Questions by Cody “Micajah” Bye (Managing Editor) and Greg “Darkgolem” Stanley (LOTRO Site Lead)

Answers by LOTRO’s Aaron Campbell (Live Producer) and Brent Schmidt (Lead Content Designer)

This autumn is full of MMO gaming goodness. On top of the release of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, we’re also going to be seeing the deployment of another of the industry’s biggest expansions: Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria. In a recent interview with Ten Ton Hammer, the Lord of the Rings developers talked about the prequel to this upcoming expansion – Book 14 – but also touched on a number of interesting topics concerning the upcoming Mines of Moria expansion. Make sure you check it out!

Ten Ton Hammer: Did you have any major goals for this particular expansion beyond being the prequel / bridge to the Mines of Moria expansion?

The Mines of Moria expansion is coming soon!

Brent Schmidt: One thing we spent a lot of time on was enhancing our previous instances. The six man instances that are found in Angmar and Númenas, and we also took a lot at our 24-man raids a little bit. We just wanted to make all of those a little more accessible with a bit more of an introduction to those particular instances, because we’re going to have more of those in our Moria content. We figured that working with our previous instances would serve as a good ramp up to what we’re working on in Moria.

Aaron Campbell: That said, we’re again looking at that theme that this Book 14 content upgrade is the bridge to Moria. There’s content bridges, experiments that we’re doing with storytelling, the instances and the loot that we drop in those instances so it can fit really well with the progression that you find in the Moria expansion. We wanted to make that really smooth for the players.

Ten Ton Hammer: So what should players expect with Book 14 and the Mines of Moria?

Aaron: This Book is really the idea of moving the Fellowship beyond the walls of Rivendell and giving the players a sense of story continuation. In Moria, we’re going to close out the Volume One story with Book 15 on top of introducing the Mines of Moria expansion with Volume Two, Book One, which has a pretty long sequence that will get the players involved with the story of the dwarves that are exploring their tunnels. It’s an expeditionary party and from Eregion you’ll meet up with them and work with them to lead you through the places that the Fellowship has already gone.