Lord of the Rings Online's Book 12 update is out, and Book 13 should be ready by sometime this spring. A significant slice of information will be revealed at Codemasters' upcoming Online Connect 2008 event in Birmingham, England this March.

Book 13 will include a new explorable landmass and a fishing system. Turbine also hinted at further tweaks to their barber shop interface, a refined looking for group system, and some kind of online leaderboards to reinforce the game's sense of community.

In other news, Turbine recently released information that they'd extended their licensing agreement for MMOGs based on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit to at least 2014. So now, though Turbine isn't saying anything, it appears we're just waiting on that The Hobbit Online announcement…

Source: GDC 2008: The Lord of the Rings Online Update





Book 13 Lotro - Questions and Answers



After first details on Lotro Book 13 update we would like to share with you some new interesting information that we've discovered about Book 13.


Instances
Book 13 will have new story instances related to the continuation of this epic story. Turbine will also be revisiting Annuminas and making some changes to those instances, but there will not be adding any new 12- or 24-man raids for Book 13.

Horse
If you didn't get any special horse from previous festivals another horse variant will show up in Book 13.

Emotes
You can expect more emotes in the Book 13

Outfit
In Book 13, we will have the option to turn off helm/cloak/shoulders/feet/hands per Outfit. So one outfit could have a cloak and no shoulder pads, while another could have shoulder pads and no cloak visible. Yes, there will be some more outfits coming your way in Book 13, although nothing quite so crazy as sandals. There are some plans to add Headgear that doesn't replace hair, like Circlets

New Region
So how will the new region be different? For this region, Turbine was challenged to develop a biome plan that was distinct from other similarly themed regions. The Book 13 region, while not a void of questless tracts of land, is quite large and should make the explorers out there happy. Both in playable space and visuals.

Ettenmoors
No plans for any new sessions out in the Ettenmoors, but there are plans for another Monster Play class in Book 13. It'll be the Orc Defiler, and he'll serve a much needed Healer role for Monster Players.

New sets
A few new sets in Book 13 are coming your way. Turbine announced that the art is pretty hot and they've really been trying to make sure the sets serve a role they haven't filled with any sets yet.

oooh yeah baby yeah!