Lord of the Rings Online is inviting players to pimp their ride in the new horse design contest. As if seeing people riding by on your horse in game isn’t cool enough, winners can also score Turbine goodie bags,forum prizes and a unique forum title for first place.

LOTRO fans, it’s time to show us your artistic and creative skills: we’re giving you the opportunity to submit your very own design for a horse which could be taken and implemented into the game as a player mount in a future content update.

The areas of customization on the mount include:

• Horse’s color and marking
• Horse blanket pattern and color
• Horse saddle

For more information on how you can have your own artistic vision featured in-game, read the specifics on the LOTRO Design a Horse Contest site.

In addition to new Book 8 content for high level players, everyone can enjoy the Summer Festival which is only a week away. The special events, decorations and the Inn League challenge will run from June 30 through July 14th.
NEW FEATURES IN BOOK 8: SCOURGE OF KHAZAD-DÛM (cont’d):

• The Epic Journey Continues – The latest update to Volume II, Book 8 will take LOTRO’s award-winning storytelling to a new level as the evil designs of Gorothúl, sorcerer of Dol Guldur, begin to be made clear as ancient evils stir again in the depths of Khazad-dûm. Small Fellowships must form to combat this emerging threat before the hopes of the Iron Garrison and the Elves of Lothlórien are darkened by new forces of evil. The epic story of the Mines of Moria continues with new adventures and challenges!
• New 12-player Raid – Book 8 introduces Dâr Narbugud, a new quest arc that begins deep within Moria where nameless things have long dwelt, further darkening the shadowy depths. With the death of Durin’s Bane, these creatures have become bolder, and the Mistress of Pestilence seeks to spread her plague to the world of light.
• Celebrate the Summer Festival! – The Summer Festival returns to Middle-earth from June 30, 2009 to July 14, 2009. The world will come together in celebration as the free people of Middle-earth enjoy the season with special decorations, festive costumes and special quests including the return of the Inn League challenge!

LOTRO’s Second Anniversary Celebration continues:

Anniversary Pricing Plans: Turbine is offering special anniversary pricing until June 30th. Players can choose any multi-month plan (90 days or longer) and lock in a monthly price of $9.99 for as long as they maintain the new subscription plan.**

In-Game Celebration:

• During the anniversary celebration, monsters throughout Middle-earth will drop rare items when defeated. Players can exchange these rare items for a special gift box that will reward them with a variety of in-game items to aid them in their adventures.
• Turbine is also giving players who have active subscriptions as of June 30th a special in-game gift—the Writ of Passage, which provides permanent 20% discounts at stable masters throughout Middle-earth.

Besides the big changes, there are a lot of little things that are bound to make every player happy. Food, craftable potions and Minstrels’s Lute Strings will stack to 50. Better yet Traveling Rations and reputation tokens as well as all crafting ingredients and components will stack to 100. And of course everyone should be thrilled that the emote for slapping fellow players with a fish is fixed.

One further piece of advice, those blasted Honey and Oats recipes are about to become rare drops. Read the LotRO : Mines of Moria Book 8 patch notes at the LotRO Lorebook.

The work devoted to the architecture of the Hall of Mirrors which supplies reflected light for Moria and the waterworks is amazing. As you make your way through the Mirror Halls into the Water Wheels of Nala-dum you’ll find yourself in a three dimensional puzzle. Carefully work your way through keeping a sharp eye out for gears and levers that activate the water wheels and complete your path.

The labyrinthine network of Water Wheels that were used to feed and power Moria in it’s glory days are now filled with strange creatures, mushrooms and plants that that you’ll recall later in deeds. You’ll need to find your way through and be aware of your surroundings to defeat the foe that awaits you in the piston room, Caerlug. Players will be returning to this area later to recover artifacts for the epic quest line.

The Flaming Deeps is focused around weapons crafting lore and the Great Forge. Here you’ll encounter a challenge for a full fellowship. Swarms of goblins of the Ghash-Hai aim to stop you dead in your tracks. When I imagine what a goblin should look like, these ugly brutes are it. Yes, they do have their own cave trolls. You’ll have to solve more puzzles and reactivate the bellows before you can confront the boss. His minions give him strength so make sure to separate them from their master.

The pinnacle of the new content is a new twelve man raid. In the Foundations of Stone, Dar Narbugud, adventurous souls will have to face five bosses before confronting their mistress. Zholuga, the Troll twins, The Nameless, and The Blind One will present players with a variety of challenges. As you battle these guardians you’ll face hordes of goblins, the impressive world eaters and creatures that remind me of twisted versions of the creepy imagery of Pan’s Labyrinth. Vary your strategy to win through to confront The Mistress of Pestilence.

As we traveled Moria from top to bottom Adam filled us in on plans for Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited. Stay tuned for the latest on the future of DDO and the method behind the madness of going free to play.

Follow the break to see more of these incredibly detailed screens resized for desktops.

Lord of the Rings Online players are getting new crafting enhancements with the Mines of Moria Volume II Book 8: Scourge of Khazâd-dum. New recipes for the Supreme crafters are available in guilds and from the Lothlorien Galadrim. They’re also changing around special ingredients for recipes, and making drops more informative. You’ll be told which craft and what level of expertise your winnings are good for.

Once again, you can bater any old ingredients you have hanging around your bank and inventory for the new ones. Other wins are being able to use rare ingredients in trail food to make dishes more potent. Superior ingredients can now be found in ore, wood, and artifact nodes. There are also several tables detailing adjustments to the minimum levels players can equip items at.

Follow the link for more crafting changes and info on an upcoming live Turbine developer chat session.

• New crafting guild recipes for Cooks, Jewellers, Metalsmiths, Scholars, Tailors, Weaponsmiths, and Woodworkers are available from the craft guild emissary in Lothlorien. Note that you must have the appropriate reputation ranks with both your craft guild and the Galadhrim of Lothlorien to use these recipes.
• New Supreme Cooking, Scholar, Jeweller, Weaponsmith, and Woodworker recipes are available from the Galadhrim in Lothlorien. Note that you must have the appropriate reputation rank with the Galadhrim of Lothlorien to use these recipes.
• New Supreme Scholar recipes are available from the Scholar’s Guild.
• Special optional ingredients used in level 60 Supreme recipes have been added to the appropriate barter NPCs in Lothlorien.
• Improved stat bonuses on most Supreme light, medium, and heavy crafted armour pieces.
• Improved stats bonuses on “Superb Radiant” and “Exquisite Radiant” Master Tailor light armour pieces.
• All crafting ingredients and components now have a maximum stack size of 100.
• Improved names for many crafting ingredients.
• New recipes to produce Tin Ingots & Khazâd-tin Ingots have been added to Prospecting. Existing Bronze Ingot recipe has been updated to require one Tin Ingot and one Copper Ingot. Existing Khazâd-bronze Ingot recipe has been updated to require one Khazâd-tin Ingot and one Khazâd-copper Ingot.
• Removed unused Mithril-infused Khazâd-iron Ingot recipe from Prospecting. Existing Mithril-infused Khazâd-iron Ingots can be traded to Taddyn in the Bree-town Crafting Hall in exchange for Mithril-infused Khazâd-steel Ingots.
• Barter token costs for some Supreme recipes available from the Galadhrim have been reduced.

Read the Developer Diary: LOTRO Book 8 Crafting Enhancements at the LotRO homepage for complete details.

Have more questions or comments on the Book 8 content? Don’t miss the Turbine developer chat with Jalessa, Graalx2, Fantus, and other team members Wednesday at 8:00PM Eastern (-4 GMT) on Warcry!

As usual these screens show of the care lavished on the architecture, player characters and monster art. Pick out one of these screenshots of LotRO Volume II Book 8: Scourge of Khazâd-dum for your desktop after the break.

Lots of game companies have started using it for lots of reasons. I tend to see a Twitter window filled with mini-announcements, or teasers, or other similar things from all sorts of developers and publishers.

Today, I got to see Turbine twitting about the next content update for LotRO. According to their Twitter page,

Twitter Exclusive Reveal! VOLUME II, BOOK 8: SCOURGE OF KHAZAD-DÛM coming in June! You heard it here first!

It looks like we can expect some all new content in the next few weeks. You can stay tuned to Gaming Today for more info as it becomes available.

Turbine is celebrating its Lord of the Rings Online server upgrades with the LotRO Performance Event. Players are invited to play with Turbine developers Thursday, May 14 between 9:00PM and 11:00PM Eastern.  You’ll recognize the devs as players with a plus sign (+) prefix in chat.

If you accept the challenge you’ll have to download and install the Bullroarer client ahead of time. Log in on Bullroarer and play for the entire event for your shot at  some loot. Prizes include a Phenom CPU with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, solid state hard drives, DX10.1 video cards, and signed copies of LotRO: Mines of Moria. Complete details on the LotRO Performance Event and prizes are after the jump.

Two First Prizes – Play LOTRO at blazing speed with this CPU & memory combo!
Two (2) winners will be randomly chosen from all players who log in on Thursday, May 14 2009 between 9:00PM and 11:00PM and will receive:
1 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU + OCZ Platinum 4GB DDR3 SDRAM

5 Second Prizes – Get into the game in seconds with this speedy new solid state hard drive!
Five (5) winners will be randomly chosen from all players who log in and play during the two hour window, and each will receive:
OCZ Vertex 60GB MLC Solid State SATA II Hard Drive

10 Third Prizes – Enjoy the full DX10.1 LOTRO experience with the latest video cards from AMD!
Ten (10) winners will be randomly chosen from all players who log in and play during the two hour window, and each will receive:
1 ATI Radeon HD 4890 Video Card

20 Fourth Prizes – Enjoy your own boxed copy of the game – signed by the devs!
Twenty (20) winners will be randomly chosen from all players who log in and play during the two hour window, and each will receive:
1 signed copy of The Lord of the Rings Online™: Mines of Moria™

Winners will be contacted via e-mail by June 22, 2009.

Be sure to stay in the game and play the entire time between 9:00PM and 11:00PM Eastern on this night to have a chance to win! (Don’t worry if you are briefly disconnected – it will still count if you log back in right away!)

Visit the Lord of the Rings Online to download the Bullroarer client.

Jeffrey Steefel reveals the next chapter in the Lord of the Rings Online storyline in a new podcast. Book 8 takes adventures back into Moria for clean up detail and ultimately to  Dol Guldur, Sauron’s Mirkwood stronghold, and the Hill of Sorcery.

Steefel also talks more about the new Skirmish feature which will give players the chance to use henchmen of a sort in instances. Marshaling troops of NPCs is a natural progression of gameplay with epic battles ahead in Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor.

TenTonHammer’s Loading Live podcast, LotRO’s Jeffrey Steefel on Book 8 runs just over 45 minutes. It’s enough time to get in a decent workout or keep you occupied during rush hour.

Most of Gaming Today plays LotRO together, so fans can be sure of getting all the details on the latest content.  You can also find a wealth of information on the Lord of the Rings Online homepage.

The team at Turbine has walked the fine line of being true to Tolkien’s world while expanding Middle-earth and bringing the story to life. After celebrating LotRO’s second anniversary, the team is hard at work on the next big chapter in the Lord of the Rings as players aid the Fellowship and become heroes in their own right.  Although the next expansion hasn’t been announced, I would guess we will be headed into Isengard and maybe Rohan. For a big picture look at future plans for LotRO check out Gaming Today’s Q&A with Jeffery Steefel.

Sure, various class/race builds make more optimal parties in WoW for grinding or questing or even instances, but one area that The Lord of the Rings Online shines is in encouraging players to band together and then rewarding them with a key party cooperation system during combat.

This system, called Fellowship Maneuvers or Conjunctions, allows players to initiate group only combination attacks against powerful mobs and foes. The official LotRO website has a lengthy article up explaining how the system works and highlighting why certain powers or classes work to trigger these event altering acts and aid groups of players in overcoming normally overwhelming odds. Players can learn how the colored buttons in the Maneuver interface merge in combination to result in special results, how Fellowship Maneuver formulas are created and optimized and get some basic guidelines on when certain moves are best executed.

As a long term LotRO player I know in the heat of battle we’re often calling out the colors based on what result we need, everyone yelling Red or Green seems to be the most common but with properly applied formulas I’m confident we’ll be taking down the Witch King’s henchmen in no time without earning ourselves that dreadful repair bill after falling in battle.

Besides gaining me as a player, 2008 was an awfully good year for Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online MMO. It won top honors from sites like MMORPG.com, and its Mines of Moria expansion released to critical and commercial success. Now it’s 2009, and LotRO is celebrating its second anniversary. Turbine is offering up some sweet deals for subscribers to cap this celebration.

Most impressively, new players who want to play LotRO can now pick up a complete copy of the game digitally or delivered for only $9.99. That complete copy includes the full game, the Mines of Moria expansion, a couple of in-game items, and 30 days of game time for about ten bucks.

But that’s not the only thing they’re offering up.

If you’re a current subscriber you can grab game time for only $9.99 a month during this event, a savings of about five bucks monthly. You can even buy a year of time at that price, which is a nice offer.

In addition to the game time deal, players will receive an in-game item called a ‘Writ of Passage,’ which allows players to receive a 20% discount from all the stable masters in the game. Since travel is one of the biggest recurring expenses in the game (especially for lower level characters), this is something that I am looking forward to getting my hands on. Current subscribers will also receive a special in-game gift at the end of the anniversary celebration, although it isn’t said what this gift will be.

It’s not a bad deal at all if you’re looking for a new MMO to call home, or if you’re thinking of going back to LotRO. If you haven’t tried it yet, you can even grab the free trial for a free sneak peek.

If you’re interested in any of this anniversary news, you can get all the details at the official LotRO site.

“Yesterday, Turbine took steps to align our business to successfully achieve our strategic goals in the years ahead,” said a spokesperson for the company.

“As part of this transition some of our talented colleagues will not be with us going forward.”

“We are a privately-held company and will not discuss the details regarding the number of our team that were affected. These changes were made across the entire organisation in both our MA and CA offices,” said the company.

As a private company Turbine isn’t obligated to reveal just how many redundant employees will be leaving and they aren’t volunteering any numbers. Turbine is far from the first games industry company to tighten up its infrastructure, cutting any positions that aren’t absolutely necessary. This is definitely a growing trend we’ll be seeing more of in the future.

Turbine has posted a new developer journal over on the official website for Lord of the Rings Online describing the lore of Nimrodel, a well know area for those versed in Tolkien lore; plus it is also a new area which was added to the game’s recent expansion the Mines of Moria.

The river Nimrodel was named after an Elf-maiden of old who once dwelt by a waterfall there, and fell in love with Amroth, the Lord of Lórien. Long ago, they left Lothlórien together for the haven of Edhellond, but Nimrodel disappeared in the White Mountains and her fate remains unknown. In later years, the River Nimrodel served as the site of a watchpost of the Galadhrim, kept by the brothers Haldir, Rúmil, and Orophin.

The waters of Nimrodel are said to bring healing to the weary, and some claim they can hear the voice of the maiden singing in the falls. As the War of the Ring has worsened, the waters have been defiled by the filthy feet of Orcs, and the Elves of Lothlórien seek vengeance.

The river Nimrodel is visited by the Fellowship of the Ring after they escape from Moria in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Players of The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria may find respite – or danger – near its waters.

Gamers who play LotRO but who have not purchased the expansion yet should go out and get it ASAP because it is not only loads of fun, but gorgeous as well.

Thanks: MMORPG

The Warden is based on Haldir, March Warden of Lothlorien. I’m most familiar with this new class as I’m leveling one on Nimrodel. This class strikes a great balance between distance and close combat, and the gambits are a lot of fun to use. They’re chain combos which give you timed combinations to pull off special moves. I actually reminds of the Final Fantasy XI combat mechanics for Cyan.

The video for the Rune-keeper class introduce in the Moria expansion follows the break.

Rune-keepers much strike a balance between offensive elemental spells and healing spells that regenerate moral over time. The better you are at one end of the spectrum, the less effective you’ll be at the other.

You can find more screenshots and videos for LOTRO: Mines of Moria on FileFront.

After a renewed start we had an interruption these last few weeks but rest assured Filefront is still hosting and promoting all the great user created and hosted content contributed to us. We return with a double length post highlighting some great mods and files for quite a few outstanding games including usual suspects like Half-Life 2, the Battlefield games and of course one of my favorite series “that I am really no good at yet still enjoy” – Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War

Highlights from this week’s column include mods for:

• Doom III – Wrathchild Act I (not ROE compatible), Revised Alphalabs
• Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – A Provost of the Nine Divines, More Nord Beards
• Battlefield 2 – Operation Peacekeeper, Allies Intent Extended
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R – Ballistics Mod
• Far Cry 2 – new maps: MP_Surf & Gold Rush

There are also links to other maps, mods and patches for many of your favorite PC modifiable games. Be sure to check it all out after the jump.

Until tomorrow, gamers who are currently rampaging through Middle-earth can get a limited glimpse of Turbine’s newest social network for those who play The Lord of the Rings Online. Currently in Beta, this preview closes tomorrow, December 12, so if you want to see what it entails you better go check it out.

Currently, this Beta is only open to North American users which is the section of the world whose servers are maintained by Turbine. Codemasters Online services the game servers in Europe, and while unfortunately there is not a preview Beta available for them, they can still check out the My LOTRO page to see what will be in store for them as well.

My LOTRO was announced back in October of this year and was promised by the end of the year, so they are cutting it pretty close. Kind of like a MySpace page, it is free for subscribers of the game, and has a searchable database of players, characters, monster characters, Kinships, and tribes. You can start your own blog (like we all need more of those), make a custom profile, and maintain a friend’s list. This will be a great way to stay in touch with friends who play but who are not on the same server as you (ahem, Shawn) and allow you to check out what sort of gear your buddies have accumulated.

What I am finding very cool about it, are the Kinship updates. When using the search engine, I was easily able to find my Kinship and while perusing through the list, I noticed that my character was already updated. It showed my latest deed accomplishment, when I leveled last, what my PvP stats are, and will eventually show off all my gear, and morale, power and armor stats along with my bio.

While all functions will be live throughout tomorrow, pages created will not be linked to your character(s) by default. So far, it is pretty fun to play around with, but if it’s even half as addicting as Facebook can be, then I am personally in serious trouble.

The Turbine developers have put a new guide up on the Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria website. This feature article is a Hero’s Guide to the Foundations of Stone.

The dev article offers an extensive look at the darkest pits of Middle-earth, offering players suggestions on what to expect and how to survive. In this the final resting place of the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, the Shadow Refuge is the last safe haven. Even the places to which heroes retreat to nurse their wounds when defeated are perilous.

Study the Hero’s Guide to the Foundations of Stone on the Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria website and prepare for a truly heroic adventure.