Official LOTRO sites keep releasing their character background pages for the most prominent citizens of Middle Earth. This time up is Gildor Inglorion of the House of Finrod. The full article can be found here.

MMORPG.com did their review of the Lord of the Rings Online and gave it 8.5 which is one of the better scores so far. You can see the full review here.

As a grand finale of this here news post - a thread I came across on the US forums entitled "How many 'Older' gamers are there out there?" - the first guy posting is 59 - see if you can beat that.

Beleglin read the Silver Surfer comic as a kid and wanted to share his fascination with the character by taking me out to the movies to see the new Fantastic Four ft. the Silver Surfer flick. When I saw the guy's shiny surface the first thing that popped into my mind was - why doesn't somebody mine this silver node? It would be funny if I brought my trusty mining pick with me to the movie theater though. Anyways - the comic speaks for itself 🙂

The free content update launch went great imo. I've patched alright, took a while to download but no biggie. I'm still a low level so I couldn't see much of the new additions, but the new accomplishments window is nice and I've noticed they've changed the icons for rare crafting components (nooooooooooo...I'll have to find the new icons now and change the old ones on the rare crafting page ed. Silriel).

Following the free update release some of the LOTRO sites have updated their content to accommodate for the new changes.

- LOTRO Vault is following ACVault's great tradition of archived patch trees. It's basically a page about everything new in the latest patch. It includes not only official information or material provided by the Vault staff members, but also, and that's the most important, contributions from players all over the world. You can find all the new info here.

- Our buddies at MEHQ.net have also included the new Dynamic Map of Evendim for all your adventuring needs.

I have to share a little secret with you guys. We had one of the best Sundays in our existence yesterday. One of the reasons behind this was that we got loads of hits from stumbleupon.com . I decided to see what the fuss is all about and joined that site. You get a toolbar for your browser and when clicking on Sumble! button you get redirected to some page somebody else stumbled upon and liked it. Was a great way to spend a few idle hours on a Sunday. Among other things I've stumbled across this picture on some Russian site:

Real cool eh? Well I though I add something to it. The LolCats seem to be all the roar on the internet these days(months) and in the spirit of things I bring you the LOLgiraffe.

In any given RPG you get this NPC whining about how poor and in debt he is. Then he makes you kill 20 of this and 20 of that for a measly reward of 20 copper or something. In LOTRO, hobbit Adso is that character. After seeing how many people were stacking in front of him returning their wolf and boar and bear hides I've had an instant image of Adso getting rich by selling all that stuff to a generic fast food joint. Who knows what them crazy NPCs are up to when we go on our merry ways...

BTW, this is probably the last of our one page - one joke -  epic comics. We are planning on starting a whole storyline and we are very excited about the whole thing. I hope you will enjoy what follows, but it might be a bit longer until the next epic comic gets published so please bear with us as we start this new and exciting journey into true, story driven, webcomic world. The casual comics will be produced as usual (I hope :).

Turbine sent us word about the in-game event that will be running for 20 days. There will be celebrations, there will be fireworks, there might even be a dragon one flying in the sky! Here's the full news:

"We’re happy to announce that from June 20th to July 10th, Middle-earth will be celebrating with its Summer Solstice Festival!"

For more info go here.

Zee Goblins have been hard at work and the new Epic comic should be released soon enough. We have had a little conference here and have decided to make some adjustments in our upcoming Epic comic episodes. We will actually start a true story and not just spew out random jokes at you. We would really like to make something you would love to read and come back to every time you want to have something fun to read. For now though, here's a small piece of original art from the upcoming comic.

Here's the top-selling software chart, covering the week of May 27th - June 2nd, 2007:
1. World Of Warcraft - Vivendi
2. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack - Vivendi
3. The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts
4. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars - Electronic Arts
5. Halo 2 - Microsoft
6. The Sims 2 Celebration Stuff Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts
7. Civilization IV - 2K Games
8. The Sims 2 Deluxe - Electronic Arts
9. Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows Of Angmar - Midway
10. Half-Life 2: Episode 1 - Electronic Arts

I must admit I was wondering how LotRO was gonna do a month or more after release and I am very happy to see that it's still holding its own. It deserves it though... Thanks go out to www.actiontrip.com where I found the news.

If you live in Europe and you have started your LOTRO client than you probably noticed that the new patch is available for download in preparation of tomorrow's release. To get the standalone patch you can go to http://www.lotro-europe.com/newspage.php?id=1289, read the instructions there and download the patch. It is a big one btw - 594.6 MB. If you just want to play the game as normal click on the continue button in the launcher and you will be presented with the normal login screen.

Make sure that you are downloading the patch into the LOTRO installation folder as instructed on the download instruction page. If you want to patch right now click on the Update button in the launcher once you downloaded the patch and you should see the installation screen. Even if you apply the patch you will still be able to play the game as usual. The files will be verified and the patch activated tomorrow.

UPDATE:

Seems that there are some problems with the patch detecting your LOTRO installation directory. Please make sure that you are following the instructions to the letter. If you still have problems please check out this thread here (you might want to start reading from page 3 of the thread - that's when the problems started being reported). The Codemasters CM is monitoring it and some users have found some solutions to the problems - I will update you as new information becomes available

UPDATE 2:
Seems that people that have upgraded the game to current version from the beta or have reinstalled their windows are having this problem. One of the solutions offered was
"solved it by letting it install the files to my C: drive (after clearing enough space!) then manually moving them back onto my D: drive in the correct location. Still runs ok so I'm assuming it has worked."
Note that this is by the first time forum poster and has not been confirmed by any other person in that thread.
The official recommendation is:
"it seems most people who try re-installing off of the retail DVD can get the standalone to work. Please ensure you try this."

So - reinstall the game to a new folder or something. Patch it up to 1.12 (something like a 50MB download). You will be prompted to patch again - this time from 1.12 to 1.2. It should work.

US LOTRO game servers are now back up and running with the first free content update for The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. Book 9: Shores of Evendim introduces a new region, over 100 new quests, new items, a new raid, major updates to the music and crafting system, and lots more. The full release notes are in 3 parts (due to their size) and can be found here:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=67623

The LOTRO community manager had this to say to all:

"We're very excited to have hit this first major post-launch milestone, and are looking forward to seeing our players explore all of the new content!"

The Europeans get to apply the patch tomorrow and in case you are getting bored I've trolled the US forums and found the following two topics for you to read besides the patch notes (or you can always browse through our comics - even if you have done so in the past!):

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=67984 (hilarious)

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=59598 (a list of hilarious things)

The US customers will be getting the Shores of Evendim - first free content update for LOTRO - today. The great thing about this patch must be the background story - I love it.

" * Dunedain of the North once inhabited the lands of Evendim. In fact, it is here that the capital of Arnor, Annuminas is built by Elendil after the fall of Numenor.
* The great city sprawls along the southern shore and islands of Lake Evendim, or Nenuial as it is sometimes called.
* At some point the city was abandoned by the Dunedain of the North, although when this happened is not spelled out in the text of The Lord of the Rings. We are proposing, though, that it fell in the year 861, when the kingdom of Arnor was sundered into three realms: Arthedain, Cardolan and Rhudaur.
* The reason for this sundering involves a dispute between the three sons of Earendur. There is no record of what this dispute was about, but we are proposing that the dispute involved the actual abandonment of Annúminas..
* Since the city did not fall in war, but was abandoned, many of its ruins remain nearly intact and rumors of great wealth are told throughout Eriador. This attracts many unsavory types to Evendim.
* Angmar is not ignorant of Annuminas, and has sent a few scouts to discern if there is anything of value to them.
* At the same time, in Rivendell the Fellowship continues its preparations to leave and Aragorn decides that now is the time to re-forge Narsil. For the light to be returned to this blade, a great gem, long since missing from the hilt, must be replaced. Such a gem may reside in the tombs of Annuminas."

The patch notes are out on the US forums. Readers should grab a drink and a snack, because it's quite the collection of additions, tweaks, and fixes! The notes are in 3 parts and can be found starting here with the first part: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=67623

Turbine continues with their  "Characters of Middle-earth" series introducing Legolas and Gimli this time around - if you don't know who these two guys are you must have been buried in a hole somewhere. Very pretty concept art in Turbine's page nevertheless.

WarCry reviewed LOTRO and gave it a 621 out of 82. The craziest game review score I have ever seen. You can read the article here

In other LOTRO related news ... The hot topic in town was the interview Jeff Steefel, LOTRO producer, gave to eurogamer.net , in which he talked about gold selling services and his views on the subject. This was interpreted by many in the gaming community as if he was hinting that Turbine and Codemasters are considering to allow or even introduce such service in the future. Outrage caused by this speculation spanned not only LOTRO related sites but I think people have been a bit too quick on their criticism because Jeff stated in a recent interview for 1UP that this is not, and never will be, the case for LOTRO and that he was talking in general on what the state of the industry is and what future might bring for the industry overall.

Tobold had a shot at the subject in his gaming blog as well. It is an interesting read and he tries to analyze the situation with a cool head. You can check his article here.

Beleglin's opinion on the subject is that we should burn the gold sellers villages and stuff ... but I wouldn't take notice of his opinions if I were you ... his ability to back his opinions with arguments comes down to saying "YOU KNOW I'M RIGHT" and than running of to a corner mumbling to himself ...