ever since the first expansion – Mines of Moria (MoM) – in November 2008 lotro seems to release new content updates/patches too slowly. i am by no means a hardcore player but if you play lotro almost every night (as i do) you get through new content pretty fast and then what? that’s the big question.
lotro’s second “expansion” – Siege of Mirkwood (SoM) – came out on December 3, 2009 and now at the end of January 2010 i have two characters at level cap (level 65) that are raid ready (enough radiance armor for the new raid instance Barad Guldur) and a third alt at level 63. my main character did all quests in the new area of Mirkwood, leveled several new legendary items to level 70, maxed the skirmish soldier and farmed the 3 and 6 man instances ad nauseam. additionally, my kin Hope and Glory completed Barad Guldur, the new 12 man raid instance in normal mode one week ago. granted there is still hard mode to crack but everyone seems worn out and you can clearly notice a general raid-fatigue.
there is no word from Turbine yet on when the next content update will be released or what it will contain. i remember vaguely that they mentioned some announcement to be made in mid February 2010 and if this is actually true i would not expect to see the next content patch going live before mid March. what is one supposed to do until then? level more alts to level cap? grind skirmishes? farm Barad Guldur? there is no easy answer to that. an expansion that raises the level cap by five levels, introduces one new area (Mirkwood), no new skills, virtues or traits, three 3 man and one 6 man instance and one raid instance that contains three bosses… seems a bit thin content wise, doesn’t it?
i really like lotro, it is a great game, no doubt about it and the dx10 graphics are just awesome. the lore, the storyline, questing and instance design is well done and it really developed into a polished, enjoyable mmo over the past 2.5 years. content updates came pretty fast in vanilla lotro: about every two month something was added and come to think of it, the free content patches that introduced Evendim or Forochel were as elaborate as the paid “content patch” that brought us Mirkwood.
my theory is that selling lifetime-subscriptions wasn’t such a good idea and now Turbine lacks the funds to keep developing free content updates in an acceptable time frame. during the lifespan of Mines of Moria (and that’s roughly 12 months) we saw two major content updates and a few smaller ones. the major updates included Lothlorien and the raid instance DN (with six bosses) whereas the small ones introduced minor things like new crafting recipes or the disappointing lair boss known as the Turtle/Toitle.