Lord of the Rings Onlinehas just released its newest expansion,Before the Shadow, which takes newly created players through a brand new starting experience that leads into the story of The Fellowship. To accompany the expansion,Lord of the Rings Onlineis also receiving a major free update that makes tons of welcome changes such as an expanded quest tracker and more streamlined trait point earning.
Featuring one of thebiggest worlds in an MMORPG,Lord of the Rings Onlinehas only gotten bigger over the years as new expansions and updates introduce sprawling regions filled with content for players to explore. Although the game is showing its age after operating since 2007, years of major updates and reworks have helped modernize the game with plenty of quality-of-life changes, visual improvements, and environment reworks. Thanks to its massive scale and the popularity of Tolkien’s works,Lord of the Rings Onlineoffers a uniquely immersive experience that many players still enjoy after 15 years.
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Before the Shadowis the latestLord of the Rings Onlineexpansionstarting at $20 for the standard edition, which is focused on the new player experience while also bringing some content for endgame players. New players who own the expansion can choose to start with a new tutorial experience which will lead them into the two new zones, Swanfleet from levels 1-15 and Cardolan from levels 15-32. Taking place before the formation of The Fellowship, players will uncover ancient history, battle Sauron’s forces, and accompany Boromir as he heads north to Rivendell.
Besides the new starting experience, other newcontent forLord of the Rings Onlineincludes a new skirmish, Doom of Caras Gelebren for levels 20-140, while a new scaling instance Sarch Vorn, the Black Grave will be coming soon. A new delvings system similar toWorld of Warcraft’s Mythic dungeons has been added for endgame players, which features 40 missions that include various effects to make each run challenging. Successful missions will upgrade the Delving Gemstone, increasing the difficulty for further runs. Players can choose to turn in these Gemstones for T3 raid-equivalent gear or risk more rewards by taking them into increasingly difficult missions.
Along with the major expansion features, a freeLord of the Rings Onlineupdatehas made some welcome changes. Class trait points that were previously gated behind specific quests or deeds are now automatically granted at level up, ensuring that players aren’t forced to do specific content to build their characters. The number of trackable quests has been doubled to 10 quests, a long-requested quality-of-life change. Fall damage has also been massively tweaked, reducing the 40% slow to 30% and the maximum duration from 60 seconds to 15. As usual, hundreds of other various fixes and balance tweaks have also come with Update 34.
Lord of the Rings Onlineis available on PC.
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