

The Rise of Isengard









Again, I lamented slightly that we weren't following the Fellowship, but we were part of the greater story. The Grey Company was making their way to Aragorn and we were involved in it. Again, I wasn't too thrilled to be dealing with Hill people, but the story was really fun.

I'll be completely honest with you guys. I wasn't playing when this initially released. RoI released on September 27, 2011 and a new MMORPG called 'RIFT' had released a few months prior and it had enthralled me pretty seriously.That being said, it wouldn't keep my attention for long and I would find myself away from Middle-earth. I remember thinking Dunland was huge...almost too huge, if such a thing is possible.I recall not being too excited about the Draigoch raid that was released. It was like WoW's Onyxia raid and it didn't really call my attention too much.The big raid, though, was the Tower of Orthanc and boy was this thing excellent! Like Dol Goldur, we once again were exposed to a beautifully orchestrated raid. Due to the changes in radiance that occurred late in Mirkwood's life, so many people got to experience Tower of Orthanc and fight against Saruman of the Many Colors.Update 5 introduced the Instance Finder and everything changed. The game became a lot more like WoW where instance spams started popping all over chats as people could quickly queue into an instance instead of running to it. This thing didn't really auto-match well like WoW's version and to be honest, I don't think it really works well today.Update 6 brought the great river and our first true experience of what Rohan had to offer. It was a brilliant zone that showed the Fellowship's Passing and set the stage for, in my opinion, the best expansion SSG ever released.I wish I could be more introspective about RoI as I was about the other expansions, but unfortunately, as stated, I was not very involved at this time, but that changed soon enough.See you tomorrow!