MMO gaming news this week

I’ll take this post to cover a trio of news items from this week that affect games I play/have played.

Lord of the Rings Online progression server

So Standing Stones Games are bringing a progression server out for LOTRO, a first for this game and maybe this studio too? They’re pretty popular these days, in this case it seems we’ll be getting a straight up progression server. Players will start from scratch at level 1, but there’ll be no “turning back the clock” on systems. I’ve been deterred from starting again on other servers to play with family in the past in LOTRO (get some cross-server grouping tech from Daybreak please SSG!), so leaving my stable of long-standing characters behind would not be easy.

A LOTRO dungeon run – short on numbers

However, the temptation in terms of a fresh start and the opportunity to play early zones that are busy. There are plenty of dungeons that I’ve never played on level in a full group – it would be great to experience them in a more as intended. Honestly at this stage playing this game at any level is fun, I’ve never been that focused on end-game anyway. So I think I’ll give it a try to see if it lasts and longer than my time on the Rift progression server.

Trion bought by Gamigo

Speaking of Rift, the slightly shocking announcement that Trion has been bought by Gamigo and that subsequently a majority of the staff were laid off was a very sad piece of news to be reading. I’ll always have a soft spot for Rift, or at least for Rift in its ‘vanilla’ heyday. People losing their jobs is never good news. I hope that Gamigo treat the games with some care and we don’t see another Wildstar-style shutdown on the cards.

Water rift emerging

Free early expansions for SWTOR

If you never got around to buying the Rise of the Hutt Cartel and/or Shadow of Revan expansions for SWTOR, you can log into your account before the 2nd November to claim them for free. This news is rather good for our old Imperial levelling trio as they stopped at the level cap just before finishing the original game’s content. These two expansions as freebies offer us new follow-on story and an extra 10 levels of experience gain – so hopefully a return to the game at some point will be on the cards.