The MMORPG Lord of the Rings Online has made some changes to celebrate its 15th anniversary. Gifts have been given out and more content has been made available for free. This is paying off directly. The game has doubled its player numbers on Steam and is doing as well as it did last in January 2013.
What exactly has changed? With Update 33, which was launched for the 15th anniversary, all content that was released between the 2007 launch and the Helm’s Deep expansion in November 2013 has become free.
The content includes:
- The classes Rune Keeper, Warden, and Beorning.
- The race of High Elves.
- Shadows of Angmar from the base game.
- The expansions Mines of Moria, Rise of Isengard, Riders of Rohan, and Helm’s Deep.
- All of them brought new quests, new areas, and a new max level, as well as some new instances and a raid.
Was there also new content? Yes, for veterans, the new region Yondershire, also known as “Far Auen”, was released.
Additionally, numerous gifts have been introduced through an event that you can earn until May 11 at 9:00 AM German time.
Player numbers on Steam double compared to the previous month
What impact does this have on player numbers? The free content and the gifts have led to a significant increase in player numbers, at least on Steam.
In March 2022, a peak of 1,585 players were online simultaneously, and this number rose to 3,760 players in April, marking the second-best value for the game ever. Only on June 16, 2012, shortly after the Steam release, did Lord of the Rings Online peak at 3,965 players all-time high (via SteamDB).
How many players are actively playing Lord of the Rings Online? It’s hard to say how high the overall player numbers are, but a large part of the community will be using the client outside of Steam, which has been available for download on the game’s website for 5 years longer.
Patch causes problems, gets a rollback
Did everything go smoothly with this big update? No, shortly after the release, players noticed serious bugs, including issues with legendary items. The developers reacted and implemented a rollback. Nearly 16 hours of progress were lost.
But aside from that, the update is being very well received. Especially the gifts are praised by the players:
The MMORPG Lord of the Rings is making many contents free starting today – exciting the players
Have you tried Lord of the Rings Online recently? What do you think of the MMORPG? Would you recommend it or advise against trying it?
