LOTRO Scavenger hunt review

Earlier this year, Lord of the Rings Online hit its ten year mark - a respectable age for an MMO. I wrote a lengthy game review in its honour. In-game the feat was celebrated with the annual anniversary, but this time around, something new was introduced alongside it: the Scavenger hunt. At the time of writing, this event is nearing its end (13th of July, 2017). It's time for a review.

Ten years of LOTRO: a history of virtual Middle-earth

Lord of the Rings Online is celebrating its ten year anniversary. Time to go back to 2007 and look at everything that has happened since then, I thought. Well, that kind of backfired: it took me two weeks of writing to finish this article. Turns out a lot happened in ten years; more than fits in a blog post! This means I had to be selective. I also had to find a middle ground between my personal experiences and universal developments in virtual Middle-earth. History is always subjective, and by no means did I want this article to be a dry summary of facts. That said, if you experienced an in-game era very differently, I would love to read about it in the comment section.

This article is meant to reminisce about good and bad times in LOTRO, or to look up what happened in a period you were absent: few people will have been around for the full ten years. I realize that some people may read this that have never played LOTRO, so I have tried to make it comprehensible for everyone. You can drop me a note below if anything isn't clear.

I hope you'll enjoy this 'longread' of ten years of LOTRO. We start by traveling back in time, to the spring of 2007...