14 DAY TRIAL // Recently, Turbine has executed a move many in the MMO industry thought could not be done. They extended their agreement with the Tolkien Enterprises regarding the use of the intellectual properties related to Middle Earth. The extension was not only of a temporal nature, sealing Turbine's rights to the IP until 2014, but also extended the rights Turbine is granted to some of Tolkien's lesser known works, like the Silmarillion.
After the recent announcement of the Mines of Moria expansion, Jeffrey Steefel, who is Lord of the Rings Online executive producer, talked a bit about how Turbine shapes the Middle Earth world they created and how they plan to expand the experience for players around the world. He began by stating that at no pint in Lord of the Rings Online will players be able to alter the results already described in the books or take part in all of those adventures directly. "Everybody wants to go with Frodo to Mordor. It's just not going to happen. It doesn't make sense. There are single player games out there that are better suited to do that" were his words.
But the PC game itself is not the whole universe that Turbine could create. There are plans to create mobile phone content, with the project confirmed for North America and with talks with Codemasters for an European implementation.
Steefel also confirmed, without providing any numbers, that LOTRO was the most commercially successful MMO in existence today after the behemoth that is World of Warcraft. To the executive producer, the fact that Turbine has a lot of MMO experience is the key to making Lord of the Rings Online one of the best experiences out there, as "this is our fourth [MMO], and quite frankly we have lots of good scars, and we've learned. We were already on the path to meet that bar, I think everyone's struggling to catch up to that. And it's not easy, it's about the hardest thing there is today."
More details regarding the Mines of Moria expansion will be commented upon as they appear.