LotRO's spellbinding 'Lieutenant of Dol Guldur' trailer
by Kyle Horner 
Nov 3rd 2009 at 4:00PM
Filed under: Trailers, Lord of the Rings Online, Expansions, News items
We can't wait to see what the future holds for Turbine trailers, especially considering the locales of Middle-earth the game has yet to expand into its world. Rohan? Helm's Deep? Minas Tirith? Osgiliath? Thinking of trailers for all these places makes us tingle with anticipation.
Check out the trailer after the cut.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Jack said on 4:36PM 11-03-2009
I wish they spend the same money on the game and get some voice overs on all that 1000s of lines of text in the game! The the voice is complete wrong for this guy for me that is....
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Tyrannius said on 2:09PM 11-04-2009
I don't understand the message you're trying to convey.
THAC0 said on 5:04PM 11-03-2009
I just cant get past slow combat and the unusual art direction in this game. I so wanted to love lotro.
I hope this "expansion" goes well for them
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Jason said on 6:01PM 11-03-2009
Slow combat will change on Dec 1st. I don't know what you mean by unusual art direction? LOTRO is one of the best looking MMO's out there. The NPC's could use some touch up work but it's stunning for a game that is almost 3 years old. The environments are the best on an MMO behind only AoC.
THAC0 said on 6:26PM 11-03-2009
I think the art is subjective. I honestly think their characters and and armors look very bad. The environment is only OK as far as I'm concerned. I like the fields of flowers waving in the wind and whatnot but it doesn't pull me in a lot of the textures really don't look natural and just look painted on. It looks very much the same as DDO in many ways whos' art direction i do not like. It may be their engine perhaps?
What are they doing to combat?
Jason said on 9:00PM 11-03-2009
I like the armor in the game. It fits the Middle Earth setting as far as I'm concerned. Some of the shoulder pads in the raid armor sets are a little to high fantasy for me. This isn't WoW so keep the armor basic and simple like it would be in a medieval setting. I agree about some of the textures but it's mainly a draw distance complaint. Up close things look incredible. If you want to see ugly environment textures, check out Aion.
I can't comment much on the combat changes but it's been confirmed by the developers on the forums so I can't get in trouble for telling you this.
SoM includes a combat response system change. Combat pace is being quickened and made more responsive. You are able to interrupt auto attacks with skills. There is more but I don't think the dev diary has released yet so I don't want to break any NDA. You can get this little bit of info from their forums. I think you would be pleased though so I recommend trying it for yourself on December 1st. I also think the combat changes are part of a free update coming on the 1st so you might not need to buy SoM to get the change. This hasn't been confirmed yet though.
Chris said on 1:36AM 11-04-2009
Of course, art style is subjective but for me, I think it's pretty well done. I like the look of DDO and LOTRO and with a powerful video card and settings on Ultra High the game is one of the most beautiful I've played in.
As for the combat, yeah, that's getting a re-work in SoM.
For my money, LOTRO is one of the top MMOs on the market.
Graill said on 5:10PM 11-03-2009
Instead of worrying about the release of mirkwood they need to concentrate on consolidating their servers to 1 or 2. The other servers simply arent needed. Releasing this expansion onto barren servers just serves no purpose other than to prolong their fantasy of having a paying population.
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Jason said on 6:02PM 11-03-2009
Is this is a joke post? Drugs are bad for you.
MrGutts said on 6:25AM 11-04-2009
Graill is right, they need to condense the servers. The only time people show up is to do these new books and once they finish them they are gone for the next one, maybe to never return because they find out nothing has changed.
Jason said on 12:54PM 11-04-2009
He stated that most servers are ghost towns and should be merged into two servers. That is insane. There are three low pop servers with the rest being medium to high population. If any server merge is warranted, it would be the three low pop servers merging into one server. They don't really need to do anything though. Everytime a new book comes out there are log in queue's on Brandy and El. If they merged servers, the servers would explode on update days. The solution is to provide more content so more people play all the time than just the raiding community. LOTRO is becoming a raiding centric game ever since MoM launched. Give the casual player base more to do and you'll see more even activity over time.
Sally said on 5:29PM 11-03-2009
Beautiful. Just beautifully done. Captures the sense of loss and bitterness that the Necro King now feels. Anyone who has read the books and loves the genre cannot help but be completely entranced by both the footage and the voice acting.
Well done Turbine...
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Archmage said on 7:00PM 11-03-2009
Is Turbine re-writing Tolkien lore?
A Ringwraith given a regular human voice? They were known to speak Common, but their voice is supposed to be strange and terrifying, unpleasant even.
And the bit about it being so long since he was a (mortal) king, that people have forgotten his name? Really? Not only was Khamûl (lord of Easterlings, prior to his turning) known to be commander of Dol Guldur and Sauron's lieutenant, but he was the second of nine, second only to the Witch-king. Furthermore, he was the only Ringwraith to be given a name by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Lame.
Jason said on 9:00PM 11-03-2009
I think they did that because they don't have the rights to use his name. I do agree about the voice though. It should be more spooky sounding IMO.
Sally said on 10:27PM 11-03-2009
Archmage -
*shrug*
Maybe it is not lore perfect. But it makes me want to live in that world and experience the game. And it speaks to the love of the genre. No one who plays LotRO can possibly say there is not a team of true Tolkien enthusiasts on staff. It resonates throughout the entire game.
I truly hope for many more years for this company and this MMO. It is one of the few that has quality.
Jay said on 5:30PM 11-03-2009
It is sad that Turbine goes all out on a trailer when the NPC's are in Moria shouting to a one "Dwarves must fight for Dwarves" all with the same gruff butch dyke voice.
It was such an important IP but Turbine were too small to keep pulling it off. The game really lacks substance once you look beneath the pretty graphics and pre-Moria Tolkein lore... and then... Look at games like Mortal Online and you actually see that LoTRO's graphics are really not that good after all.
The Long Tail is here. Turbine are living on yesterday's product.
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Kalu said on 5:47PM 11-03-2009
I re subbed and finally made it to Moria and am having a ball, looking forward to this expansion.
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Venekor said on 7:10PM 11-03-2009
I just can't get past the lack of good PVP and the character models, they just look really odd and I also hated having to loading into houses.... just make it like WoW Inns where it's seamless. I have to agree with the combat aswel it felt really wrong along with the animations and the UI which was ugly. I wanted to get into a Lord of The Rings game but I couldn't like Lotro and wish someone other than Turbine made it who also ruined the potential of the D&D franchise. Next time after Bioware do Swtor they should do a D&D based mmorpg like BG2 and I'd love Bethesda to do Middle Earth Online.
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sugewise said on 7:14PM 11-03-2009
are you people on drugs? have you only played wow your entire mmo career? LOTRO is one of the most well done polished games on the market. I agree the pvp is boring, but everything else it top notch.
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Bryan said on 7:29PM 11-03-2009
I didn't really find this trailer all that impressive. Perhaps I've seen so many trailers from all these mmo's these days and the content doesn't live up to it or is blown through so fast it didn't matter.
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