Coming Soon: Alamo teechs u 2 play LOTRO

With the announcement that Lord of the Rings Online will be introducing Beornings, the shape shifters/skin changers from The Hobbit, to the game, it can only be a matter of time before Alamo, teacher of all thing durid in World of Warcraft brings his lessons to Middle-earth.

The draft so far starts off with:

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ALAMOES COMPLEET BERONIGS INSTURCKSHUN

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1) OK, Sum beronigs is bare

2) Tehm whos bare, can B 4 tank:

ONLY BERONIGS DONT HAF SUM PEEPS IN THE HEAD AND A GUNZ LOL!

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We will have to wait and see how that develops.

Meanwhile, the actual announcement around Beronigs… erm… Beornings… is pretty sparse so far.  The actual quote from the Producer’s Letter:

Of Bears and Bees
Recently we confirmed that LOTRO will be releasing a new class this year. I’m pleased to announce that this class is the Beorning! This will be LOTRO’s first class since the Mines of Moria expansion introduced the Warden and Rune-keeper.

Beornings are noted in The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a race of Man, with close origins to the Rohirrim and the Men of Dale. Most Men are not shape-changers, so we envision the Beorning as a light armor casting class with a focus on control of the battlefield. When a Beorning gathers sufficient rage, they may transform into a mighty bear.

We’ll be sharing early class designs with the new Players Council. Expect more details later this year, as the class progresses through alpha and beta.

A light armor casting class that may, upon building up sufficient rage, transform into a mighty bear?  Alamo may need a re-write.  Or maybe Turbine does.  I am not sure that we have enough information to make sense of this new class yet.  Is it really a class, or a race, or both?

And what do we do with this guy now?

Does LOTRO need a new class?   Is this a way to get the current player base to play through old content, and maybe to sell a few of their “on again, off again” Gift of the Valar level boosts, in this year of no expansion? (Though you still have to play through Moria onward even with the boost.)

Of course, as a casual Lifetime subscriber who keeps playing through the original 2007 content, I might not be Turbine’s key demographic target.  I was happy enough with the quirky old class structure and didn’t think the game needed to go to a specs and talent trees format that seemed to be copied from a 2006 version of WoW.  But the kids seem to like it, and it isn’t like I am spending any money on LOTRO these days.

A bear with a plan!

Is a new class, plus a few high end content updates, enough to keep LOTRO fresh in 2014?

Or will the Beornings be the “Cousin Oliver” to the “Brady Bunch” that the rest of the classes form?

And what will the people who complained about loremasters casting more magic in pursuit of a single quest than occurred in all of the Lord of the Rings say about a mass of Beornings appearing in the fields of Middle-earth?  Bears, bears bears?