Turbine confirms five new LotRO instances by the end of the year

I am loving this! Having a blast in LOTRO, but was concerned about running out of things to do.

I'm pretty disappointed by this news, I don't feel like RoI is a proper expansion without group content, they already dropped the PvMP zone out, and the Dragon Raid was supposed to be with OD, not part of the expansion.

I hope they get their stuff together, as I really feel that the team is either lacking resource (which I hope not as they announce how well they are doing) , lack proper direction or are so focused on profits now, that more effort is spent making money through TP sales than creating content to keep players playing. I also feel that other projects are competing for resources and that the team has diminished since the introduction of F2P.

I think if I had known this I probably wouldn't have pre-ordered and waiting until the group content was added. I feel that I'll level through content then be starved of things to do, other than a weekly raid and revisiting under level content.

I hope that RoI isn't a stellar success, which is sad, as I think it will take a shock to the system for Turbine to re-evaluate their approach to expansions, free content and updates and give better value to the player base on a more frequent basis.

Other than that, the game is fun, enjoyable, pretty content heavy, but with stops and starts in releasing content, it's not really a persistent world. It's like when the movies came out, you watched one, and then waiting a year for the next one!

The lack of dungeons appears to have helped depreciate the view of RoI as a major event and expansion package (compared to Mirkwood and Moria), but this clarification should at least relieve some questions such as whether these were going to be sold separately.

This reeks of 'well, lets see if the expansion sells then we might release the instances' market research thing. Not a great sign of the times for LOTRO.

More likely, they're rushing to beat SWTOR and GW2. No getting around it, those two releases are going to HURT for Turbine... but if they already have our money, and give us something ("for free") to come back to after the hype train winds down, it won't be as bad as all that.

Turbine appear to be completely unable to deliver content in a timely manner. The 24 man raid coming in the expansion was supposed to be out in April.....do they only have 3 people working on this game?

I wouldn't be surprised if these "instances" don't see the light of day this year....Turbine seem to have developed a habit of announcing things and dates, then having to back pedal a few months later.

Sad really as I was going to get back into LOTRO with this expansion, but with a few other games due out, why bother?

good thing i have free TP comming but they basically said if you don't order through their turbine web store you will have to pay extra for it if you buy xpac through the LOTRO store i don't agree having 2 methods of paying for a xpac LOTRO future is not looking very good

You have to think, back when Turbine was planning RoI they were not sure when TOR was going to be released. They did not know about GW2 or TSW either. They decided to rush it and get it in there by Sept. I knew it was a mistake then, but with them touting 3 NEW REGIONS, too many quests to be contained to 70 so we are going to 75 I figured WOW they have been working on this and have their stuff together. Come to find out all they had was the 3 new regions (and small they are), some class updates which in most cases are just updated skills and nothing new to speak of, and a silly 24 man lair raid. Thats about it. That in itself does not justify an expansion. So now they back pedal a bit and say Oh BTW, we will GIVE these instances away to anyone who goes and ahead pays for this half-ass expansion. Its the same as the hoodwink we got when they released Moria with 3 NEW AREAS! We got a path to Lothlorien.

I myself dropped my sub today. I had pre-ordered RoI but do not plan on playing. I will wait a year, see how Turbines business practices go and come back if TOR, or TSW are disasters or if I get bored... I seriously doubt that, but thats about all Turbine has to look forward to is people getting bored with other games and coming back to burn through 2 weeks worth of content.

Wait... there's no new instances coming in the expansion but they want me to pay money to pre-order it?

This is... just... wow.

I mean I was already pretty dissapointed that the expansion seemed to be basically more of the same with no new innovation or systems. I was further dissapointed to learn that there would be no new PVP zone, despite an obvious cash grab to open the five year old one up to F2P Players.

Now no instances. In an expansion. I suppose next they're going to spit in my eye and call it a feature?

Look, I love lotro. I have a life time sub and was eagerly looking to get back into it at some point, but right now, I might just uninstall the whole thing and write off Turbine as a bad idea.

i'll only use my free TP to puchase it and play it tell SWTOR comes out then i'm gone turbine has showed its greed pretty good lately

This whole thing is just disgraceful. I love Lotro and i will continue to play but this really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

I left before 3 man instances but I honestly wouldn't have bothered with them. Scalable instances might have been more interesting but 3 man just seems like a waste. More 6 man stuff would have been appreciated. 12 and 24 man stuff just doesn't appeal to me.

Come now. Turbine never stated there would be those instances but there are the usual scaled ones so far. To get the new gear it needs superior skirmish marks VIA scaled instances.

I wonder what the gear progression is, do you walk into this raid with a set of Crafted Gear if there are no instances to get preraid gear from? TBH it dosen't matter to me; after playing WoW/Rift I'll take LotRO community any day of the week regardless of content. I wonder if EQ2F2P is worth dabbling in, the last time I tried EQ2 back in 2009 no one was really lvling, and those that were treated you like an outsider to be shunned.