I had the chance to visit Standing Stone Games' offices this week to check in on the teamto see what they've been cooking up, and what's next for the game. In case you haven't been following along, they just wrapped up the War of the Ring saga: Sauron has been defeated, and now it's clean-up time. There's still plenty of despair in the realm of Middle-earth, and that darkness continued with the recently released Minas Morgul update, which includes 250+ new quests, seven instances POE currency trade, a Shelob raid, and a continuation of a storyline that's 12 years running.

What a lot of people don't know is that LOTROhelped revolutionize storytelling in MMOs; far before the grandeur of Final Fantasy XIV‘s 2.0 run. Current executive producerRob Ciccolini is proud of that legacy, and hopes to continue it forwell..forever. When asked about the biggest impact LOTROhad in the MMO space,Ciccolini replied the world itself, most definitely. The thing about LOTROis that it has this huge world, and that world has a special meaning for players. Now with that world comes expectations that we'll do right by the lore of Tolkien, but I think we've succeeded on that front so far and will continue to do that.

I pressedCiccolini on what the key ingredient was that allowed LOTROto survive this long, and he immediately responded with our players. He continued, you see at the time, we were breaking new ground with the free-to-play model, and we really didn't have anything to go off of. We ran the risk of going too far with it, but we have to cheap Path of exile currency constantly balance between being risk-averse and going all out. Our players help guide us in that respect and I think it's worked out pretty well so far.

One of the big successes in recent years has been the implementation of legacy servers (called Legendary Servers in LOTRO), similar to WoW Classic before Classicwas a thing.Ciccolini says that these have been doing great for the company, taking in lessons that they've learned from their other property, Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO).Ciccolini points out that the permadeath hardcore league has been wildly successful: allowing players to risk their character dying forever, with the concession to port them to regular servers should they fall. Seasons run in 90-day increments, with all the expectations upfront.Ciccolini cites Path of Exileas a similar, positive model for keeping the playerbase engaged beyond standard live servers.