Bareandir writes: MMORPG.com’s Carolyn Koh has just posted the first preview of the upcomming expansion for LOTRO and I thought you would like to share this interesting read with the other ringers out there. More..

Turbine, maker of Dungeons & Dragons Online, has a busy legal department of late. In addition to suing Atari, it’s being sued – along with Sony and Blizzard – by a holding firm alleging infringement of their patented realtime technology. The company, Paltalk Holdings Inc., has successfully settled claims against Microsoft, alleging it infringed the same patents in Halo. The technology in question concerns how multiple players in different locations still see the same events – explosions, monsters, etc. – in real time. More..

From our friends at LOTRO: A new digital expansion for The Lord of The Rings Online has been announced today. The new expansion, entitled “Siege of Mirkwood”, will bring the culmination of the epic storyline that began with the Mines of Moria, or more specifically bring the game to Book II Chapter 9, and will include the Epilogue as well. In addition to the story content, the expansion will bring a level cap bump to 65, introduce a new 12 man raid, and a smattering of three to six man instances.

“Seige of Mirkwood” will be available in the fall (just around the corner). In the mean time, check out the cool intro here.

EDINBURGH–According to Turbine executive Nathan Jones, the massively multiplayer online gaming genre is only going to expand. Speaking at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival today, the Lord of the Rings Online developer’s vice president of corporate and business development gave his views on the future of massively multiplayer online games, pointing to social networks and consoles as two expanding frontiers. More..

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment confirms The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest will launch in Spring 2010 on Wii™, Nintendo DS™, PlayStation®2 and PSP® (PlayStation®Portable). The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest is the first videogame offering an authentic The Lord of the Rings gameplay experience designed for all ages to enjoy. In The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn’s Quest, players assume the role of Aragorn to take on his greatest quests from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Wielding a sword, shield, bow and spear, fans will battle enemies, lead armies and journey through a colourful and fresh rendition of Middle-earth. More..

Fantasy Flight Games’ new boardgame, ‘Middle-earth Quest‘ is now shipping. The FFG web site has a PDF of the rulebook and a QuickTime trailer movie. This looks to be an interesting offering, not as heavy as the FFG ‘War of the Ring’ game, but certainly more complex than the Knizia ‘Lord of the Rings’ co-operative boardgame. [Trailer] [PDF]

The time period is sometime before the main events of LotR, with Sauron extending his power from Mordor; one player portrays Sauron, with up to three opponents portraying heroes who try to hinder his plans. The heroes win or lose against Sauron as a group.

Hopefully, when I have actually played the game, I will report on it more informatively. [Middle-earth Quest]

Our friends from the Tolkien Society wrote in with a notice of the Penkridge Library Tolkien Festival, in Staffordshire (UK) happening July 10, 11 and 13. The area is where author J.R.R. Tolkien spent parts of 1915 and 1916 with his wife Edith and where some of his earliest thoughts and ideas about Middle-earth and its languages were formed. John Garth, author of the highly esteemed “Tolkien and the Great War,” will be giving a lecture along with a program of other events, which you can read inside. Read the rest of this entry »

Alf Seegert writes: This week my board game BRIDGE TROLL is being released by Z-Man Games (it was released in Germany last week). I’m a huge Tolkien fan, as is the artist Ryan Laukat, and my hope is that the troll-theme of the game might appeal to other Tolkien-fans as well. (In the game players get to play bridge trolls who eat and extorts travelers who try to cross their bridges). It would be a huge honor if you found this fit to post on theonering.net! More..

Lord of the Rings Online, the only MMO based on the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien, is a subscription-driven online title, but it’ll soon be heading into a market filled with free-to-play games. CDC Games, which has more than 160 million users and 13 million active users in China, holds the exclusive distribution rights and expects to launch the game in China during the second half of this year. The Chinese version of Lord of the Rings Online will come with “significant changes” from the version launched in North America and Europe. CDC Games will utilize its extensive knowledge of the Chinese market and research into local customer preferences to alter the game in various ways, including an enhanced player versus player function. CDC is already encouraged by preliminary test data on the game so far, which has shown an activation rate of more than 80 percent during its closed beta test held earlier this year. Lord of the Rings Online to Rule China

Today, Turbine has released Volume II, Book 8: Scourge of Khazad-dum, the latest major content update for subscribers of The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria (LOTRO). Book 8, which is now available to North American subscribers (available in Europe on 6/25), delivers the next installment to the epic story for Volume II of LOTRO, a new 12-player raid, several rich new instances for small fellowships, major gameplay enhancements, and the Summer Festival. An official press release follows. Turbine has also just released a new Book 8 teaser video and batch of screenshots. Read the rest of this entry »