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Turbine today announced the third expansion for its MMO, Lord of the Rings Online. At their booth in Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Jeffrey Steefel, LOTRO’s executive producer walked me through the new area and new features being introduced in “Siege of Mirkwood”, set for release sometime this fall.

Following last year’s retail expansion Mines of Moria, Siege of Mirkwood will complete Volume II of the storyline in the Lord of the Rings Online universe. In the new expansion, players will band together eastward towards the perilous forest of Mirkwood.

“2009 has been a year of unprecedented growth for The Lord of the Rings Online and the launch of Siege of Mirkwood will end the year with a bang,” said the game’s executive producer Jeffrey Steefel in a press release.

Mirkwood will be a digital download-only expansion, and includes new features such as an increased level cap (from 60 to 65) and a new region that includes Dol Guldur, the fortress of the Ringwraiths. In addition to new skills, traits and quests, there will be
a new “Skirmish” system where players can train and customize soldiers that they can take with them into battle in repeatable, randomized instances.The developers also promise “major enhancements,” such as “improved responsiveness” in the game’s combat.

Update: An earlier version of this story said the expansion was free. Turbine has issued clarification on the game’s forums regarding the pricing details saying that the expansion is actually “paid.” Siege of Mirkwood will have a base price of $19.99.

About Lord of the Rings Online

The game’s milieu is based on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. However, Turbine does not have rights to any other works in Tolkien’s legendarium, such as The Silmarillion or The Children of Hurin.

Much of the gameplay is typical of the MMO format: The player controls a character avatar which can be moved around the game world and interacts with other players, non-player (computer-controlled) characters (or “NPCs”) and other entities in the virtual
world. Camera angles can be switched between first-person and third-person options.

Players’ characters are improved by gaining “levels”. A character’s level increases after it earns a set amount of experience points through the player versus environment (or “PvE”) combat and storyline adventures. Characters’ abilities are improved by
increasing in level, but character skills must be purchased from specified NPCs after gaining a new level.

The main storyline (also known as the “Epic Quest Line”) is presented as a series of “Books”, which consist of series of quests called “Chapters”. There were initially eight Books when the game was released, with new books added with each free content update.

Tolkien’s Middle-earth as represented in The Lord of the Rings Online implements magic in a different manner than other MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft. There are only five “wizards” in the fictional world, none of which are player-controlled. Instead, there are active skills which require “power” (the equivalent of magic points). Some skills behave like magic (like healing or throwing a burning ember at an enemy), but are based on “lore”. In addition, objects and artifacts are used to create effects similar to magic.

Other features include a fast travel system and a detailed quest log with tracker and history.