But they didn’t actually announce the expansion itself, which seems odd. They have two posts up covering features of the upcoming Wolves of Mordor expansion, as well as having given MMORPG.com an exclusive interview about the features, but didn’t actually make any sort of fuss about “Oh, by the way, we’re going back to Mordor with the Wolves of Mordor” thing. Lord of the Rings Online Sure, they mentioned it, even gave a bit of insight, but it was absolutely not a full throated announcement of coming content. Maybe it is just me, but I went to their site to dig through it because if felt like I must have somehow missed the big Wolves of Mordor announcement. Alas, no. Maybe it was mentioned at minute 78 of one of their “we’ll never get to the point” streams. Cord of the Rings? More like Bored of the Rings! Seriously, I am trying to picture Blizzard or EverQuest team posting about an upcoming feature and just mentioning that it is coming with an expansion, naming that expansion, before the expansion was announced. SSG is bad at general communications. It is like they don’t want outsiders knowing about their stuff. Anyway, context no longer matters I guess, and there were two features announced. Let’s take a look at them. Survival Instincts This is essentially a new talent tree that will only work in the zones of the yet to be announced Wolves of Mordor expansion. I know this because the announcement literally says so. No, I am not going to stop harping on the fact that the expansion hasn’t been announced. It isn’t getting less weird as I write. From the post about it. Survival Instincts unlock powerful new abilities, options, and character enhancements that will help you endure and thrive in the unforgiving lands of Draugardh. Sounds like a new talent tree. This is reinforced by the sample, not final yet, look at the UI, which is just another talent tree of sorts. Wolves of Mordor – Survival Instincts If I do not sound excited about this… it is because I am not. On the one hand, I get it. You have a new expansion… yet to be announced… and you want something special for it because you’ve delivered some boring crap before (Siege of Mirkwood being exhibit A) and you’ve learned your lesson. On the other hand, do we need another talent tree? You already have your class talent tree and your virtues and your legendary item which, when you break it down, is just a huge, overly complex talent tree. And I am sure there are effectively more such trees to manage. Doesn’t your Riders of Rohan mounted combat horse have a tree? I know, I know, somebody will bring up the whole “interesting choices” thing, and I want to stop you right there and suggest that “more” does not equal “interesting.” Also, history indicates… and it is really tough for a game studio to break from their history because it is far too easy to just do what sort of worked before when you’re on the clock and need to sell some more boxes… that each class will have an optimum set of choices that all the people who play close attention will go with, and then a selection of mediocre to possibly bad alternatives. Well, they can’t be bad. If you let people gimp their character they will because I am 100% sure that SSG will not give players anything like enough feedback on their choices that one would need to make good decisions. (A problem endemic in the industry. You don’t like damage meters? Well giving poor feedback on combat is how you get damage meters!) So it will have to be something where you need to pick something for overland content… though you would be surprised at the percentage of users who will ignore repeated pleas to select an option… but the pick won’t matter too much… unless they decide they want to punish the average user. That is very much the legendary item path, which is still needlessly complicated. We shall see how this plays out. But I haven’t gotten very far past the gates of Mordor, so I won’t have to worry about it myself. Nosy Neighbors The second feature announced… and believe me, I led with the strong one… is you can now have an NPC neighbor for your house who gets all up in your business, because we all know the one thing really missing from LOTRO housing is your very own Gladys Kravitz. That is actually an insult to Gladys, as she at least represented an aspect of the plot in Bewitched, the hiding the fact that Samatha was a witch. So yes, you’ll get a neighbor and you’ll have to interact with them and they will have various personality traits and you’ll have to play the mini game of trying to figure out what actions they like and what they do not prefer. I personally find little appealing in this idea. I never played The Sims and even in Stardew Valley, the one thing I have totally failed to do is build rapport with the residents in and around Pelican Town. (This might possibly reflect how I am in real life, friendly enough but tending to mind my own business.) Anyway I am sure this will 100% be somebody’s absolute favorite feature of all time. For me, if it wasn’t for the VIP vendor in the neighborhood, I don’t even think that much about housing in LOTRO. And it isn’t because I do not love housing. I just do not love mediocre implementations. I feel like if you’re not going to commit to making housing a real part of the game, then maybe don’t waste your time, and my eyes roll when I run across people who would rather have poorly implemented housing than no housing at all. That is a losing fight on my part. So we have LOTRO housing that is barely attached to the game where you have beautiful neighborhoods that are bereft of activity and half the plots are abandoned and where seeing another player is an oddity. I guess, in that context, giving you faux friends to hang around with in your neighborhood makes some sense. Still, this very much has a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation vibe to it, as the motto might very well be “Your virtual pal who’s fun to be with.” Share and enjoy. More To Come Of course, we are not getting Wolves of Mordor until November at the earliest, so there is plenty of time for more updates… and maybe even an expansion announcement. So much to look forward to! Related: LOTRO – Survive the Savage Wilds of Draugardh with Survival Instincts! LOTRO – Neighbors: New to the Neighbourhood! MMORPG.com – The Wolves of Mordor Expansion Brings Two Ambitious New Systems Massively OP – LOTRO reveals its ambitious Wolves of Mordor expansion with two new systems