Today Turbine announced the fourth expansion to Lord of the Rings Online, named Riders of Rohan.  The expansion which will be released in the fall of 2012 and will bring with it a level cap increase, new locations, mounted combat and much more.  Executive Producer, Kate Paiz, stated that Riders of Rohan will be the largest expansion to date and will be twice as large as Rise of Isengard.

NEW FEATURES:

• Experience the Riders of Rohan – Join with the Rohirrim and ride across the sprawling Plains of Rohan; witness the breaking of the Fellowship at Amon Hen; forge alliances with the Ents of Fangorn; and aid Éomer, adopted son of Théoden, as he seeks to protect his homeland from the growing Shadow.

• Introducing Mounted Combat – Ride into Combat atop your loyal War-steed as you defend the people of Rohan from the forces of Isengard and Mordor. Customize your War-steed’s armor and level its skills over time to aid you in mounted defense of King Theoden’s lands. Mount your steed and gather your fellows to fight against Warbands, contingents of roving warg riders that have been scouted all over the Plains of Rohan! It falls to you to head off and defeat this new threat before they over take the land.
• Advance to level 85 – Continue your legend in the next chapter of The Lord of the Rings Online. Experience new adventures in the epic story, and gain new skills and deeds as you face new challenges on your journey to 85!

The date for the next content update to Lord of the Rings Online has been announced by Turbine today and is December 12th. Update 5: The Prince of Rohan will continue the games epic story line and adss five new Isengard instances. The update will also introduce the new instance finder to help players find groups faster.

One of the new instances added is called The Foundry, which is a sprawling subterranean area underneath the Tower of Orthanc. In the header image you can see some of the nasty creatures that players will run into on their journey through the Foundry.

That damn instance finder is so hot right now (I don’t know, Zoolander just gOt into my head so I had to) that Turbine has decided to add one for Lord of the Rings Online in their upcoming Update 5 content update.

Along with the instance finder, update 5 will continue the Epic Book story-line focusing on Theodren and will introduce 5 new dungeons which will take place in near or within the Tower of Orthanc leading up to Saruman.

Three of the new dungeons will be 3-man, one 6-man and one 12-man raid where players will confront Saruman himself. Along with the new dungeons there will also be new instance gear sets and raid sets.

Good news for players who weren’t all to pleased with the content from the recently released expansion Rise of Isengard, which only included one new dungeon raid.

It seems the Dungeon/Instance finder is catching on as RIFT also recently added one and WoW recently expanded theirs to include raids. Good news for solo players, not so much for role-players.

It seems the switch to the free-to-play business model is working well for Turbine as it was announced today that the third Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Rise of Isengard, is the best selling Lotro expansion to date.

Although no specific sales figures have been released yet, Turbine did mention that pre-purchases fueled the record breaking sales numbers for Rise of Isengard. It’s also safe to say that going F2P also helped to contribute to the numbers as membership numbers have been steadily increasing since the switch.

The first two expansions were also released when LOTRO was still a subscription based game and subscribers were steadily declining. It seems F2P has turned the tide in a big way for LOTRO and Turbine. In January it was also revealed that Turbine has tripled its revenue since the switch to F2P.

In a recent financial press release, CDC Corperation, the company that licensed the exclusive rights to distribute Lord of the Rings Online in China, reported that not only had it failed to launch the game, but they spent $10 million dollars doing it. Finally after five years, Turbine announced the delay constituted a breach of contract and has now terminated the agreement.

In September 2006, CDC Games licensed the exclusive rights to distribute, in China, Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (LOTRO), a MMORPG based upon the Lord of the Rings trilogy. For the past several years, CDC Games has experienced significant delays in the continued development and launch of this game. Since initially licensing this game, CDC Games has invested approximately $10.0 million in licensing, development and other costs related to it, including a $4.0 million initial non-refundable license fee.

CDC Games has received notification from the game’s developer that the failure to launch LOTRO constituted an event of default under our agreements with them. The developer has also asserted that our license agreement for LOTRO has been terminated. CDC Games is currently in settlement discussions regarding the license for LOTRO, but does not currently believe that settlement discussions will permit it to retain future licensing rights for LOTRO.

I’m glad that at least Turbine got to keep the $4.0 million licensing fee. Just another example of a Chinese corporation doing whatever the hell they want because there safe behind their “you can’t sue me” wall of protection. To take a already completed game and not be able to translate it in five years is embarrassing. Not only has Turbine lost years of revenue due to CDC’s incompetence, they’re going to have to start from square one with yet another shady Chinese gaming company whose last game’s content was probably stolen from other games.

Today Turbine released a new video developer diary previewing more content coming from the next Lord of the Rings Online expansion Rise of Isengard.  The diary focuses on The Gap of Rohan and how it will introduce epic scale instances where thousands of NPCs roam and fight against each other as the player journeys through the area.

While The Gap of Rohan is the first of these epic instances, the diary states that as the player marches towards Mordor, Turbine be able to do more and more of these large scale types of instances.

Also two new characters from the books are introduces,  Thadric and Grimble (not sure if that’s spelled right).  Thadric being the prince of Rohan and Grimble is a captain in the Rohan army. Check out The Gap of Rohan dev diary after the jump.

Continued…

We have some good news for MMOCrunch readers.  Turbine was kind enough to send us 5 Rise of Isengard beta keys for their upcoming Lord of the Rings Online expansion to giveaway to our readers.

Normally we would setup a giveaway page to give out the keys, however since we have a very limited number of them, we’ll be running this contest a little different.

• To enter simply reply to this post stating why you think you should received a beta key to Rise of Isengard.
• After 24 hrs, we’ll select our five favorite answers and send them a beta key using the email address used to comment. So make sure you enter a valid email or you won’t get the key.

Good luck to everyone.

Update

And the lucky winners are:

• Joe
• LotroSurviver
• Eoldred
• Grinili
• Jason

You’ll each receive an email shortly with the beta key and instructions on how to use it. If you don’t get it check your spam folder. Congrats.

A new developers diary was posted up today on the Lord of the Rings Online forums discussing itemization in the upcoming Rise of Isengard expansion.

Gear stat and rating limits will be completely removed to allow for more diverse and unique items.

Early in the development of Shadows of Angmar, we decided to restrict certain stats to certain pieces of equipment. This decision made it difficult to create items that felt different from one another. In the end, our light, medium and heavy helmets had very similar stats. We want you to make more decisions and to feel empowered by those decisions, so we’ve gone ahead and opened up the floodgates on which stats and ratings could appear on gear.

Gear level increments have also been increased to allow for bigger changes in gear stats between levels.

We want upgrades to feel like upgrades and we want you to be excited when you get a piece of gear. To correct this, we’ve created larger steps between the items.

Yellow gear items are also getting a boost to their stats in an attempt to make the relevant to LotRO players past the early stages of gamplay. Turbine stated they have “added significantly to their power starting at level 66“, but they will not be more powerful then the next level of purple items.

Rise of Isengard will make it easier for solo players to acquire four out of their six piece class sets through solo quests.  And for the group player or raider, there will be better drops for classic instances, scaling raids and skirmish raids.

To end things, the devs discussed more about what the new Finesse stat is and why its isn’t a replacement for Radiance. It was quite confusing even for a ex-lotro veteran, so I’ll leave it up to you to figure it out.

Turbine today released the first screenshots of the Tower of Orthanc and the Gap of Rohan for the upcoming Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Rise of Isengard. The next expansion for LotRO will be released on Sept 27th and will open up three new areas, the Gap of Rohan, Isengard with the Tower of Orthanc, which were revealed today, and Dunland, which was revealed last week.

The Rise of Isengard expansion will also raise the level cap to 75 and introduce a new 24-player raid to name a few.  For more info on the upcoming LotRO expansion, check  out the official Isengard site.

Screenshots after the jump.

Continued…

The next Lord of the Rings Online expansion Rise of Isengard is set to launch in about two months and today Turbine announced the launch date for its beta program. The invite only beta program will launch next week on July 27th and will be open to all players who pre-ordered their copy of Rise of Isengard.

There are three different versions of the expansion, Base, Heroic and Legendary Edition, all three will grant access to the beta.  Aside from beta access, each come with its own in-game bonuses which are listed below

• Rise of Isengard Base Edition – Includes the full Rise of Isengard expansion plus:
  • Steed of the Gap, a new in-game mount with matching red cosmetic cloak for every character on your account
  • In-game title – Guard of the Isen
  • 25% XP boost for all characters on an account up to level 65

• Rise of Isengard Heroic Edition – Includes the full Rise of Isengard expansion plus:
  • 1,000 Turbine Points for use in the LOTRO Store
  • Steed of the Gap, a new in-game mount with choice of matching cosmetic cloak and armor in your choice of red, white or green for every character on your account
  • In-game title – Guard of the Isen
  • 25% XP boost for all characters on an account up to level 65

• Rise of Isengard Legendary Edition –  Includes the full Rise of Isengard expansion plus:
  • 1,000 Turbine Points for use in the LOTRO Store
  • All three Steeds of the Gap, new in-game mounts with matching cosmetic cloak and armor in all three colors for every character on your account
  • In-game title – Guard of the Isen
  • 25% XP boost for all characters on an account up to level 65
  • Access to the Path of the Fellowship Quest Packs including Trollshaws, Eregion, Moria, Lothlorien and Mirkwood