Standing Stone Games To Make First Five LotRO Expansions Free To All Players

Standing Stone Games has lately made it a habit of offering its older content for Dungeons & Dragons Online and The Lord of the Rings Online for free. Such offers, like this one from last year, are usually only claimable for a limited time, but when Update 33 for LotRO goes live in late April, tons of content will be available for free, forever.

Producer Raninia dished on all that in a letter today, as well as the new content coming in Update 33. That will include a new northern area, the Yondershire, "home to Hobbit recluses and troublemakers." The anniversary celebration also returns for its 15th year, bringing a new instance, A Flurry of Fireworks, and Raninia hinted at "an exciting gift to share with everyone" that will be announced at a later time.

Update 33 will also make some significant changes to the game's monetization -- in a good way! -- as VIP accounts will have access to the standard versions of the Mordor, Minas Morgul, and War of Three Peaks expansions. In addition, the High Elf race and Warden, Rune-keeper, and Beorning classes will be free to all players.

Want more free content? How about every expansion up to Helm's Deep? That's right, all LotRO content through the game's first five expansions will be free to all players when Update 33 goes live late next month.

Finally, Raninia updated players on the progress of LotRO's legendary servers and gave the eternal LotRO promise of doing "work to improve performance and lag," as well as usual bug fixes and balance. She also hinted at bigger announcements yet to come; with the Amazon Lord of the Rings show set to premiere in September, you don't need to be as wise as Gandalf to guess that it might be related to that.