Eurogamer has pulled through with yet another inter­view with Tur­bine. This one specif­i­cally dis­cusses Mines of Moria and the future of LotRO with Jef­frey Steefel. You can read the full inter­view at their site, but I’ve writ­ten a bit about the things that inter­ested me below.

There’s some dis­cus­sion of how LotRO can com­bat World of War­craft mov­ing for­ward. Steefel feels the game has done a good job push­ing sto­ry­telling into the lime­light for MMORPGs amongst other things, but that it still has a way to go before it reaches “crit­i­cal mass” in terms of con­sumer base. He really feels that their work so far and their con­tin­ued expan­sion of the game to the rest of the world (such as Korea) will help them become far more of a close sec­ond place to World of Warcraft.

Steefel also dis­cusses how their cur­rent sub­scrip­tion model doesn’t work for casual play­ers who may put in a few hours a week. There’s a lot of stuff they could use that they just aren’t using for var­i­ous rea­sons. There sounds to be other sub­scrip­tion plans under con­sid­er­a­tion here (Steefel is pretty adamant that the $14.95 a month plan is not some­thing that can stick for MMORPGs), but how seri­ous Tur­bine is about chang­ing any­thing in the near term is anyone’s guess.

The Rune-keeper is again brought up and Steefel yet again admits its inclu­sion in Tolkien lore is a stretch. It sounds like a com­pro­mise to sim­ply make the game more fun and inter­est more peo­ple .… Per­son­ally I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I can’t tell you how often I read posts from peo­ple lament­ing that there were no “mages” in this game. The Rune-keeper seems like a good step.

Mon­ster Play also sounds as though it’ll be get­ting some major expan­sions some­time in the future. Between Korean play­ers’ love of PvP and just the options pro­vided by get­ting fur­ther into Mid­dle Earth, it sounds as though Tur­bine has some tricks up its sleeve yet. Minas Tirith’s bat­tles are specif­i­cally men­tioned here, although who knows how far off that would be in-game.

It ends with some dis­cus­sion on Turbine’s upcom­ing con­sole MMO and what will work, what won’t. Steefel doesn’t men­tion what the real sta­tus is on this game or what it’s even about … But per­son­ally I’d be sur­prised if it doesn’t take advan­tage of The Lord of the Rings license.