VIDEO Middle earth Shadow of War

So it looks like the long rumored sequel has been announced at last:

 

Never beaten the first one but did enjoy it and am looking forward to this one

 

I'm more excited about the coming expansion pack of Mordor, Nurnen, Rhun, Khand, Harad to Lord of the Rings Online.

 

Whats this?

 

It's a Free-To-Play online game. The amount of territory is huge... the amount of space relative to the size of your character that you can actually walk around on is comparable to the real-life size of Texas.

The scenery and atmosphere can be really beautiful. It also has day/night cycles, randomly changing weather, it just feels like a real world. You get to explore so much of the world, and it's really deep in Tolkien lore too.

Here's some of my screenshots, this imgur album has even more.

http://imgur.com/a/ZLorp

Spoiler: Screenshots inside

 

It's been around a while, but it's still getting updates all the time.
www.lotro.com

For story material, you choose to be either an Elf in the Blue Mountains, Dwarf in the Blue Mountains, Hobbit in the Shire, Human near Bree, or Beorning near the Great River.
(The main story begins a little before Frodo sets off on his journey, but if you're playing as an Elf your first quests are actually set about 1000 years earlier, and for the Dwarf about 70 years earlier with Thorn Oakenshield right before he begins his journey from the Blue Mountains to the Shire).

The early quests are about the war in the North, the attempted rise of Angmar, with a few run-in's with the Fellowship at various times. Then you help lead a reclamation of Moria with the Balrog dead (after the fellowship has already passed through), fight against Sauron's forces in Dol Guldor, slow down Isengard's rise in Dunland and Rohan, and then reunite with Aragorn in time for Helm's Deep, then it's off to Gondor (where I am now, when I'm not going back to other regions to complete deeds). The next big update this spring/summer will apparently be the Battle of the Black Gate and then going inside Mordor, post-Sauron, to presumably help clean up the mess and much more!

Spoiler: Here's a map of some of the regions:

Spoiler: And to give you an idea of how big it is:

Each of those regions on the map is its own region with its own map, like, here's East Rohan:




Inside of East Rohan, here's the Sutcrofts:




And inside of the Sutcrofts, here's Snowbourn:





To give you an idea of how big the game has grown...

And don't even get me started on the huge scale of Moria... I thought I'd be lost in there forever!

 

This looks soooo good!

 

The first one was incredibly good, it's a shame it didn't get the amount of love and attention it deserved.

 

I Don't think WB was expecting much from it.