The Lord of the Rings Online was released in 2007. Now the developers talked about the future and promise improvements in some places.
What kind of game is this? The Lord of the Rings Online is set in the world of Middle-earth and is one of the top rated MMORPGs on Steam 2022.
For its 15th birthday, the game made a notable leap when it offered a wealth of content at once for Free2Play players. This also led to a jump in the number of players.
How does it go from here? Executive Producer Rob “Severlin” Ciccollini commented on the subject in a Q&A about the future of “Lord of the Rings Online”.
In a one-hour video, “Severlin” answers various questions from the community. Above all, the big, planned autumn update was talked about, in which the game should get some additional content.
Improved graphics, more endgame – That’s what LOTRO plans
Here’s what LOTRO says about the graphics: In terms of optics, the game wants to improve, but there are difficulties. “We’re currently looking at something that will refresh our graphics code and some art,” explains Severlin.
“Our goal is to take some of the outdated art and update it to make it one of the best.” Don’t expect that too soon though: “I can tell you it’s incredibly slow to arrange a big project like this and I apologize for that,” says Severlin. Legal and organizational things would slow down the process.
Character creation is also being worked on, currently on human races: “We are working on a large number of character customization options,” says Severlin. Part of the art update should then also affect the avatars “and make them look better without changing them too much,” says the producer. They should then look “very good”, but not completely different. However, all this is still a work in progress, as are improvements to the user interface.
What about the endgame? Here Severlin got a bit more specific. The Executive Producer admits: There has recently been too little to do for players in the endgame. But that is about to change: “We are in a transition phase because we have hired a lot of new people who are now moving up and who we are training, which is very exciting. The result is that we are in a different situation than with a small core group like we had in the past,” explains Severlin.
As a result, it is now possible to deliver more for the endgame: “In the next updates we will try to get this under control. We like having content in the middle, but we can’t have so much that your main character feels like they have nothing to do. So we definitely need endgame content.”
The update in the fall should be about as big as the “War of the Three Summits” expansion. A new 6-player dungeon, a new skirmish and the so-called “Delving system” are planned. The latter is the ability to customize difficulties and get better rewards for missions.
In addition, a new level experience for levels 1 to 30 is planned, as well as server improvements. But more information should come soon: A big announcement about Lord of the Rings Online is planned for the end of August, at the DevCom on August 22nd.
Are you looking for a Free2Play alternative when it comes to MMORPGs, but Lord of the Rings isn’t for you? Then you will find the 12 best F2P MMORPGs in comparison here.