Turbine has announced their plans for 2012 today, and it includes the next expansion–it’s Riders of Rohan for next fall. The expansion will bring mounted combat.
Some critics are speculating that Turbine is trying to counter bad press by timing the announcement now, but we were told weeks ago that we would have a map for 2012 laid out soon.
Justin Olivetti heralds the scope of the expansion as “insane” at twice the size of Moria, but Dunland/Isengard was billed as being about the size of Moria.
Could I get excited by two more Dunlands? I’m honestly not sure. I’m sitting only halfway through the first one. I actually like helping villagers just fine, but the idea of bigger, more epic battles the likes of which I’ve never seen before in an MMO could be exciting. Turbine started on this new game tech with Isengard, and it will be interesting to see what they will do with it.
Other critics are pointing a finger at the verbiage used by Kate Paiz that suggests another grind (your mount quality) in addition to legendary items and skirmish soldiers. The success of this expansion will pretty much hinge on the success of the mounted combat, so it makes sense to make it a weighty, significant system. Maybe the LI grind will be reduced a little bit. You know the store will be there to help you, of course.
Turbine also announced some coming free updates, which will include a new Great River (Anduin) region with update 6. This region will basically be a bridge between Lothlorien and Rohan. This means that we are back on the track of the Fellowship’s path (Frodo, Sam, and company boated the Anduin) instead of continuing with the Rangers. This is a very good thing for the game.
Another major feature coming soon is skirmish soldiers in the landscape. Turbine appears to be copying SWTOR, which recently implemented this full-time companion mechanic with success. I hope Turbine does something more with skirmish soldier customization though–such as new features, voice sets, armors, and weapons–something to make soldiers differentiated a little more in LotRO and seem less like cardboard.
I think Turbine needs to do something special if they want to advertise post-SWTOR by suggesting yes, we have that too–and be taken seriously. Although I have no intention of returning to LotRO, I’m still open to a possibility of logging back into the F2P-gone-wild situation at some point, and spiffing up my skirmettes could work for motivation. (The KittyKitty dual-boxing girl powers don’t need no stinkin’ skirmish soldiers, but the more the merrier.)
As far as the cake goes–i.e. the 2012 MMORPG outlook as a whole–the big titles of 2012 are starting to fall into line at this point.
We have spring releases scheduled for Tera and Secret World (see list in the right column). Blizzard announced a cancellation of Blizzcon today in order to focus on the three titles they hope to release this year, which may mean summer or early fall releases for Pandaria and Diablo 3, which would be a logical basis for the Blizzcon cancellation because Blizzard would then have nothing really left to show.
Guild Wars 2 remains a wild card in closed beta, and I’m a little bit interested in Wizardry, which should be coming to NA and EU this summer. This permadeath MMO has been a hit in Japan, and I did play the ancient original Wizardry games (Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, Knights of Diamonds, and Legacy of Llylgamyn) on dinosaur Apple computers three decades ago, so there’s a small nostalgia factor.
There are also some caveats. Wizardry Online is a F2P game. This video apparently reveals the mechanic of using “cash items” to have an increased chance of avoiding permadeath (character deletion). This kind of corrupts what makes the game unique.
I don’t mind paying a fee for a game service (preferably a fair, flat fee), but I don’t like feeling tortured into using my credit card.
Further Reading:
A RoR Discussion Forum has been opened in the LotRO official forums.
