LotRO Book 11 notes and early download available

Book 11: Defenders of Eriador , the third free content update for Lord of the Rings Online, is arriving Wednesday morning. In advance of the patch going live, Turbine has released the patch notes two days early on the LotRO Lorebook, their official Wiki site.

There are no surprises since we saw these patch notes on the Preview server earlier this month. Still on track are all the major changes:

• The introduction of player and guild housing in the Man, Elf, Hobbit and Dwarf cities
  
• Four new level 40+ outdoor zones in and around The Misty Mountains to smooth out high level questing
• The Rift, the game's second raid zone, a 12-man level 50 instance that pits your group against a Balrog and introduces new class armor sets
• Class revamps for Lore-masters (new Lynx pet, new high level skills) and Minstrels (Warspeech, a new dps stance for faster soloing, new high level skills.)

Also, the introduction of Gollum to the game through a flashback instance. And the epic quest series that allows the players to help the Fellowship in its journey to Mordor has a new 13-quest arc. We're not sure yet how the new Epic Quest series plays out yet, but the title of patch could mean all the playable lands are in jeopardy.

The patch is currently available by Torrent and direct download. It will also be available through the patcher on Wednesday, October 22, 2007.