LotRO: Book 7 Leaves of Lórien Live

The latest game update for Lord of the Rings Online has gone live today in the US.

Book 7: Leaves of Lórien introduces many new features to the game including:

* The new self-revive mechanic
* Induction times (time spent interacting with game objects) reduced
* Monster Play emotes
* New area: Lothlórien, with new quests and a new faction, the Elves of Lothlórien
* New player Experience overhaul
* New quest guide integrated with the quest tracker
* New 12 man raid
* Crafting instances
* XP curve change (faster levelling speed)

[Maticus]

Yay, more faction grinding ahead of me...! Seriously though, this is a massive upgrade to the game, can't wait to get stuck in.

[Dorjan]

But at least the xp curve has been reduced!

[Leord]

Haha, it's funny, since all games have something similar to faction grinding =)

Also, explaining why jokes are funny, can be fun.

That's funny, because jokes are not supposed to be explained =D

[thetamer]

It's about time. That was one of the issues with LotRo, not enough grinding!

[AndyA]

Lothlórien looks very nice indeed.

[lothaer]

i wonder if any of there ideas came from blizz and i wonder if blizz will "borrow" any ideas from here :D

[Leord]

Well, Blizzard are usually the first to "borrow", so whatever they do, they can hardly do anything wrong ;)

The thing is just implementing it in a good way, and even if you nicked someone else's idea, it's not a given fact that you'll do as good.

I think borrowing is good though, that's how games as a type of medium evolves.

[barom]

I think WoW's expansion the Wrath of the Lich King has borrowed a lot from Lotro. In terms of the quality of their quests. Lotro were the first to truly have like a true story integrated in to their quest and while the initial WoW had to some degree that as well they never really took it to the level of Lotro (until WotLK). Although in that sense Lotro could've borrowed those parts of WoW to begin with. Oh and I guess Lotro was the first to have the thing were if you do this one quest this village burns down and it stays burned. In other words permanent changes to the world as you progress.

Either way, does it matter? They're both really great MMOs and all games snatch at least something of one another.

[Fyzzu]

Huzzah for faster levelling. That, at least, was something Blizz started to do as their expansions came out - speeding up the earlier levels so people could see the new content.

[Maticus]

It certainly makes the prospect of starting the game less daunting.

[Medievaldragon]

Always cool to play new expansions. Wonder how many hours of entertainment this one has.