Lord of the Rings Online expands

By Robert Purchese Published 9 May, 2007

Book 9: Evendim awaits.

Codemasters Online Gaming has magically revealed that Book 9: Evendim will be the first of many significant expansions for Lord of the Rings Online when it arrives sometime this month.

It will add a vast new area for players to explore, Evendim, which will offer more than 60 quests to get stuck into, plus lots of content for players over level 30 - including the first major raid in the game.

There's also a spattering of new skills to enjoy, enhancements to the Champion class, as well as a handful of new monsters and a fresh storyline to get stuck into.

You see, Aragorn needs your help to scour the ancient city of Annúminas for the powerful relics within, so that he can repair his uber sword. Typical royal behaviour. You'll also get to meet an Ent who is roaming the hills in search of some missing Entwives.

It's just the start of the ongoing support Codemasters Online Gaming will offer the game, according to product manager Ed Blincoe, who insists the publisher has huge plans for the future.

"The Lord of the Rings Online has had a great launch. We're please to welcome the hundreds of thousands of people that have already signed up to play the game," Ed Blincoe told Eurogamer. "We have huge plans for content updates going forwards and the arrival of The Shores of Evendim just a few short weeks after launch highlights this perfectly."

The Lord of the Rings Online is a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game that is actually pretty ruddy good. You can't play as Aragorn and the Fellowship cronies, but you can interact with them on crucial storyline quests.

Head over to our Lord of the Rings Online review to see why it's one of the best MMOs out there.

Alternatively you can follow Frodo into our Book 9: Evendim gallery to see what awaits you in the first major update.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (25) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Mox #1 5 years ago

    They could fix their peak-time log-in problems first ...

  • UncleLou #2 5 years ago

    Yeah, I am sure the people who develop new content are the same who are responsible for the login servers. ;p

  • ZuluHero #3 5 years ago

    wow - new stuff already? the game has only been out just over a week (and i only started playing yesturday)

    Nice to see that the game is being supported. Now if only Codies can pull their fingers out in regards to server management!

  • OnlyMe #4 5 years ago

    They should do something about the horrible stuttering in towns.

  • Wendelius #5 5 years ago

    "They could fix their peak-time log-in problems first ..."

    The new content has nothing to do with Codemasters. It's being developed by Turbine. At most, it will take up some localisation resources. It's interesting to see that, playing on the US servers, there is no extended downtime, there hasn't been a rollback and we don't have any login server issues. Looks like the Codemasters side of thing is slightly more flaky and unstable.

    So, the good news, is that Turbine developing new content will not impact Codemasters' ability to fix their servers. It's sad to see that marked a difference on how the same game runs on both sides of the Atlantic though. I'm glad I'm playing on the Turbine side.

    Wendelius

  • Wendelius #6 5 years ago

    "wow - new stuff already? the game has only been out just over a week (and i only started playing yesturday) "

    Yep. that was a Turbine trademark in the Asheron's Call days and one of the reasons I enjoyed that game so much. They were very good at developing storyline arcs and providing monthly content updates to advance that arc. I'm hoping for more of the same here.

    Wendelius

  • #7 5 years ago

    I'd p-p-p-p-play it but it w-w-w-won't run decently on my p-p-p-p-p-pc without st-st-st-st-stuttering.

    m-m-m-m-m-m-muppets!

  • FWB #8 5 years ago

    Good game. Addictive stuff.

  • Mox #9 5 years ago

    It's COG that provided this press-release to EuroGamer. I found it mildly ironic that they were telling me about all the great new stuff I can't log in to play on.

  • the_dudefather #10 5 years ago

    one does not simply log-on to mordor!

  • funkstar #11 5 years ago

    mapster i suggested something that might help with the stuttering in the kinship thread.... amd dual core optimiser... its from the amd website :)

  • George-Roper #12 5 years ago

    Dead in 6-9 months.

  • #13 5 years ago

    cheers funkstar, but I have a P4 3.4 in my PC
    Edited by 1 at 09/05/07 @ 14:26

  • UncleLou #14 5 years ago

    Dead in 6-9 months.

    Unlikely. And even if, I couldn't care less. MMORPGs don't need to last forever.

  • Harlequeen #15 5 years ago

    My condolences to your family George

  • funkstar #16 5 years ago

    coulda sworn you said you had an AMD X2...
    musta got you mixed up with someone else, sorry lol

  • AOFanboi #17 5 years ago

    LOTRO runs decently on my P4 2.8 w/Radeon 9250 256 graphics. Unlike, say, Vanguard which does not run at all (no *shader 2.0 support).

    Codemasters manage billing, but the .Net-based (yes I saw a stack trace during yesterday's troubles) is likely to be at least partially Turbine-made.

  • Wendelius #18 5 years ago

    "Codemasters manage billing, but the .Net-based (yes I saw a stack trace during yesterday's troubles) is likely to be at least partially Turbine-made."

    Turbine made but run by Codemasters on their own servers. And it seems to make all the difference between a stable MMO with no unannounced downtime and the login troubles in Europe.

    Wendelius

  • -TKF- #19 5 years ago

    Reading these "comments" shows me one thing, that this MMO is running better than WOW did in the start and for a long time..

    have faith guys..

  • tap #20 5 years ago

    'I'd p-p-p-p-play it but it w-w-w-won't run decently on my p-p-p-p-p-pc without st-st-st-st-stuttering.'

    I've had pretty good results by turning on vsync, triple-buffering and setting the max frame rate to match my monitor's refresh rate.

    A bit counter-intuitive but it worked a treat. Not perfect but much better.

  • jaxon58 #21 5 years ago

    Really really enjoying this game so far, and had hardly any problems at all. The slight stutter in towns and the odd 'server down' are far outweighed by the things it does well.

    Good to hear there's some new content on the way so soon!

  • smelly #22 5 years ago

    Ive never even heard of this!

  • thefilthandthefury #23 5 years ago

    Would this run decently on my pretty poor machine? I have a 2.4ghz P4, 1gb RAM and a Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card. Hardly impressive but it runs WoW so was wondering if you lot think this would actually work (specs lie I tell you! LIE!)

  • FWB #24 5 years ago

    I am running it on my iMac (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo 1Gig Ram and ATI 1600 with 128Mb Ram). Got the resolution at 1024 and graphics turned down a little at the moment (still looks great). I did have everything high up but then started to get the stuttering in crowded towns hence I lowered it. However, it doesn't seem to improve performance (I should put everything up again). 90% of the time the game is absolutely fine. But as soon as it gets busy in any city it goes completely pear-shaped (even logged out a couple of times cos I just couldn't do anything). But its not happening in battle so its not the end of the world. I have faith they will fix it (I am assuming its down to lag and nothing else). At least they better had.

    I am not an MMO expert. I played EVE for a little and was in the Neocron beta. In neither did I see any major bugs (but then I didn't play them long). Speaking from that stand point LOTR is very good. No major... in fact apart from the stuttering.... no bugs at all... so far. Just the usual game balancing/mechanics issues. Touch wood. good start at the moment.
    Edited by 1 at 10/05/07 @ 01:17

  • Vandrius #25 5 years ago

    I haven't heard a bad thing about LoTRO yet (excluding the usual server load issues that accompany mmorpg launches)...

    Makes me wonder if it might be worth jumping back into a MMO for, especially since they're already adding content.

  • Dizzy #26 5 years ago

    >Ive never even heard of this!

    WTF are you even on EG smelly?

  • Macross #27 5 years ago

    I had real bad stuttering problems in places like Bree with lots of players around, then I bought an extra gig of RAM to bring it to 2 gigs, and that reduced the stuttering by 90%.

    Might try some of the other suggestions here to improve it further.