The new area in this expansion, which is just the southwest corner of Mirkwood, is a lot larger than Lothlorien. Of course it could be even larger, but then they'd probably have to expand way beyond Dol Guldur, which if you look at any of Tolkien's actual maps show DG being very close to the southwest edge of the forest. Here DG takes up the eastern end of the map, and is where the Volume 2 story ends, so it makes sense that our exploration of the forest ends there too... for now anyway.

The level 62 skills are completely underwhelming, but one thing that's rather encouraging about this expansion is that Turbine has left itself room to grow with the upcoming book releases. When SoA launched, we only had skills up about the mid-30s, with a level cap of 50. As we progressed, Turbine gave us more goodies and everyone was pretty happy. With MoM we had teal gear sets and all our skills laid out from the beginning. Without a good boss raid, things were just really grindy. Now with SoM, we're starting slow with room to expand again.

Positives:
The forest is really incredible to wander through. Skirmishes are fun (with the potential to get old, but enough variety that it should take a long time). DG has a good bunch of instances. Lots of barter rewards and customized soldier companions. Improvements to multiple systems and areas of the game. Fantastic epic story.

Negatives:
Lackluster new skills and equipment. All new legendary grind. Soldiers have more development options than player avatars.

Overall, I think Turbine has done a good job with this mini-expansion, and the price is appropriate for the content. My number one hope is that they're about finished with the modifications to the core systems, because then they can focus on fleshing out the rest of Middle-earth.