Lord Of The Rings Online: LotRO: Pair of Interviews

Eurogamer and Hexus Gaming are both featuring interviews with Jeffrey Steefel. Eurogamer chose to focus on the just-announced expansion for LotRO, the Mines of Moria:

Moria, the ominous, deserted dwarven city which serves as the climax to the first book in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, will be rendered as a single, continuous underground world for players to explore. It will offer players a chance to fight the Balrog demon that's defeated by Gandalf in the books. We asked Steefel if this would involve making significant changes to the continuity of Lord of the Rings lore.

"No," he said. "Well, not as much as you would think. We're not talking about how we're doing that yet, but it definitely took some thinking. But especially around something as important as that, we never want to do anything that's anachronistic to the lore."

Gaming Hexus spent time with Steefel discussing the various properties owned by Turbine:

HEXUS: It must have take Turbine a lot of blood, sweat and tears to acquire the Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons franchise, not to mention a huge amount of money. Looking back over the last few years has it been worth the gamble?
Jeff:Absolutely. You never really know what's going to happen when you buy into a franchise, but we've worked tremendously hard to make it succeed. The communities in both are continuing to grow. We're launching Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) in China, Korea and Russia so it's going to continue to grow leaps and bounds. We planned to very aggressive on how we approached the game regarding its growth and content and the players seem to appreciate that. We're delighted with the way things have gone.

Both are good reads to check 'em out.

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