Soloers who may want to try Skirmishes won’t be completely alone. You can summon an NPC soldier who will fight with you. They’re more advanced than your typical Lore Master or Captain pet in that you can not only choose their class role but customize their skills, reminiscent of Heroes Henchmen in Guild Wars. If you’re in a group, every person in the group can summon an NPC teammate, so a 12-man can expand into a 24-man skirmish. I can only imagine how people with slower computers will be able to handle all those characters at once. Also unlike LM or Captain pets, you won’t be able to control these NPCs, which may prove to be a problem in terms of crowd control or aggro management.

Siege of Mirkwood will also offer some small but greatly appreciated changes. The legendary item system will be tweaked, though Steefel didn’t go into specifics as to how. “We did a lot of balancing that players have been asking for; there were some issues with it.” He did mention though, that legendary weapons and items will now level to 60. Crafting and the legendary system will merge once again, as in the Book 8 update. SoM will introduce crafted runics, which will go in a new fourth slot. Steefel couldn’t go into detail, so it’s unclear if you can choose what kind of relics to craft or whether they’ll fall into the RNG trap.

Roleplayers and non-roleplayers alike will rejoice at the improved mount system. Mounts will no longer take up bag space and instead be considered a skill. Furthermore, you will now be able to do tasks while on your horse. This includes talking to NPCs, checking your bank vault, and passing into some zones while mounted. You can even do emotes, as Steefel demonstrated when his Warden waved and cheered on horseback.

Storage is always a problem in many MMOs, and LOTRO is no different. It’s especially troublesome – and sometimes expensive – when you mail items back and forth among your characters. SoM will introduce account-wide storage, another feature that Turbine seems to have borrowed from Guild Wars.

Avid PvPers will be disappointed to hear that SoM will bring little to no changes to Monster Play, other than their monster characters also reaching level 65 and acquiring new skills to reflect that level. There will be no new maps introduced or any improvements to gameplay in terms of Monster Play. According to Turbine Communications Director Adam Mersky, they chose to focus on issues based on player requests and on observed player behavior in the game. “It’s not like we’re ignoring it or it’s not an important part of the game,” he explained, and speculated that improvements to Monster Play may arrive as soon as the next free content update in winter.

With the new Skirmish system, end cap, raid, and various instances, high-level LOTRO players will be kept busy as they wait for the next full retail expansion. At the same time, with no new region to explore or any significant improvements, it’s a shame that Monster Play fans will have to grin and bear it as they are once again moved to the back burner.

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