SSG has announced the date for the next Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Fate of Gundabad, which is set to go on November 10th, 2021.
The fate is per-determined by the quest chain I’m sure
The expansion boasts of the following features:
- New Brawler class
- Level cap raised from 130 to 140
- New mobs to face, new zones to explore
- New instances and raids
- A new run at the Legendary Item system
The expansion is available for pre-purchase now and comes in three different flavors:
Standard Edition – $40
- Fate of Gundabad Content
- Brawler Class
- Extra Character Slot
- Standard Expedition Supplies
Collector’s Edition – $80
- Fate of Gundabad Content
- Brawler Class
- Extra Character Slot
- Improved Expedition Supplies
- Brawler Gauntlet Box
- Level boost to 130
- Gundabad Cosmetics
- Gundabad Mount & War-steed
- And more bonus items!
Ultimate Fan Bundle – $130
- Fate of Gundabad Content
- Brawler Class
- Extra Character Slot
- Ultimate Expedition Supplies
- Brawler Gauntlet Box
- Level boost to 130
- Gundabad Cosmetics
- Gundabad Mount & War-steed
- Fateful Gundabad Cosmetics
- Thunder Boar & War-steed Appearance
- Dye Carry-all
- 10,000 Virtue XP
- And more bonus items!
I do find it a bit amusing that the Expedition Supplies include various accelerators, because nothing says your game is grindy like handing out XP boosters with the expansion pack.
All of which seems to be standard fare for an MMO expansion; level cap increase, more stuff to do, a new class to play, and some changes to a key system here and there. As pointed out elsewhere, not exactly earth shattering stuff.
More interesting to me is where the game is heading.
Lord of the Rings Online is in an odd position in that it cannot just make up new content. It cannot follow in the footsteps of its Norrathian siblings and just go to the moon for a couple of expansions or decide to go on a sea voyage to discover some new content.
SSG is stuck with the books of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. As I recall they cannot even stray into The Hobbit, which seems like it would be a nice time travel expansion, much less the lore dense Silmarillion.
And when it comes to the main story line of the trilogy, we’re kind of done. The ring has been destroyed, Sauron has been thrown down, we’ve tidied up Mordor a bit, had a wedding, scourged the Shire, and have generally wrapped up all of the great moments of the Third Age.
So the team at SSG has been working on what I call “plundering the appendix” of the trilogy. Dr. Tolkien, bless his soul, crammed in more than 150 pages of appendices with all sorts of bits of history, family trees, pronunciation guides and language primers, and other items of tangential interest to the main tale including a timeline of events of the world.
In that condensed history of Middle-earth you will find the tale of Gundabad in the Misty Mountains, where the dwarves first awoke when the world was young and their struggles with the orcs over it. This has been picked up for the latest expansion.
And that makes me wonder what else is buried in the appendix that they can farm for more expansions. Where else might they go? I mean, technically, there is a lot of stuff mentioned in the appendix of the trilogy. Is something being there an opening to include it in the game, because they do retell a tale of one Thorin Oakenshield and an expedition to the Lonely Mountain… I’m just saying.
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