Turbine’s The Lord of the Rings Online has seen 10 major content additions since its launch in 2007: nine released for free and one retail expansion pack. This December sees the launch of its second paid expansion, Siege of Mirkwood, which brings new playable region Skirmishes, a level cap increase from 60 to 65, and the conclusion to the storyline begun a year ago with the Mines of Moria expansion.

The headline feature of the expansion is the new region, Southern Mirkwood, containing the fortress of Dol Guldur, formerly inhabited by Sauron in his guise as the Necromancer. Geographically, the region covers a roughly rectangular swathe of forested land, stretching from the far bank of the River Anduin in the west to the Necromancer’s Tower in the east. In terms of story, the landmass is intimately associated with Volume II, Book 9, which focuses on an early strike by the Malledhrim, the Golden Host of Lothlórien, against the Lieutenant of Dol Guldur and the intertwined conclusion to the story of the Dwarves expedition to retake Khazad-Dûm.

Entrance to Mirkwood proper is predicated on the successful conclusion of the Foreword to Book 9, which comprises the landing and establishment of a foothold on the shores of Mirkwood by the Malledhrim. Thanks to the magic of instancing, you alone play a crucial role at several key points of this endeavour whilst still being able to interact and collaborate with other players during the rest of the invasion.

As with last year’s similarly instanced entrance to Moria, there is a series of optional quests that can only be completed during this initial attempt to establish a foothold. One involves fighting alongside a small company of Malledhrim soldiers to hold a gate and takes place in public, rather than a separate instance. The Elves will attack, with or without your help, and both you and other players are free to join their charge. Back at camp, small groups of Elves frequently arrive at the riverbank by boat, are given a short speech by the expedition commander, and set off into the Mirk-eaves. Healers tend to the wounded, and scouts scan the horizon. All of this goes a long way toward producing an atmosphere of things happening around and to you with some urgency, rather than the normal state of affairs in which the player’s actions alone drive the plot forward.

After the hectic push of the landing — and your valiant part in gaining the Malledhrim access to the remainder of Mirkwood from their hemmed-in landing site — you are released into the wilds of the forest. The Elves have gotten there ahead of you, setting up camps, outposts and a stablemaster travel network, which provide quest hubs and rest stops for weary adventurers. The playable area isn’t huge — a rented horse can cross from the Elves’ beachhead to the outer bastions of Dol Guldur in the space of a few minutes — but it certainly doesn’t feel small. The playable space is content-rich and varied, subdivided into about half a dozen smaller subregions, each of which demonstrates a unique variation on the “evil forest” motif one would expect from the setting.

Turbine’s Mirkwood is perhaps not as dark as that experienced by Bilbo and company in The Hobbit, a fact for which I am quite grateful, but it certainly deserves its name. Visibility is curtailed in most parts of the forest, especially at night, and finding a gap in the tree cover makes for a welcome break from the gloom. Mirkwood isn’t quite as oppressive as Moria, and some areas are less heavily forested than others, but Turbine’s visual and sound design teams have done an excellent job at evoking a place I simply wouldn’t wish to linger in. The War of the Ring is progressing, and with it, we as players are heading deeper into territory held by the enemy. It shows.

Mirkwood hasn’t always been the realm of the Necromancer, and there is evidence of past human habitation of the forest once known as Greenwood the Great. It’s also not completely overrun with orcs, wargs and goblins — another welcome change from Moria — though servants of the enemy are numerous. I’ve also seen wildcats, many-legged crawling things, spiders and representatives of the dead, to name a few.

The expansion brings with it a new reputation faction (the Malledhrim), with barter items and reward vendors, similar in style to other recent additions to the game. This gives a fair amount of flexibility in acquiring rewards for completing quests: Many quests provide barter rewards, instead of fixed items as loot, allowing players to collect tokens and choose the precise reward later. This also encourages the completion of a wider spread of quests, instead of only those with the “best” rewards. Item sets from the new dungeon cluster, including those required to enter the new 12-person raid instance, Barad Guldur, function on a similar principle. Completing one of the dungeons in the new instance cluster will reward all present with barter tokens; completing optional quests and challenges while inside will provide additional rewards. These tokens can later be used to barter for armor set pieces, including the radiance gear required for the raid.

A similar system has been retrofitted to the dungeon instances of Moria. In both cases, the goal is to allow players to avoid instances they don’t enjoy while still progressing through the content and to reduce the impact of chronic bad luck in loot rolls on forward progression. This was a major complaint in the post-Moria world, where radiance gear was seen as a requirement, and each successful dungeon completion yielded one set piece for six players. Hopefully, these changes will be seen as a positive step.

The Lord of the Rings Online has always placed a strong emphasis on narrative, especially with regards to its Epic storyline, and Siege of Mirkwood continues to deliver. Book 9 is one of the longest currently in-game and is followed by the Epilogue to Volume II. Volume III is to begin with a free content update, to be released in 2010. While I’m not going to spoil the storyline for anyone, there’s one point about the implementation I’d like to highlight: This Book makes use of the new Skirmishes feature, described below, to allow the group instances to scale between up and down depending on the number of participating players. Finding groups for the Epic storyline once the content is no longer fresh has been a problem in the past; hopefully the use of Skirmishes here and going forward will alleviate this trend.