The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria Review

Turbine’s The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria expansion pack managed to snag a 9/10 in a new review over at GamesRadar.

Turbine have done an amazing job in expanding their game while being mindful about not unbalancing the core Angmar experience or leaving vast swathes of Middle-Earth deserted as people migrate to the new areas a problem many MMOs have suffered from. In Lord of the Rings there’s always a good reason to head back to the original areas, not least to complete deeds, build up traits, access key crafting halls and go trading at the Auction House. There’s always something to do, and it isn’t all about fighting evil.

Moria is not without its faults: the first week of release saw an unwelcome and unusual abundance of bugs. Server stability has been a little bit questionable, with dumps to Windows, characters getting stuck in doors and finger-tapping waits while the game attempts to clean up your connection when you reconnect. These are not uncommon issues for MMOs to experience during the post-release blues of a major update, and given the game’s previous level of bulletproof reliability prior to Moria, we expect Turbine to stamp on these flaws promptly. But it still leaves us wondering darkly if this expansion was rushed to release to coincide with Wrath of the Lich King.