The Lord of the Rings Online Volume III: Book 1 Preview

Ten Ton Hammer has dished up a “sneak peek” of Volume III: Book 1, the ambitious new content update headed to Turbine’s The Lord of the Rings Online next week.

Perhaps the coolest feature here is that the story is dynamic. Based on your actions you can unlock alternate drama sequences. If someone died in one of your story plots, they’ll be dead in subsequent stories. If you’ve interacted with an NPC before, they won’t react to you as a stranger. You’ll recognize many of the Rangers from previous explorations around Middle Earth.

And what about Skirmishes? Surely with over ten million Skirmishes completed since the launch of the Siege of Mirkwood expansion Turbine would continue to add more to this feature. And surely they have. Book 1 will introduce an all-new Skirmish that takes players back to the Rift of Angmar. The Skirmish system will also now offer a (Duo Mode) which will allow two players and their soldiers to run through a Skirmish. Previously players were only able to do Skirmishes solo, as 3-player or small fellowships, so this is just another way that players can do what they want, when they want and with whom they want. This idea was incorporated after Turbine had noticed that players were scaling down the 3-player Skirmishes to 2-player. There are also four new 12-player Skirmishes that will be included with the update.