15 years of updates in expansions, questpacks and systems have brought along many changes to Middle-Earth. Some large and some you might not have given much thought about.

Major small updates

We’ll skip the major changes such as a new expansion, skill trees or legendary weapons and focus on smaller, more deceptfull changes. In no particular order.

Essence crafting and reduction in slots

with Dol Amroth we’ve gotten essences and its sockets to put them in. While essences certainly bring a bit of flexibility and its merits and pitfalls can be discussed. The full socket armour in Dol amroth, Osgilligath and Minas Tirith quest or crafted gear was simply too much. Not having a ready to go option remains a pain in the game. One of the best parts of the level 100 and 105 legendary server was the option to skip the whole grind of purple to gold essences in all intermediate forms of gear and go straight to the best versions.

The reduction of no slot or 1 in quest gear with a max of 2 raid gear. Combined with the (if wanted) crafted essences makes coming back or gearing an alt a far less cumbersome activity these days.

Evendim

Stay around and listen, back when the game launched you couldn’t simply walk to Mordor. It didn’t exist yet. As did most of Middle-Earth. With Wildwood, Before the Shadow, Angle, revamped North downs and Trollshaws there are plenty of places to get to level 50. Neither could you jump into a skirmish, missions or a level 35 Sambrog to get some xp.

Evendim filled the large gap you had to struggle through to get from level 30 to 40. It remained the easiest (and cheapest) way to continue your journey. With the Steely dawn starter pack you could even get it for nearly free when your trial in the Lonelands did end.

Pvmp Override

One little button that changes all your graphical settings to the preferred status. Compared to landscape lotro where you’re alone, your normal settings would grind to a halt in the Ettenmoors. Manually setting shadows, graphics, cloak to low while upping the draw distance and resolution. Only to do it in reverse when you went back to helping hobbits. 

This one button does it all for you upon entering Ettenmoors. While you might struggle for other reasons. At Least it’s not your fps this time.

Virtues tied to specific deeds

While the amount of work your virtues now take has increased immensely. The ability to choose where I go and what I’ll do to get these extra virtues. If you were unlucky and needed Zeal or Valor and spent so much time killing orcs and goblins in old instances. If you didn’t like running around on your minstrel. Bad luck, you wanted Wisdom which came from discovery deeds mostly. 

The extra 3000 virtue xp has made me do plenty of extra weeklies. Or dragged people into that last spot for Hiddenhoard T1. 

Barter wallet

At different times we’ve gotten a change to the barter wallet. Besides the introduction of capped currencies nearly every change was an improvement. With the first version not having to carry around your quest tokens to premium wallet extending this. With this one going free this year. The amount of storage and ease of use this one brought us is lovely. 

A few more account wide shared would be the next update for me. Taxidermy, quest tokens or Rift gear for alts now take a few too many steps.

Disenchanting gear and items

Introduced in Wildwood and continued in other questpacks you can break down your questgear and instance rewards into crafting materials. While higher quality items turn into motes and embers. The choice to either sell it or use its components for your crafter was a nice choice to give us.

Alas it never trickled down to older areas and gear. One run of Carn Dum and your bags are still cluttered with vendor trash. Same with all scaled instance rewards.

Prime plugin

One plugin to rule them all. While it has gotten more complex over time. Our kins raiding time in Remorchant and Threshold got made so much easier for the raidleader and raiders. 1 install for all the countdowns, warnings and timers people would need to be able to jump into the runs without being a veteran mmo or instance player. If anything, the Prime plugin made the barrier to entry that much lower. 

Even the information it provides on older instances such as Fornost challenges or Web of scuttledells are suitable.

Solo instances and Inspiration buff

The same as the barter wallet. The solo-ability additions in lotro improved overtime. While the new instances won’t work for groups of 3-4 and the inspiration buff might work better in such cases. A lot of players wouldn’t be doing (parts of) lotro if these buffs were not made available.

Bringing back the choice of challenging and/or engaging content certainly wouldn’t hurt though.

Featured instance and new group content

This update focuses mostly on the level 100 and 105 level range. After Rohan, Lotro decided that time spent on classic instances was better spent somewhere else. Hindsight is a beautiful thing, but it certainly wasn’t the best decision made in the lotro history.

Osgiligath and Minas Tirith brought back at least a few kinnies that just slowly left during this time. The featured instances, set bonus armour and imbued LI’s gave us options and a reason to keep playing the game.

Wardrobe

A glorious update for cosmetic fanatics. Sharing your outfit and gear across multiple characters. Previewing different dyes and keeping multiple versions of the same item in 1 slot. While my memory is vague if it all came in 1 update or parts of it came in overtime. The wardrobe system was one of the best updates to lotro for at least a portion of the community.

Updates to it would certainly be akin to WoW’s transmog system. Do away with the physical need or limited slots and allow players to unlock appearances and colour schemes. And allow a functional store-preview again.

Caryy-all

In a time where more storage is sadly technically now allowed and possible as by the developers. The carry-alls extended our hoarders’ needs for atleast a few years. The larger stack sizes are a godsend for crafters. Certainly it has upgrade options that would be lovely such as renames or fixes to Runes of enchantment stack size. Or even expand it to allow armour set versions of them. Alas due to technical reasons we’ll never see those in its current form.

Housing and updates

Besides the introduction of premium houses, there hadn’t been a major update to housing i’d say. Scenario however kept twiddling with small updates that brought us movable hooks for customisations, new skyboxes recently for a new atmosphere outside and a showcase for pets and mounts. 

The major small update for me was the consolidation of hooks. (hardly) any object that you can’t find a space for anymore. That small large hook that you need to put on the table? Now put that in a previous small hook with no wasted space anymore.

Dishonorable mentions

Rushed updates (Gundabad time)

“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.” Either by choice or pushed out by deadlines and management, plenty of updates in lotro weren’t good enough when released. Issues slowly scaling up such as imbuement scrolls in the 100’s or endless alt grind for virtue xp aside. 

The lead up to the gundabad expansion year after it have been plagued by systems and instances that weren’t ready at the time of release. Starting with Update 30.3 with a reward system for traceries that took 5 months to finalize post launch and a brawler that is still receiving updates to core parts of skills. While Gundabad landscape was up to the good Q&A state we’ve gotten used to. The instances launched with a small delay into only 1 playable 3-man. Puglak was broken to a state it had to be disabled. Only to be reopened to only the most masochistic raiders that could sit through the higher tiers. 

House of rest got dumped out just before the month holiday break on a 2 week Bullroarer cushion that provided the amount of bugs you would expect in  the midgewater marshes. 1 month of contorting groups with 3 burglars, 1 tank and 1 heal with 1 dpser followed by months of slugging through until eventually “all” gundabad instances got put in a state they are in now. 

My guess, because management finally gave it enough priority due to Gundabad getting released for Lotropoints in that update.

Scaling in lotro

For a long time I wished that SSG would allow for more scaling of either mobs or players to allow us to venture with friends together everywhere. I’m now glad they didn’t. Scaling roughly worked around the 95 to 105 range. Anywhere below 90 you never really had the stats to scale. It never was hard to get at least a silver medal in a big battle. But go in there at anything level 90 or lower is near suicide. With the virtue system they broke the scaling in the other direction with a maxed out virtue player able to solo a 6-man these days.

Lotro remastered

If it happens or whenever they show us what this momentary blip of the executive producer Severlin entails. There are plenty of parts of Lotro that could do with a bit of dusting off and streamlining a bit. Lets hope its going to be a great brush and not a duster from wish.com