This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
Its been a fun year for players of the Lord of the Rings Online. We got the biggest expansion the game has ever seen content wise and a slew of updates to our hobbit-fueled minds at work throughout the year. And now, hot off the heels of Riders of Rohan, Turbine is getting ready to pump out a huge update that should quell the wants and needs of the end game players, and excite those who are still trying to get to level cap.
Turbine wants to honor their promises made a few months back on delivering an instance cluster for the latest expansion by the end of the year, but thanks to a string of setbacks, notably the 40-day delay for Riders of Rohan and hurricane Sandy which rendered Turbine's offices inoperable for a small span of time, they couldn't roll out the full onslaught of instances and raids they originally hoped for, but thank goodness to that because there is a ton of content on the way, ready to burst down our doors!
Revamps
First off, what seems like a small part of the update, yet huge addition to the game are the many revamps given to certain sectors of the game in Update 9. One of the most fascinating overhauls is the newly rebuilt Bree-town. When I first caught a whiff of the upcoming changes, I was a bit taken aback since I've played the game for four years now.
A rush of memories smacked me in the face of all the good times I've spent in the city, watching concerts, testing my luck at the auction hall, grouping up for instances, and training in some of the very first skills I learned at the dawn of my journey in LotRO.
But after a little peek into what's to come, I was left both relieved and anxious to check out the changes. The town seems much more alive and vibrant than ever before, with big new neighborhoods clustered together by the gates of the city, with tall peaked roofs and large stone walls. Although much of the old streets remain the same, Bree has definitely taken on a new vibe that gets me excited to run in and explore again just as I had so many years ago.
The other major revamp coming in the update is the second half of the Moria revamp that began back in Update 7 earlier this year. The usual rehashes have been as before, quest streamlining, some graphical updates and an extra flavor of polish on the areas have all been accounted for.
So for the new players playing through Moria now, you should be very happy to hear the news since Moria wasn't so nice and easy just one measly year ago. Yet somehow, in the of my mind, I miss the horrendous challenge those cavernous depths once presented. Getting lost for hours and frantically trying to find my way around the mines just gave the zone that extra edge that it was much more massive than it really was. And it made for some good storytelling later on!
The rest of the enhancements to the game in a nutshell includes the now scale-able Dol Guldur instance cluster in Mirkwood, open tapping, a concept made famous in Rohan that allowed for share-able kills and XP on mobs among-st the players is now readily available throughout Middle Earth (YES!), and a new concept called remote looting, where every player in an instance or raid group gets separate loot from one another eliminating the need for a "master-looter" has been introduced as well.
New Instance Cluster
The meatier part of the update is arguably the new instance cluster, of which includes three of the seven instances to come in the foreseeable future. We get three new 3-man instances with the update that all coincide with thematically with the Hobbit movie coming out soon, visiting locations found in the book.
Perhaps the coolest thing about the instances is that they're all available starting at level twenty, meaning that those of you who are leveling up, whether you'd be a newcomer or and alt roller, you'll a bit more something to do with your time than grinding away at the same old boring quests or now dated instances we have now.
In Webs of the Scuttledells, we see Thorin and his dwarves march straight through Mirkwood on their trek towards the Lonely Mountain and will match thematically with the dwarves' encounter with the spiders of Northern Mirkwood.
The Seat of the Great Goblin takes us back in time, into the innards of Goblin-Town. The unique themed adventure from this instance however occurs some 80 years after the events of the Hobbit, where the goblins of Goblin-Town could never fully recover their strength since Gandalf's attack on them.
Last, but not least, the last instance, Iorbar's Peak, takes place in the Misty Mountains, in where one of the Stone giants living in the area has stolen an egg from one of the legendary giant eagles, Gwaihir. You and your two friends are tasked with finding the egg and preventing it from being eaten. The catch? The egg is guarded by dozens of Dourhand and Helegrod escapees, so good luck getting to the end!
As this is only the first of two parts to the update, the second half coming sometime early next year, we have a lot to look forward to. From the many enhancements given to spice up the game's dated mechanics to the Hobbit-themed instance cluster, I haven't been this excited to jump back into Middle Earth and play LotRO in a while! Look forward to the update releasing sometime within the month.