European customers have been wondering for a while: when is the Siege of Mirkwood release date on this side of the pond? A repsonse by Codemasters Dev Satine (to questions relating to the new expansion’s European pricing structure), has revealed the digital-download only expansion should be released Thursday 3rd December (two-days after the U.S. release date).
A little off topic, but when does pre order ends?
not to soon i hope, dont get money before the end of the month
We will be ceasing pre-orders the day before Mirkwood goes live, which is currently tracking 3rd December for launch.
The news is altogether not very surprising, with Thursday tying in with the European “servers are coming down” day, and a 2-day gap between release dates having been used in the past. Of course, it remains to be seen whether this release date sticks… for both Book 7 and Book 8 updates, European customers were repeatedly stalled in downloading the latest patch due to technical errors or glitches in the new patch that required fixing first!
As Nerfthecat and Merric have already reported, the European pricing structure for the Siege of Mirkwood expansion was leaked this afternoon. Since, the official Codemasters site has confirmed these costings, for which full details can be found here — you can find the summary after the jump!
All-around good person, mbp (of mindbendingpuzzles.blogspot.com), sent me an interesting e-mail today. I’m just going to quote him because he says it nice and clear:
Tony, people who availed of Lotro Europe’s “welcome back” week have been offered an exclusive life time subscription offer of only £75 / €110. That’s a big saving on regular prices. It hasn’t been advertised at all but if returnees try to reactivate their accounts they will see the offer. Might be worth telling folks because the deal runs out on 10th August. You can read a forum post about it here http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?t=370195
So, if you’re in Europe and love the game, there’s a great deal. Heck, even if you don’t want to play forever, that’s little more than a year subscription. You could come and go as you please for years.
For those of you in the US, that’s about $160. I pay $120 a year currently for my subscription, to give a comparison. Not bad.
Both Turbine and Codemasters have announced that applications to the Isengard Test Server are now open for European and American players alike.
As it says on the Official Lotro forums, to stand a chance at being one of the select few to take part in this preview program you need to:
Have a valid and active subscription to The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria
Be at least 18 years of age
Have a clean forum and game history
Be able to interact with the community in a mature and constructive manner
Be able to communicate well through forum posts and bug reports
Accept the terms of the Private Preview ProgramNon-Disclosure Agreement, the full contents of which will be provided during the registration process should you be accepted to the program.
It is nice to see that they are making Isengard’s purpose clear. This is not just a cheap way of seeing new content before everyone else does, like for example World of Warcraft’s PTRs whose content is available for all to see within hours of it opening, but a genuine effort to get reliable members of the community involved in making the game better. Apparently places are extremely limited, so I would assume community members who have participated in forum discussions (read: not trolling) will be picked first.
Already several people on the forums have shown their interest in joining up, which only goes to prove how successful a testing strategy this is for Turbine. True, they may not get the numbers a PTR open to all (like Bullroarer but with deeper content) would pull in, but instead they will get a small number of elite testers who care about the direction the game is taking. I must say I would love to be one of them however, I have not really played the game long enough to deserve such a place.
If you are interested in applying for a position, you need to send an e-mail to LotROIsengard@turbine.com or isengardeurope@codemasters.com depending on the region you are from. In this e-mail you should include your real name, user name and forum name, the e-mail address you used to sign up to Lotro with, and crucially an explanation of why you want to participate in the program.
Good luck to all those who attempt to set out on a trip to Isengard, and I hope you experience some excellent content on the horizon!
Now this is surprising…and amazingly generous. To celebrate Lotro’s upcoming 2nd birthday, Codemasters has teamed up with the popular European game review site/blog Eurogamer to give away 2000…yes TWO THOUSAND free…yes FREE (okie i’ll stop that now) copies of the game (minus Mines of Moria). As you’ll read in the site’s news article, the first 2000 individuals to claim a key after 2pm GMT on April 24th will get 30 days’ game time and a digital download of ‘Shadows of Angmar’ totally free! All you need to do is sign up to Eurogamers’ free community and wait for the time to arrive so you can pounce.
Now I know this is little more than a huge free trial, and Codemasters only stand to profit from this arrangement since at least some of the 2000 will go on to set up paid subscriptions to the game, but it is rare a company shows this kind of generosity these days. Especially considering the fact that Lord of the Rings Online is doing extremely well, I cannot promote this move enough and thank Codemasters for this opportunity for the uninitiated to try out my favourite MMORPG on the market.
Building Middle-Earth: The Shire: I sometimes need to remind myself how amazing 3D computer generated worlds are. When I was a little gaming-brat I used ...
