The Lord of the Rings Online Executive Producer Interview

Originally released back in 2007, The Lord of the Rings Online is still going strong, albeit without the fanfare of somethings huge like World of Warcraft. And according to the game’s executive producer Rob Ciccolini, Standing Stone Games intends to support it for as long as possible. And if you’d like to learn a thing or two about the team’s future plans, you should check out this recent Destructoid interview. An excerpt:

But what about that impending Amazon LOTR game project that’s supposed to run tandem with, or potentially rival LOTRO? “What about it?” Ciccolini said confidently. “Right now we’re kind of doing our own thing and don’t expect anything to change. Like everyone else we really don’t known anything about this new project, and everything is going great for us, and we intend on supporting the game for as long as possible, hopefully forever!”

Actually forever? Yes, Ciccolini confirms: “I’d love to see the game prosper long after I die. If I have to haunt the server rooms and tweak the game to increase player drops, so be it!” On that note, I spoke to several members of the design team (Elise Valla, Tim Dwyer, Ryan Penk), who were all bursting with ideas on what to do next. I pointed out that no one had really tackled the Fourth Age (after Aragorn became King Elessar at the end of the film trilogy, basically), and the trio pointed to it as a possibility.

“We’d love to go to Harad (the desert region in the southern part of Middle-earth), Umbar, Núrn, Rhûn, you name it,” Penk told me, as the Tolkien fan inside me lit up (most of you are probably looking at those runic letters, eyes glazed over). “We’re not afraid of a content wall at all,” Valla said, “and really, as creatives it’s exciting to keep going.” “We have a good 20 years here,” Dwyer chimed in. These are extremely under-explored regions in Middle-earth, and if there was one team I trusted to do it right, it’s the LOTRO folks. But what about the Second Age (the period that ended after Sauron was initially defeated, which is seen in the intro for the first Peter Jackson LOTR film)? Well, no one really knows yet.