Lord of the Rings MMORPG gets better for Free2Play players – Highest player count on Steam in 10 years

The MMORPG Lord of the Rings Online has made some changes to match its 15th birthday. Gifts were distributed and more content was made available for free. That pays off immediately. The game is doubling its player base on Steam and is doing as well as it did last January 2013.

What exactly has changed? With Update 33 being deployed for the 15th anniversary, all content released between the 2007 release and up until the November 2013 Helm’s Deep expansion became free.

The content includes:

• The Rune-keeper, Warden, and Beorning classes.
• The people of the High Elves.
• The Shadows of Angmar, Mines of Moria, Rise of Isengard, Riders of Rohan, and Helm’s Deep expansions.
• They all brought new quests, new areas and a new max level, as well as some new instances and a raid.

Was there any new content? Yes, for veterans the new region of Yondershire has been released, also known as “Far Floodplains”.

In addition, a number of gifts have been brought into play via an event, which you can earn until May 11th at 9:00 a.m. German time.

Player numbers on Steam double compared to the previous month

How does this affect player numbers? The free content and the gifts have resulted in player numbers increasing significantly, at least on Steam.

While in March 2022 peak 1,585 players logged online at the same time, the number rose to 3,760 players in April, the second best value of the game ever. Only on June 16, 2012, shortly after the release on Steam, did Lord of the Rings Online peak at 3,965 players at an all-time high (via SteamDB).

How many players are active in The Lord of the Rings Online? It is not possible to say how high the total number of players is, but a large part of the community will use the client apart from Steam, which has existed for 5 years longer and is available for download directly on the game’s website.

Patch causes problems, gets a rollback

Did everything go smoothly with this major update? No, shortly after the release, players noticed serious bugs, including problems with legendary items. The developers reacted and performed a rollback. Almost 16 hours of progress were lost.

But apart from that, the update is very well received. The gifts in particular are praised by the players:

The Lord of the Rings MMORPG makes a lot of content free from today – Excites the players

Have you tried Lord of the Rings Online lately? What do you think of the MMORPG? Would you recommend it or would you rather advise against trying it out?