I've been following the progress of Lord of the Rings Online for quite some time now — since it was called Middle-Earth Online, in fact. While I'm still pining for the vast scope a game with that name would have promised, I've been a contented casual player of LoTRO: Shadows of Angmar since launch, happily puttering about Eriador in search of ale, bloodshed, fine food and, of course, more boar. Now we're on the verge of having another large chunk of Middle-Earth dropping into play, in the form of the Mines of Moria expansion pack. I've spent the last few weeks of my game time puttering around the alternate realm of the expansion beta server.

Whilst the Mines of Moria expansion is being marketed as a boxed (or digitally downloaded) product, there are actually two products being developed as part of the same development cycle: the expansion itself and the free content update containing Book 15 of the Shadows of Angmar storyline.

There are two big headline features of the expansion pack: the Mines themselves, and two new classes, the Rune-Keeper and the Warden. The Rune-Keeper specializes in words and writings, is a split offensive/healing class, and is the closest thing to a “magic-user” player class in Turbine's Middle-Earth, whilst the Warden is a protector, motivated to fight for those unable to fight for themselves. I'm going to leave the discussion of the new classes there; I'll talk about my experiences with them in a second article, to be published soon.

Now, simply shelling out for the expansion pack won't get you straight through the Doors of Durin and into Moria ... no, there are a few little honey-dos to be completed first. To be specific, the first Book of the Volume II epic questline must be completed. This isn't a particularly onerous requirement — it took me a couple of hours, including a little exploration and the side quests, and there was no requirement to fellow with other players. The section of the game world where this takes place is actually a set of related instances. At the start of the quest, an expedition of dwarves are en route to Khazad-dûm and working on bringing supplies and clearing the rubble from the doors.

This is implemented as a public instance: Players entering the Walls of Moria area at this stage of the quest are directed to an instance with wagons and dwarves busy with pick-axes. Later stages of the quest bring the player through a couple of private instances in which entry to Moria is eventually gained, and after the conclusion of Book I, players entering the Walls of Moria are directed to a public instance with the doors opened and the rubble cleared. This is a similar technique to that used for the Man and Hobbit introduction instance — the town of Archet is burnt to ashes at its conclusion — and one that provides a reasonable blend of massively multiplayer game scale with single-player, world-changing events.

An unwise Dwarf, skimming stones across the Black Pool while waiting to enter Moria.

Even ignoring the two new classes, there are quite a few major changes coming with next month's releases, for both players with and without the expansion. For everyone, the region of Eregion and with it, the conclusion of the Shadows of Angmar storyline will become available with the Volume I, Book 15 update. There are a few UI tweaks, changes to the Hope/Dread mechanic to increase its flexibility, and a reworking of combat avoidances (Block, Parry and Evade) and critical hits. There will, of course, also be a whopping great big download for everyone without an expansion CD on launch day, as is fairly traditional with MMO expansions.

Eregion is a fairly large area, bounded on the north by the Trollshaws, near Rivendell, and on the west by the southerly portion of the Misty Mountains, into which the Mines of Moria themselves are delved. The new region brings with it the usual mixture of settlements, travel routes, quests and instances, as with many of the previous regular updates to LoTRO.

The changes to combat are likely to cause the most uproar amongst the player community; mechanics changes have a habit of being polarizing. I'm not going to talk about these changes in detail — now that the NDA has lifted, the game forums are a better source for information, from players more experienced with the high-level mechanics than I — but I will give a brief overview.

A new equipment slot is provided for class-specific items — my Champion will be very happy to be able to equip both a bow and a rune! There's a new form of critical hit, Devastation, which causes significantly more damage (as the name would imply) but is a correspondingly rarer occurrence.

The presentation of various combat statistics — block chance, poison resist and the like — has changed, with numbers replacing percentage changes as the base statistic displayed on the character panel. More substantially, it's now possible to partially block, parry or evade an attack, which leads to a reduction in incoming damage, rather than avoiding it entirely.

Dread and Hope also have changed, with Dread becoming a little more nasty, reducing the effectiveness of skills, and Hope becoming a secondary attribute based on a new statistic, Radiance. Bonuses to Radiance are available on some items, giving players access to additional sources of Hope with which to offset the harsher Dread penalties.

For players with the expansion, the areas of Moria and Lothlorian will become available, with further excursions into Rhovanion promised in future updates. These are high-level areas; those below level 45 are suggested not to apply, and the depths of Moria certainly provide challenge to those working toward the new level cap of 60. New skills, class quests and traits are available to those treading that road. Class traits are now organized into sets, in a similar fashion to equipment sets — equipping multiple traits from a single set will confer bonuses, encouraging players to trait toward a particular theme or themes. Bonuses are provided for having only two or three traits from a set equipped, so flexibility is still possible, but specialization does seem to be encouraged.

Durin's Bane, as first uncovered deep within Khazad-dûm during the reign of Durin VI.
This encounter is relayed to players as part of a historical tale, in which players take on the role of a contemporary character for the duration of the telling.

While we're on the topic of specialization, I think it's time to speak about the biggest change the expansion brings — Item Advancement. Simply put, the item advancement system allows certain weapons and class items — Legendary Items — to grow and evolve as they are used in combat. The inspiration for these came from Tolkien's named weapons — the Glamdrings and Strings of Middle Earth — and in practice, they have become the main mechanism for character customization in LoTRO.

When found, a Legendary Item will have a generic name — I carry a Champion's Great Axe of the Third Age, for example — and you wont be able to tell much about it. A quick trip to your local Forge-Master, a new type of NPC, will allow you to identify your item (upon payment of the appropriate fee, of course). You'll now be able to see the full statistics, bonuses and Legacies associated with that item.

Once a Legendary Item has been identified, you'll be able to equip it and begin using it in combat. When you do, equipped items will earn experience points for defeated enemies, in a manner similar to characters. Over time, accumulating experience points will cause items to level up, and leveling up will allow you to enhance the abilities of your item. It's rather like managing a character in microcosm.

Legacies are equivalent to character statistics or skills: Each provides a particular bonus or attribute, and by spending Legacy Points (awarded when the item levels up), you can improve individual Legacies. The Legacies associated with each item vary — I've encountered Legacies that provide character statistic bonuses, enhance particular skills and simply improve the weapon's damage. Similarly, the cost to improve Legacies varies — and the cost grows with each successive improvement.

There's an equivalent to character equipment, too. Legendary Items feature slots into which Relics can be fitted. These provide bonuses to either the player character or the item, in a manner similar to character equipment, but with one significant difference: Once slotted, a Relic cannot be easily removed. A new Relic can be slotted over the top of an existing one, but this will destroy the currently slotted Relic. If you want to maintain multiple sets of bonuses for different situations, you'll have to maintain multiple Legendary Items.

Legendary Items also can sport their own titles, proclaiming their heritage or great deeds. Titles are obtained as quest rewards, cannot be reused and, unlike player titles, provide in-game benefits. Titles can change the damage title of a weapon or provide any of a range of bonuses or effects. It seems a little odd to me that the type of damage dealt by a weapon can vary during the lifetime of that weapon — considering that damage type in LoTRO includes the mutually exclusive heritages of Westernesse and Ancient Dwarf-Make. But from a gameplay point of view, having this mechanism available does make sense.

Every 10 (item) levels, Item Advancement will cease, and you'll be required to seek out the services of a Forge-Master once more. Here, you'll have the option of reforging your weapon, allowing you to discover additional Legacies and bestow upon the item a name of your own choosing. This also is the only point at which slotted Relics can be recovered, and you also have the option of refunding spent Legacy Points, allowing you to redesign the effects of your Legendary Item. There's a reasonable amount of flexibility here: No decision you make about your item is permanent, but changes cannot be made on a whim, either.

Should you find yourself in the possession of a Legendary Item for which you have no use — perhaps it's outdated or simply for another class (all Legendary Items are closely tied to specific classes), all is not lost. It can be deconstructed to yield a selection of Relics for slotting into other Legendary Items, and it's also possible to transfer a proportion of the item's earned XP after deconstruction. There is therefore unlikely to ever be a glut in supply of these things (and even if there were, they become bound to a character after customization). I accept that it's an economic reality of these games that such item-sinks are required, but melting Orcrist or even a plain Barrow-Blade for scrap seems a little disingenuous to me.

In play, Item Advancement does feel like having a second, entirely separate form of advancement to leveling your main character. In LoTRO, character leveling is primarily performed by completing quests. Going out and killing does net you experience, but it's generally much faster to level by working on quests — and picking up kill XP along the way, of course. With Item Advancement, this is reversed somewhat: Quests that offer Item XP as a reward exist, but they're significantly less common than those offering character XP, so leveling your prized Waterfowl's Bane will require a bit of elbow grease.

That said, I found that the two forms of advancement complemented each other nicely. Most quests in Middle-Earth involve a fair bit of killing, after all, so my items advanced reasonably quickly in normal play. It will, of course, be interesting to see if this holds true for the highest levels of item advancement.

Besides providing additional advancement options, the intent of the Legendary Items is to provide a more detailed form of character customization than is available in Shadows of Angmar. Previously, the only options available for customization were traits and equipment — in LoTRO, it's not possible to directly control skill or attribute advancement. With a wide variety of Legacies and Relics, it's now possible to achieve a much finer grain of character customization — and to embody different configurations in different Legendary Items, so long as you're willing to take the time to maintain them all. It's a different approach for this game, and I'll be interested to see how well it works in the coming months.

Finally, yes, it is possible for crafters to construct Legendary Items; how worthwhile a pursuit this will be remains to be seen, especially as tweaks are still possible at this stage of development. In the beta, the consensus seems to be in favor of loot drops over crafted Legendary Items; we'll just have to wait and see if this persists through to live.

So, after all this waffle about the game mechanics, there's one more question to be addressed: What is Mines of Moria actually like? This is a question best answered with a video (something my computer is utterly incapable of recording, so the one above has been provided by Turbine), but in a few words: dark, vast and 3D. Oh, and goblin-filled — but I'm sure you'd guessed that already. As with much of Turbine's Middle-Earth, Moria is beautiful in its own way — vast caverns and halls of stone, phosphorescent crystals and glowing forges, laden goats traversing the vast stairways ... wait, you weren't expecting the goats? Well, the dwarves of the expedition needed some way of transporting themselves and their equipment around in an environment unsuited to horses or ponies, and the sure-footed Redhorn Goats proved an excellent substitute.

A Redhorn Goat, in its natural habitat.

Perhaps the key point to take away about the Mines is that they are a truly 3D space with all the benefits and pitfalls that entails. Quite literal ones, in my case — most of my deaths in the beta have been due to simply not looking where I'm putting my feet when underground. Unfortunately, your map remains stubbornly 2D. Successful navigation requires a bit of experience and quite a lot of spatial awareness, but it's worth it. The environment feels very different to anything else in the game, and Moria just wouldn't be Moria without deep crevasses, vast caverns and expansive halls.

Keep an eye out for Part 2 of this preview, to be published soon!