Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria is in its first week after launch. Turbine is celebrating with a veritable trove of trailer and videos featuring the expansion’s new areas. Today’s offering covers Zelm-melek within Khazad-dûm itself.

Today Turbine unveiled two new videos for the The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria, the first expansion for the multiplayer online game, which just launched yesterday.

The newly released videos depict two of the many new areas that have been added to the game with the expansion. The first trailer above, is the Redhorn Lodes and the one below is of the Great Delving.

You know, I never thought I could ever enjoy LotRO any more than I already do, but Mines of Moria has brought my enjoyment of the game to an all new level, and I cannot for the life of me even describe just how much.

Turbine has opened a new path to adventure for players of the Lord of the Rings Online with the launch of the Mines of Moria expansion. With ten new levels, three areas including the vast Moria dungeon crawl, legendary items and two new classes Mines of Moria has a lot to offer just a little over a year since the release of the original LOTRO: Shadows of Angmar.

To kick off the release, Turbine has a new trailer for your viewing pleasure:

You can dig up the LOTRO: Mines of Moria in retail stores or upgrade your account online at The Lord of the Rings Online website.

Turbine has released a new trailer for The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria expansion and while it may be very short in length, it makes up for it in quality.

If you have not been keeping up with what to expect when you enter the dwarven city of Moria, then the trailer should speak volumes. The prerequisite Goblins and Wargs are present, but this time the Goblins are actually riding the Wargs – which you should be familiar with if you read the books or have seen the movies. The atmosphere looks very lush for the decrepit state it’s in, and with so many different obstacles inside you never know what will be lurking around the corner.

One thing you will notice is that the winged denizens of Angmar, the sexy but dangerous Merrevail, are back along with what appear to be winged demon men which will be new to the expansion. What challenges these monstrous creatures will provide is anyone’s guess but they do look formidable indeed.

After you have watched the trailer, FileFront has some exclusive shots pulled straight from the Mines of Moria Beta up for your perusing. The expansion invades retail on November 18 and if you still have some unfinished adventures floating around in your quest log, you may want to log into the game and get them out of the way. Once the Mines of Moria goes live, it may be a while before you ever wish to go back to the comfort of The Shire.

Turbine has followed the call to go west and spread its business coast to coast. The new Redwood City, California studio will be headed by new recruits Dave Brevik as Creative Director, Jeff Lind as Engineering Director and Matt McKnight as Studio Director.

The growing developer has several MMOs to its name including Asheron’s Call, Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach and Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. The first LOTRO expansion Mines of Moria is out next month and Turbine expects to have a social gaming network up and running by the end of the year. A new console MMO is also in the works. The west-coast studio is just another step in Turbine’s longterm plans for growth as one of the largest privately-held developers of online games in North America. Look for more new projects with the same attention to detail that has made Turbine a very successful developer of MMOs.

Jim Crowley, Turbine’s president and CEO, revealed some interesting news this morning at the Tokyo Game Show that should get Lord of the Rings Online players pretty excited. Apparently, the company plans on adding social a networking site to the MMORPG by years end that will be reminiscent of MySpace and Facebook and connected to the online world.

Not only will gamers be able to display full character profiles and upload other gaming data from LOTRO, but they will also have the ability to add friends, view live news feeds, and share videos via a YouTube style feature.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Crowley described the new tool as “a version of Facebook or MySpace that sits directly on top of the gaming world. This is a fully-featured, rich, robust social network. It has every single feature that you would find in the major commercial social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.”

Fully expected to launch by the end of the year, Crowely feels that MMOs are in a position to integrate “web-literate” players into a Web 2.0 network attached to the games, and that Turbine’s other online games Dungeons & Dragons Online and Asheron’s Call will also be able to get in on the networking come late 2008 or during 2009. This would eventually make Turbine more money as well by “extending the lifetime value of the customer and driving “viral customer acquisition” by getting gamers more involved in the online world they are paying a monthly fee for.

“Turbine believes that a closed eco-system will have to become an open eco-system. The MMO needs to learn… to adapt itself to the ‘born digital’ generation. The MMO needs to step out of its shell and start reaching a much broader and deeper audience.”

He went on to elaborate that this is a great opportunity for developers to take advantage of advertising without ruining the games by riddling them with product placements.

“It allows you to inject advertising in a way that’s not in conflict with the game world,” he said. “It’s natural to it, something you see across the web 2.0 space.”

This is great news for players who want to socialize with their Kinships or other online friends in a more in-depth way than just going on grinding missions together. From a personal standpoint, it would be fun to be able to delve deeper into my character and show off some of the cool things I have accomplished that you just cannot see when inspecting an online character; plus it would be nice if you can sign in to the network without signing into the game as well. That way, you can check on your friends’ progress from your mobile without having to be near the computer your game is installed on. Maybe in the future, gaming companies will find a way to integrate all MMOs into one social network so that others can stay up to date on all of your online characters – not just one specific game.

Turbine is giving Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar players a chance to prepare their favorite characters to explore the Mines of Moria. This weekend, you can earn 25% bonus experience starting Thursday October 2nd through October 6th.

As added incentive to look forward to the new expansion, Turbine developer Brian “Zombie Columbus” Aloisio has revealed more of the theory behind the new Rune-keeper class for Moria in the latest dev diary entry.

“The Minstrel sings words of Power and the Lore-master finds Power from ancient secrets, but there are more paths than these. Middle-earth is a land where language has Power, and such words are comprised of rune-letters. Put them together in the right order and the world can be changed in subtle and sometimes grand ways.”

The Rune-keeper rounds out the magic using classes of LOTRO quite nicely with the use of Battle and Healing Attunements. This class uses lightning for quick attacks and chill attacks to hit multiple targets or debuff enemies. Rune-keepers inflict fire damage over time which builds becoming more deadly the longer its maintained. Their healing is also over time supplementing healing skills of other classes without duplicating them.

The Rune-keeper class isn’t modeled after any specific character in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. However moon letters and runes are both part of the mythos so the class fits into the spirit of the world. For more on these linguistic mystics, check out Aloisio’s Rune-keeper dev diary on the LOTRO website.

Turbine is in the home stretch to the release of Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria expansion. More invitations are incoming to those players who’ve registered to participate in the beta. For those of you who haven’t put your name into the lottery yet, you still have a chance to register. Visit the www.unlocktheminesofmoria.com website to apply.

The Moria team released new screenshots today as well as the news about the beta. There are five screens of the Foundations of Stone, each with a different Moria MOB. For more incredible screenshots like the Runekeeper battle above, visit the LOTRO: Mines of Moria archives at FileFront.

I was impressed with the quality of the art and the sheer magnitude of these monsters. Seeing the giant spider in one of the shots sends my imagination into dark fantasies of what Shelob’s brood will be like. MMOs are fun, but they don’t tend to have the same heart pounding effect on players as the horror genre. I’m not asking Turbine to take LOTRO in that direction, but I hope to feel a sense of awe and danger when facing these creatures.

Turbine has released scintillating new action screenshots of the two new classes for Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria. The shots feature the new mage class, the Rune-keeper, using lightning attacks and the spear wielding Warden in combat. You’ll also get a look at more of the MOBs in Moria as well as a glimpse of other areas included in the first LOTRO expansion.

Catch the full collection of LOTRO: Mines of Moria screens courtesy of 1UP.

Turbine has released the first in-game footage for the upcoming Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar expansion, LotRO: Mines of Moria. The trailer gives players a glimpse of the infamous black heart of the Misty mountains that was once the crowning glory of the Dwarven kingdom, Khazad-dûm.

The video contains shots of the vast underground halls of Moria that still retains its majesty despite its fall. There are also glimpses of some of its denizens that thrive in its depths. Feast your eyes on “The Flaming Deeps.”