LOTRO Producer's Letter Lays Out 2015 Plans: New Instances, PvMP Zone, Legendary Revamp
The Lord of the Rings Online Executive Producer Athena "Vyvyanne" Peters today posted the first Producer's Letter of 2015, wherein she discussed Turbine's plans for the MMO for the coming year.
Peters promises new group instances as the game pushes forward to Minas Tirith and Osgiliath, where the closing battles for the War of the Ring were fought, as well as a new kind of episodic content which she compares to a TV show, and the squashing of the game's "most persistent bugs."
But as a long-time LOTRO player who just crafted a first-age level 100 greatsword, my lidless eye was drawn to the mention of a reworking of legendary items that will let you keep your top-level weapons, which will be able to gain experience apparently indefinitely. The skeptical part of me figures it'll just be replacing one grind with another, and I could probably write entire paragraphs on my dissatisfaction with the legendary item system, but any improvement would be greatly appreciated.
The final item on the list was talk of a new player-versus-monster-player zone in Osgiliath, which would be the first new space in that ilk in about seven years. That's major news to the Ettenmoors crowd, which is still oddly alive, at least on my home server of Arkenstone, despite having little new to do. The letter says that the area would focus on "smaller and more tightly focused conflicts," which might lead one to speculate that it could be fixed-group battleground-style PvP.
In any case, it's always nice to have hope for new stuff... now we'll just have to wait and see how well Turbine can deliver!
About the Author

Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.
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Its nice to hear that Turbine is promising to crush bugs which have been around for a while but then again ive heard that many many a time and as a LOTRO player for 4 years Turbine is known for their lack of QA and make very very similar mistakes again and again (like the broken raid drop tables dropping the weapon parts for the best weapons in the easiest difficulty and taking forever to fix it). Also wouldn't be surprised if they messed with all the class roles again because they rebalance classes so class roles are swapped for some classes.