The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood

Through all of this, you'll be able to take advantage of some major tweaks Turbine has made to gameplay. Key among these is the revised combat system. Not only have weapon classes all had their speed and damage standardized, combat itself has been made more slick, more responsive. This is one of those changes that probably involved a lot of industrious work on Turbine's part, but for the player is so subtle you may not even notice the difference, which is probably a good thing - it just feels right. It's still not quite perfect, though. My Champion still feels the need to swing his axes for a few more seconds after a fight, despite an enemy being felled. The dimwit. Too many knocks on the head.

The expansion's not all about Mirkwood, endgame content and combat though. There's been extensive revision across the main body of the game. Steefel talks about revamps to all the book quest content, and considerable work on the "the way the first 30 levels of the game work, to more efficiently enter the game." So even though most of the above won't mean much to non-players, rest assured, if you like Tolkien, LOTRO is a great place to indulge your inner hobbit, and even more so now the entry-level content has been revised. Personally, I came to the game because I loved the films, and wanted to see more of Moria. The game can visualise Middle-earth in a broader way than the movies - and it is, after all, the original fantasy world, so influential on the entire genre of fantasy RPGs. Steefel rightly says, "you can't build a 300 hour movie," so the game fills in the gaps.

Among the other tweaks in Siege of Mirkwood are some that answer some of the most nagging irritants in the game, like the way you had to dismount to talk to an NPC or go through a portal or doorway. There's even a mail name auto-complete now too. About time. A pity Turbine didn't add an option to attach multiple items though. World of Warcraft players, with their innumerable fancy mods, will probably scoff, but LOTRO has never about laborious third-party customisations. We rely on the generally pretty flexible UI, and just hope Turbine keeps implementing such tweaks.

Turbine has also done a lot of work on the Legendary Item and Legacy system - the equipment that levels alongside you, introduced in the Mines of Moria expansion. Notable among these changes are the provision of Legacy information sooner in your handling of a Legendary item, so you don't get into a frustrating bind where you invest a lot of time levelling a weapon only for Legacies to unlock that are no use to you. Crafters will also benefit from changes relating to Legendary items. Mirkwood introduces new Legendary recipes, and there's also a new, fourth relic slot on legendary items, for crafted relics.

It's not all hunky-dory, however. Although the Skirmishing is great fun and a reliable way to accrue XP and item XP, now that I've played it more and played it on my own character rather than loaners in beta, I'm feeling a little nonplussed about the rewards. As discussed in the hands-on, Skirmishes yield Skirmish Marks, which can either be invested in your soldiers, or on crafting items, or on kit. In the developer diaries, designer Brian Aloisio said the Skirmish "rewards are usually slightly less powerful than those found through endgame instances or top-tier crafting." Really? None of the gear rewards seem to even come close to gear players can still get from Moria content (and there doesn't seem to be even a whiff of Radiance), which seems a bit odd, especially at level 65. Hopefully Turbine wil re-appraise this, as however much fun Skirmishing is, players don't just want fun - they want shinies.