With PAX behind me, I thought I’d take the time to share some of my thoughts about my time at the Turbine booth, and some of the things that came up in our interview with Rowan. We’ll have more information up in the next few days, but I wanted to give a quick overview today.

First, and I think most importantly, the Turbine booth was full every time we walked by. There were lots of people trying out DDO and LOTRO every time we walked by, and they seemed to be enjoying it. We met many people out on the convention floor, at restaurants, and waiting in line that were either currently playing LOTRO or were going to once the game went F2P.

We spent a couple of days looking at a whole bunch of other MMOs as well, and the one thing that we found was that they were all pushing the Story (yes, I capitalized that for a reason!). The Story was the center of almost every presentation that we went to, from Guild Wars 2 to The Old Republic. Why do I bring this up on a LOTRO blog? Because this new Story element has been a part of Lord of the Rings Online since it launched in 2007! We have been a part of a game where the story follows the player for their entire leveling experience. That was a part of the game that enhanced our experience. The idea of having the Story be a central part of the game is not new. LOTRO’s been doing it for years!

We were lucky enough to meet up with some of the Turbine folks at the LOTRO Reporter meetup on Thursday night, and it was so much fun to sit and talk to them about the game. They were very open about how prepared they felt (this kept on coming up) and how excited they were about having all those new people in the game.

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We spent Sunday morning at the Turbine booth talking to Rowan about the upcoming change, and you’ll notice when we post the interview that he does mention going further into Dunland. Although I know that this is the name of the general area that Eregion and Enedwaith are in, I wonder if he’s perhaps hinting at the next zone….

Like I mentioned before, we’ll have a lot more info in the next few days. Look for more PAX goodness coming your way soon!

See you in-game!