalled. 

For years, I've been pointing out to people that even though we have our arguments in the LOTRO forums, that the maturity level there has always been maintained at a much higher level then in the forums of other games I've been involved with, and most particularly, have never devolved to the depths seen in the World of Warcraft forums.  WoW attracted a much younger crowd of gamers, probably because of Blizzard.net, then most MMORPGs seem to.  And you can see it in the forums.  Baseless rants, demands to change aspects if the game with no explanations of the perceived problem, calling the devs names - there's an effect way to encourage them to look into your problem, and broad, sweeping generalizations were rampant.

Tags: LOTRO | QA | devs | forums