File under “when am I going to find the time?”
Turbine announced the next point of expansion for Lord of the Rings Online. Players will be headed through the gap and into the fields of Rohan.
So far, Syp over at Massively has the best write up about the expansion I have seen so far.
Despite LOTRO not being in my currently play rotation, I am a lifetime subscriber (which seems like the best deal ever nearly five years down the line) and do peek in now and again.
And because Turbine always offers some pretty nifty pre-order incentives, I am sure I will buy the expansion despite the fact that my highest level character is still in the Mines of Moria, having only arrived there this past August. That just leaves the Mirkwood and Isengard expansions between me and Rohan.
It seems unlikely that I will catch up, but I am still excited about the new expansion. I look forward to more details.
Let’s just hope Turbine can stay away from the crazy mounts addiction that SOE has. It turns out that 25% of EQ2’s revenue is from mounts, so they are never going to slow down.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
I may need to get back into the game for this one, I really thought that Riders of Rohan was coming out in 2009 when I bought the game. It makes me want to play after a 8+ month break.
LikeLike
I really wish I had picked up the lifetime subscription. I like playing it from time to time, but I cant afford another sub, and past around level 23ish, leveling gets annoying as you have to buy quest packs.
LikeLike
I wonder if the mounted combat will be better or worse than what Darkfall does, which IMO had the genres best combat. Hard to picture mounted combat feeling ‘right’ if it uses the hotbar-spam style that is current LotRO.
LikeLike
@SynCaine – Best mounted combat? Darkfall has nearly the only real mounted combat in the genre.
WoW has vehicular combat and you have horse-vehicles jousting in the Argent Tournament. But even if you like that horse-vehicle implementation, it is like a bumper car ride, only usable in a specific area. You cannot just ride out and slay NPCs on your pseudo-horse.
For a long time in EQ2 you remained on your mount while fighting, but all that did was pooch your animations. All your combat skills were the same.
Who else besides Darkfall in the MMORPG genre has actual free, not simply in special spots, mounted combat?
LikeLike
Do we know yet if they’re going to gate the Rohan content by making you play through Moria to get to it? I have no interest whatsoever in Moria but I like the idea of the plains.
LikeLike
@Bhagpuss – Well, LOTRO suffers from the levels thing. Moria was level 50 to 60 content. Everything after that is 60+. So, to my knowledge, there is no need to do the content in Moria in order to do the follow on content, but you do have to get into the right level range… say 58 at a minimum… to have a hope of success beyond Moria.
LikeLike
If you are the only one doing something, you are still technically #1 at it.
Also the fact that I can only think of DF as having mounted combat is a sad reflection on the genre.
LikeLike
Age of Conan also took a stab at mounted combat. It never amounted to much, just a few more abilities to further clutter up already cluttered action bars. There was a mounted charge, a back kick, and probably a forward kick. And you lost access to most of your class abilities other than auto-attack and a few basic attacks/spells.
And, as others have mentioned, you could fight while mounted in EQ2. But I can’t say it counts as “mounted combat” except in the most basic sense of those words. Apart from stat buffs, your mount added nothing to combat, not even movement speed.
LikeLike
@Darraxus – You can buy all the quest packs for less than the price of the cheapest Lifetime subscription they offered. Furthermore, you can earn Turbine Points through in-game activities (completing deeds, many of which you’d want to do anyway for the traits and virtues you’d earn). In fact, Premium status in LOTRO is one of the best gaming deals currently available, if you can stomach the P2W facets of the cash shop.
@Bhagpuss – Sounds like East Rohan will be a level 75-85 zone. You can theoretically get to level 75 while skipping Moria, but it wouldn’t be easy, since there =is= no other level 50-60 area in the game. You might get to 53 in Eregion, do levels 54-56 through skirmishes and instances, and then move directly to Lothlorien and beyond.
LikeLike
Was it aoc that had the video of a horse on a bridge knocking people down the cliff? Rattling around in my head.
LikeLike
Yep, that was Age of Conan. Pretty much the only use anyone found for the back kick ability, as far as I know.
Shame, because it shows significant attention to detail, which is something I usually applaud. Unfortunately, significant attention to insignificant details usually results in, to put it kindly, misallocation of resources.
I suspect such issues are the reason it took Funcom over three years to finish =a single dungeon= (House of Crom), over six months to figure out how to merge servers (because the necessity for server merges became obvious after maybe three months but didn’t occur until well after nine months), and never managed to put out a patch in less than three months. Funcom’s glacial pace of development makes Turbine look like eager beavers chomping away on trees and frantically building their dams….
LikeLike