12 Games of Christmas: LOTRO
...my true love sent to me: 5 gold rings (and one to rule them all)
For the fifth Game of Christmas how could it be any game other than the most famous gold ring of Lord of the Rings Online?
It has been a big year for LOTRO, with Riders of Rohan bringing added scope to the already impressive game.
As outlined by LOTRO’s senior producer, Aaron “Rowan” Campbell recently, 2012 has been a big step forward for adventurers in Middle Earth:
“We introduced Mounted Combat, let you walk in the footsteps of Frodo and Boromir, resolved almost 8000 bugs, and added another 500,000 words to the game.
2012 also brought us:
LOTRO’s 5th Anniversary Celebration
- The Great River region
- Open Tapping and Remote Looting
- Revised Moria quest lines and story
- Scaled Fornost and Dol Guldur instances
- Audacity and Ettenmoors keep capture updates"
Having played through a chunk of the content in Update 9: Against the Shadows just a few weeks ago, I was impressed as always with just how solid LOTRO is in its game play and how committed the team at Turbine is to keep the sense of authenticity that fans of Tolkien demand.
Even while ensuring that the game is unerringly faithful, the team is able to expand upon the original lore to flesh out the world even further, such as with the depiction of the stone giants in Iorbar’s Peak.
With updates such as The Bells of Dale, Flight to the Lonely Mountain, The Fires of Smaug and The Battle of Erebor coming in 2013 via the Rohan Instance Cluster, there should be plenty more for fans to sink their teeth into.
So how has LOTRO been for you this year and what do you want to see in 2013?
10 Lords a Leaping (over a tall building in a single bound)
5 Gold Rings (and one to rule them all...)
Scott “Jarimor” Hawkes, Editor in Chief