Following yesterdays expansion announcement, blogs and forums are being overwhelmed with the many voices of the fan-base, who all want to express their criticism, anxiety, questions, hope, excitement and/or confusion over ‘Siege of Mirkwood’. Over on the official forums (http://forums.lotro.com) the game developers are answering a few of these queries, and in doing so have provided us with a bit more information about Book 9 itself.
Q: [Does Book 9 contain] actual stuff to do or will it be like [Vol 1] Book 15 which has a ton of chapters too except most are running back and forth delivering messages?
A: There’s a lot of meat to Epic Book 9: instances, skirmishes, monster-hunting, and a few surprises. Book 15 could stand to be streamlined, but I don’t think that will be an issue with this one.
A: Speaking as a storyteller, I’d hope that you’d want to complete Book 8 in order to set the stage for Book 9! But as a game designer I recognize that Book 9 needs to be another on-ramp to the Epic, so you won’t need to do Book 8 first.
A: Epic Book 9 and much of its Epilogue take place in Mirkwood, so you’ll need ‘Siege of Mirkwood’ for it.
So not humongous amounts of news (but every little counts right!!?). Hopefully some more interviews and sneak-peeks will be revealed tomorrow (Massively.com will be posting an interview they conducted with LotRO boss Jeffrey Steefel by the end of the weekend) — talking of which, according to the latest Massively.com article: no fixed date has been set for the expansion release as of yet, nor will a date be released until full-testing is complete (http://www.massively.com/2009/09/05/pax-2009-lotro-siege-of-mirkwood-coming-this-fall-for-20/). Of course we also have some Developer Diaries to look forward to, and these tend to really clarify the issues and whet the appetite for the brand new content. Is anyone else feeling really excited?! 
