Lord of the Rings Online launched the Wolves of Mordor expansion on Wednesday afternoon.  I was a little concerned a bit back because they felt the need to publish a guidance message about the launch date, which is something you only do when you are not feeling 100% about the launch date.  But nothing came of it and the expansion launched as expected.

The Wolves of Mordor

The expansion itself is billed as follows:

Answer the call of the hunt by traveling to Draugardh, a distant corner of Mordor where the Free Peoples’ victory proves far from complete. Not every shadow fled when Mordor’s fires dimmed, and some of the Dark Lord’s oldest servants issue forth to threaten those who caused their master to fall. As terrible howls pierce the night, will you stand against the were-wolves of Mordor, or fall prey to the evil that stirs there?

SSG has finished, for now, farming the brief bits of the deep appendix at the back of The Return of the King about distant Harad and other points south, and has turned its eyes back towards Mordor where there still lingers a bit of the IP they have yet to exploit.

As I have noted previously, that may sound more than a bit cynical, but I am torn on the subject.  I want LOTRO to survive, to remain available, which necessitates selling more content every year.  That is the business model.  On the other hand, even the mighty appendix at the end of The Return of the King only has so much in one can hang ones hat on, and I fear some day we might end up in with content answering questions nobody cares about, like a Middle-earth version of the movie Solo.

But that might just be me.  It is perhaps the one MMORPG where the lore matters and I pay attention to it willingly.

So I do wonder where SSG will go in its meandering journey to avoid the Grey Havens and the end of the book.  I mean, technically, we could go back to Numenor I suppose.  That’s in the appendix.  It just has the problem that Professor Tolkien noted so many years agol; no Hobbits.

For now though there are still locations in the back end of Mordor to visit.  I expected the expansion to get to the Sea of Rhun, but SSG decided to take its time revisiting Mordor and only made it as far as Draugardh, on the way to Rhun, but not yet there.

Maybe next years expansion.

As previously noted, the expansion is available in three packages varying from just the content to all the fluff you might desire.

  • Standard Edition – $40
  • Collector’s Edition – $80
  • Ultimate Fan Bundle – $130

All the pre-order goodies are no longer available, which I believe included a level 160 character boost.

There was no increase in the level cap, the company opting to halt that ongoing upward climb for an expansion by adding in a new mechanic called Survival Instincts.  That, the new nosy neighbors, and the new zones look to be the extent of the update.

There is also a brief expansion trailer.

So the Wolves of Mordor is set to go.  The launcher didn’t even take that long to update for me.

Related:

  • LOTRO – Wolves of Mordor expansion page
  • LOTRO – Wolves of Mordor Update 50 Release Notes