There are a lot of wild conclusions you could leap to after hearing the report that EG7 put an end to the 2020 remaster project for Lord of the Rings Online, and some of the most distressing conclusions have prompted people to start kicking over tables and declaring an end to Middle-earth. Perhaps the wildest of these claims is that this announcement somehow marks the end of the MMORPG’s development, a viewpoint that Standing Stone Games strongly rejected in a recent forum post.
In response to a player concluding that this report means that LOTRO is in maintenance mode and will close within a decade, Senior World Designer Matt “Scenario” Elliot said, “We have been and continue to be actively developing LOTRO through the release of content updates and expansions packs. That is very much the opposite of ‘maintenance mode.'”
You’d think this wouldn’t need to be said, especially if you step back and look at what LOTRO has done and is planning to do in 2023, including a new race, class, crafting overhaul, the difficulty slider, the Lyndelby housing neighborhood, the Corsairs of Umbar expansion, Carn Dûm dungeon revamps, the King’s Gondor storyline, and then there was last fall’s mini-expansion that added two early level zones. All in all, the MMO is on track to push out a total of five sizable updates over a 12-month span – in line with the largest games in the genre right now. Perhaps hold the panic for the day when the updates slow down.
