This week on the forums, the chatty developers over at Lord of the Rings Online shared a couple interesting behind-the-scenes tales of content that could be and never was.
For starters, one dev said that SSG had considered a couple other ways to travel over the water with last year’s expansion: “We had discussed ‘boat mounts’ and ‘boat pants’ travel networks as part of the Corsairs of Umbar expansion pack but did not have the time or resources available to allocate to such a feature. It’s in our back pocket and could be something we do in the future but it currently does not have an ETA.”
I mean… who wouldn’t want a good pair of boat pants?
And in another thread, Jeff Libby clarified rumors of a “lost” Drearspire dungeon while also sharing the shaved-down scope of expansion production. “The legend of the Drearspire grows every time someone brings it up. I think it’s because it has a cool name and the dungeon has other content associated with it. You get used to these relics of Preproduction after awhile — there are lots and lots of cool-sounding ideas that never quite turned into anything over LOTRO’s long history. That’s just how game development works.”