I was sur­prised to see a new Devel­oper Diary today announc­ing an updated main menu sys­tem for LotRO. This will roll out with the Book 9 updates.

The new Main Menu for LotRO

As you can see in the shot above, items are nested in ways that make sense. The pre­vi­ous main menu sys­tem (which was just a hand­ful of icons that opened up impor­tant win­dows) is now being renamed the Sys­tem Menu. What’s really cool is that Sys­tem Menu items can be cus­tomized. If you don’t want an icon for the Craft­ing Panel, then just replace it.

Even cooler (at least to me) is that you can also cus­tomize the inven­tory icons on the right-hand side. I never had a need for five sep­a­rate bag icons, so this is a great option. Being able to replace that with a sin­gu­lar “Inven­tory” but­ton and some other use­ful quick links will be very useful.

I’m very happy to see this.