LOTRO social network begins beta

By Oli Welsh Published 11 December, 2008

It's US-only for the moment.

Turbine has opened its social networking site for The Lord of the Rings Online to the public for the first time.

The site, My LOTRO, is available for a very limited time as a "beta preview". The preview closes tomorrow, Friday 12th December.

At the moment, My LOTRO is run exclusively by Turbine, the developer of the Tolkien MMO, and so is only available to players on the North American servers operated by Turbine itself.

For the time being, it's not available to players on the European servers operated by Codemasters Online Gaming. You can browse the site, but you can't log in with your account details to use its features, or track events or characters on your server.

My LOTRO, which Turbine previewed to Japanese developers at the Tokyo Game Show, combines the character profiling and guild features of World of Warcraft's Armory with the social features of Facebook - live news feeds, media sharing, friends list management and communication tools.

Although access remains restricted to the American servers for now, this sort of thing is clearly the future of the life-sucking world of MMOs. We know that CCP is working on a similar site for EVE Online, and we'll be watching the development of My LOTRO with interest.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (7) Latest comment 3 years ago

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

  • hiddenranbir #1 3 years ago

    We won't get it for yonks.

  • DFawkes #2 3 years ago

    If ever. I'm assuming Codemasters would have to mirror it, and I can't remember them saying they would do it too.

  • Wendelius #3 3 years ago

    You mentioned the WoW Armory. EQ2 Station Players has been doing that since before that came out. Not a bad interface. Journal entries in My LOTRO seem to be Wordpress based. Although I'm not sure where the test entry I thought I published went.

    Wendelius

  • DFawkes #4 3 years ago

    Wait, so you're from USA and able to access this Wendelius? That makes me feel better about taking you PS3, since the compo would've been UK only.

    I still like the idea, and I'm glad LOTRO is getting it. I just hope it is Euro-bound.

  • Bleh #5 3 years ago

    Just see the US as beta testers :D.

  • Wendelius #6 3 years ago

    Nope I'm UK based, just play LOTRO with a US account since my usual online friends are US based. And I didn't know you were the one who got the PS3. For once I had won a competition! Thanks for reminding me. *shakes first in mock anger*

    That will teach me to read my EG mail in the future though. :)

    Wendelius
    Edited by 1 at 11/12/08 @ 16:13

  • DFawkes #7 3 years ago

    I never thought of geting a US account. I just deleted my character because he was rubbish, so when I start again I might go US - the forums there are a little better too.