Sauron’s defeat may have ended The Lord of the Rings, but Middle-earth has never run out of stories to tell, with one coming this fall specifically focused on the werewolves of Middle-earth. Long before he forged the One Ring and ruled from Barad-dur, Sauron carried another title: the Lord of Werewolves. That forgotten piece of Tolkien lore (mostly explored in The Silmarillion rather than The Lord of the Rings itself) is finally stepping into the spotlight with a brand-new adventure set deep inside Mordor.
Mordor itself has always been more than ash, lava, and the Eye of Sauron. Beyond the familiar plains of Gorgoroth are regions rarely explored across Lord of the Rings games, books, or films, with their own history, civilizations, and creatures that never reached the front lines of the War of the Ring. That’s exactly where Standing Stone Games is taking fans of Lord of the Rings next, swapping familiar battlefields for unexplored corners of the Dark Land filled with experiments, buried societies, and werewolves created during Sauron’s rise to power.
The Lord of Wolves, the Draugardh, and New Regions of Mordor, Oh My
That’s the foundation for The Lord of the Rings Online: The Wolves of Mordor, the MMO’s next expansion launching this fall. As first reported in MMORPG.com’s exclusive on Wolves of Mordor, the update explores three new regions of Mordor: Heledhris, Parth Rhavas, and Nan Ogol. It’ll also focus on Sauron’s time as the Lord of Wolves, at least some of it, while introducing the Draugardh, a society of intelligent werewolves inspired by Tolkien’s writings.
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The Lord of the Rings: Online expansion’s biggest gameplay addition is the new Survival Instinct system, an account-wide progression path built specifically for the new regions. LOTRO players will unlock new skills, tactical abilities, enhancements, and passive bonuses instead of simply grinding for more levels, with Standing Stone Games saying the system is designed to carry forward into future expansions. Alongside it comes the Neighbor system, letting players build friendships with NPC companions through housing, gifts, quests, and daily interactions, which is certainly an exciting addition for LOTRO.
Players will also encounter three distinct werewolf factions, surviving Easterlings, Woses, Gondorian scouts, Elves, and Dunedain while exploring volcanic mountain ranges and Nan Ogol, a prehistoric jungle filled with creatures and laboratories where LOTR‘s Sauron once conducted terrifying experiments. New three-player and six-player instances, plus a raid planned before the end of the year, round out the brand-new LOTRO expansion’s PvE offerings.
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More importantly, The Wolves of Mordor looks less like a standalone expansion and more like the beginning of The Lord of the Rings Online’s next era. Standing Stone Games says both Survival Instinct and the Neighbor system are intended to grow over time, while the studio is already looking toward the MMO’s 20th anniversary in 2027 with plans to revisit classic content. For a game nearly two decades old, that’s a pretty impressive slate of upcoming new content for Lord of the Rings Online.
- Released
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April 24, 2007
- ESRB
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T For Teen due to Blood and Gore, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Standing Stone Games
