Category: Lord of the Rings Online News

Lord of the Rings Online players will be happy to hear that the datacenters will be moving on Monday, January 11th, new hardware included. In the most uplifting news, EU players will be able to enjoy much lower latency thanks to a new datacenter opening in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The latest ‘roadmap’ for Lord of the Rings Online that gives players a brief look ahead at what 2016 will bring to the game. Among other things, players can look forward to quality of life improvements, more Fellowship Challenges including, devs wrote, a 12-player raid, a level cap increase to 105 and new collections with an improved UI specifically for that purpose.

Lord of the Rings Online will be bringing in a new buff called Blessing of Valar that will allow players instantly level their characters to 95. It appears that this will be a store item, according to the preliminary patch notes. In addition, new housing decorations are featured in the store and many significant (and not-so significant!) bugs will be addressed as well.

Everyone has her/his own favorite book or film in a series. For the two big ones, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings, it’s become fashionable to like The Empire Strikes Back and The Two Towers, respectively, and pooh-pooh the others. Yet, Return of the Jedi and Return of the King have always been my favorite movies in those trilogies, as they represent the most epic and climactic moments in fantasy storytelling.

Lord of the Rings Online was recently updated with a large new update called The Siege of Minas Tirith. Siege includes three new zones (Pelennor Fields, Talath Anor and the White City), a pair of new "epic battles" (Defense of Minas Tirith, Hammer of the Underworld), and seventy quests and deeds for players at level 100+.

The Lord of the Rings Online site has been updated with a list of both North American and European worlds that will be closed beginning in early 2016. As of this time, no new characters can be created on these worlds and players will begin the transfer process by opening the test world for character copy.

Lord of the Rings Online has a unique music system and battle weary players have taken a real liking to its nuances. ABC files number into the many thousands with music being played at any street corner and at all hours with genres ranging from Mozart, to Led Zeppelin. This could make for ripe event planning… Enter the fan-created event, Weatherstock!

The Summer Producer’s Letter has been published on the Lord of the Rings Online forum to give players a forward look at the happenings of the next several months.

While May the Fourth might be considered a Star Wars holiday due to the pun ("May the Fourth be with you!"), it’s also the day that Lord of the Rings Online publisher Turbine intends on launching Update 16, titled The Ashes of Osgiliath. In preparation of this launch, Community Manager Andy Cataldo facilitated a livestream preview for the public. We were there and brought back this report!

In the latest developer diary on the Lord of the Rings Online site, Ben Schneider has a pleasant surprise for players looking for, as he put it, "hard". In the next update, currently scheduled for next week, players will be able to take part in two three-player instances and one full fellowship instance that will scale from levels 50-100.