LotRO F2P launch day roundup

Volume III, Book 2: The Ride of the Grey Company is upon us, a massive Lord of the Rings Online patch that is functioning as a virtual relaunch of the game. In addition to adding loads of new content, Turbine is transforming LotRO into a hybrid subscription/free-to-play model in the hopes that this choice will draw fresh crowds to the game. The company's even opened eight new servers for the launch -- four for US and four for EU.

Unfortunately, we have received word that Codemasters is going to release the patch in Europe "later than expected."

Hit the jump for a roundup of our LotRO F2P news and discussion!

	Turbine releases Lord of the Rings Online patch notes Turbine has posted the release notes for The Lord of The Rings Online: Volume III, Book 2: The Ride of the Grey Company, and if you think the title is long, wait until you see the release notes.
	PAX 2010: Counting down to LotRO's relaunch with Turbine The feedback from beta testers had a major impact on the dev team's focus, and likewise, what players enjoy and clamor for in upcoming weeks will be shaping the course of the game's future. We pressed Campbell for a hint as to the future of the game, and after a pause he smiled and said: "If this goes well -- your wildest dreams."
	LotRO UI implements Lua, preps for extreme makeover In a new dev diary released yesterday on the European community website, Games System Engineer Narrel provided a glimpse into what began as the "pet project" of three developers and has now morphed into a full-fledged extreme makeover of the game's user interface capabilities.
	If the road goes ever on, I'm gonna need a GPS In the spirit of welcoming these fledgling adventurers to Middle-earth, I wanted to hand out a few pieces of advice today that I would give to myself if I were just starting out (and I guess there'd be some sort of weird time travel paradox event going on there, but hopefully you catch my gist). What should you do in your first week in LotRO?
	The lion, the witch and the LotRO wardrobe LotRO's wardrobe has raised a bit of confusion over what it is and how it functions, which is why Turbine's Elliot Gilman penned a new developer diary to explain the wardrobe in detail.
	The further adventures of Captain Vault and the amazing LotRO! When beta testers responded negatively to the new vault interface, the devs worked to find a solution to mimic the old structure of multiple chests. Vaults 2.0 also come with a number of spiffy tools, such as dynamic filtering, sorting, automatic stack merges, and searches.
	Rep pony riots Last week I received a note from a LotRO player named Shawn who was concerned about one of the controversies revolving around the LotRO store and was wondering if I was going to touch on it.
	Putting the "lass" back in "class" It's easy to forget that this fall's update contains more than the LotRO store, like a whole barrel of additions and fixes to the game -- including class tweaks. Grab my hobbity hand, and we will venture into the land of the unknown... the land of class changes.
	Near-Death Adventures (NDA) lifted! I'd be remiss if we didn't spend some time this week looking at what people have to say about all of the changes, additions and updates to the game -- not to mention the looming specter of the LotRO store.
	Latest LotRO free-to-play screens show new starting areas The man and hobbit starting areas will have a new look when free-to-play arrives this fall. You'll see some familiar faces, and you'll still have the standard assortment of shadowy figures, backstory, and angry creatures to fight, but things will look a bit different.
	LotRO dev diary dishes on scaled instance rewards Do you have a lot of questions about the upcoming scaled instances in Lord of the Rings Online? Good, because Turbine has a whole truckload of answers for you! In the second of a hefty five developer diaries devoted to the subject, LotRO's Joe "jwbarry" Barry tempts players with sweet, sweet candy.