A couple weeks ago when I wrote up my April

Fools prank about the new class in the

Lord of the Rings Online, I made a very deliberate decision.

The gist of the gag was that Aaron Campbell was suffering from terrible IP

confusion, and was sticking an inappropriate Dungeons & Dragons class

into a Lord of the Rings game (and at the end, I went all in by adding DC

comics characters from Infinite Crisis as well).

My initial inclination for that article was to name the Druid as the new

class, and have Mr. Campbell justify it by making comparisons between the

Druid's shapeshifting abilities and those of the Beornings. The deliberate

decision I made was to reject that idea, in case they actually did go with

shapeshifting Beornings. That's a class that makes sense - Beorn appeared

in The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug, so it seems only natural to

capitalize on the character's popularity. And the Beornings are a part of

LotR lore that has been conspicuously absent from the game thus far. So if

Turbine did go with Beornings as the new class, my gag article would have

been seen as something other than what it was.

Turns out, I made the right call. Beornings are to be the next new class

in the Lord of the Rings Online. According to Aaron Campbell's Producer's

Letter,

Recently we confirmed that LOTRO will be releasing a new class this

year. Im pleased to announce that this class is the Beorning! This

will be LOTROs first class since the Mines of Moria expansion

introduced the Warden and Rune-keeper. Beornings are noted in The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a race of

Man, with close origins to the Rohirrim and the Men of Dale. Most Men

are not shape-changers, so we envision the Beorning as a light armor

casting class with a focus on control of the battlefield. When a

Beorning gathers sufficient rage, they may transform into a mighty

bear. Well be sharing early class designs with the new Players Council.

Expect more details later this year, as the class progresses through

alpha and beta.

As he mentions, LotRO hasn't had a new class since Mines of Moria, the

game's very first expansion. We've had four major expansions and dozens of

updates since 2008, and we've seen the addition of the skirmish system,

mounted combat and big battles, but we haven't had a new playable class to

go with them.

You can't really fault the developers for that, though. Nine classes is

lots, and already draws quite deeply from the somewhat shallow pool of playable classes allowed by the

lore. Especially when you consider that magic is the province of god-like

beings only - no mortals wield actual magic. Not in the books and not in

the game. The "magic" wielded by Lore-masters, Rune-keepers and Minstrels

is not proper magic, but rather earth-science, herbology, brilliant

story-telling, pantomime and inspirational music, which affects the morale

(not the actual health) of foes and allies. The only ones using magic in

the mortal world are the five Istari, who are immortal beings of a

somewhat lowly order, and Sauron, who is a god-like personification of

evil. Even Galadriel, who appears to be very powerful, mostly relies on

showmanship and the wisdom of her many, many years, and not on actual

magic.

Nearly every other character in the books is more mundane, and those

classes are already covered. Swords, bows, axes, spears, halberds and

daggers - all taken care of. The game has been decently balanced since the

addition of the Rune-keeper and the Warden - three armor types, three

classes for each type. The skin-changer is going to demolish that

beautiful 3-way symmetry.

So why a new class this late in the game? We're over halfway to Mordor

now, and the level cap has nearly doubled since the game's launch (and

will be doubled before the year is out - according to the producer's

letter, the next update will include a 5-level increase, bumping us up to

level 100, and the one after will add another 5).

Well, consider: last year around this time, they added the Erebor

instance cluster, roughly coinciding with the home video release of The

Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug has just

hit the BluRay shelf, so the timing of a new class announcement with ties

to the movie is quite fitting. Though not mentioned in the producer's

letter, I imagine early 2015 will have something related to the third

Hobbit movie - maybe an Epic Battle re-enactment of the Battle of Five

Armies, or a foray into Northern Mirkwood, or something to do with giant

eagles.

It goes without saying that I'm going to be rolling a Beorning when the

class becomes available. Gunkybear shall roam the wilds of Bree-land and

beyond, battling the forces of shadow and fishing delicious salmon out of

rivers. And I imagine there will be a lot of others doing the same.