Summary: Galloping in at ramming speed is Riders of Rohan, the newest expansion to Lord of the Rings Online from Turbine. Legendary stories take place in these huge plains and are arguably the most popular area of all of Lord of The Rings books. Did Turbine capture the lore and legend of these epic lands? Lets explore with the Rohirrim and find out! Listen now: Pros and Cons Entering this expansion is very unique from the get go. The musical score brought Rohan to life instantly. It was indescribable the feeling I had when entering the new area for the first time. The music helped it feel like I had just stepped into Rohan. Then I got into combat and the game switched to battle music. I suddenly felt a bit reckless fighting to it like I was some sort of hero! It is amazing how a full orchestra can make you feel like something larger then life is about to happen. Chance Thomas did a amazing job composing this. The epic story picks up from where the Great River Region left off and tosses us into the breaking of the fellowship. You can play out some of those important moments from the book in session play. My favorite one was to play the fall of Boromir, where you try to slay waves upon waves of orcs as they try to take you down! The story then moves you into the Rohirrim plot and is well thought out. I think they did a excellent job with the epic story this time, and it reminds me that I'm not out here to just grind out ten wargs for the nearest warg eating npcs. The six new areas are The Wold, The East Wall, The Norcrofts, The Sutcrofts, The Entwash Vale, and The Eaves of Fangorn. These areas are all huge! I expected them to be very boring because they were mostly described as all plains in the books. That was not the case. Each town has its own charm. If you're like me, you will be exploring every corner of them. There are children running around, men chopping wood, soldiers practicing horseback formations, and women scolding their children. One woman is even shoveling horse poop! Who puts a poopsmith in their game? I was so happy to not see NPCs just standing around doing nothing. In Riders of Rohan, Turbine introduced a totally new mechanic, mounted combat. Riding across the fields at lighting speed and destroying your foes is the highlight of this expansion. There are three War-steed types: light, medium, and heavy. Light is made for speed and helps the caster type classes. Heavy is for the big damage dealing classes. The medium is a all around War-steed and is free for all players. They level up with you, and you spend points to make them work with your style. Learning to control your bucking bronco will take some time, kind of like driving a car on ice. You'll be sliding around for a while, but in the end, you'll fly! With each War-steed, you get three skill trees that are adjusted for each type: defense, damage, and speed. These change depending on what type of War-steed you choose, but most of it is the same. You can spend points on new skills, defenses, speed boosts or offensive bonuses. Or you can spend it all on buffing up your War-steed's stats. The best thing is, if you don't like what you spent them on, just hit refund and all of it goes back to zero and you can spend the points you earned again! You can do this whenever you like and as many times as you want. It only costs a few silver to make the change. Killing your friends has never been more fun with the updated Ettenmoors! The camps have been recreated with new graphics. The outposts now give damage buffs to the side that holds them. Keeps now give renown and commendation bonuses. Needless to say, anyone controlling all of them gets a massive bonus. Luckily there is a way to take all this back with stealth. Remember that underground instance through the Ettenmoors that was under-used? That is now revamped and is a underground tunnel system to the camps and keeps. Creep raids running into Freep raids underground is pure chaos.
