LotRO hasn’t seen a new hobby since the addition of Fishing many months ago. Players have been asking what’s next, but Turbine has pretty much kept a lid on the subject. Every so often they’ll make a comment about when we could expect to see a new one (generally “after Moria”), but that’s the extent of it.
Coming up with hobbies that are simultaneously useful and fun seems like a difficult task. It’s important that they’re simple, but still compelling and worthwhile to players. It’s also important that they don’t greatly affect the balance of anything else in the game. Fishing was probably the most glaring omission from LotRO (seemingly every other MMORPG under the Sun has it), but since that’s been added in since launch there’s nothing missing that’s seems quite as obvious.
For the most part, I personally expect hobbies to mostly have cosmetic effects. While cooked fishes can be eaten, the main goal of fishing (aside from being a time waster) is to catch big trophies and hanging them on your wall. I imagine that most future hobbies will have a similar approach.
