I was reading through this thread and it got me thinking about future possibilities for major villains. I haven't completed the Black Book of Mordor yet (I'm in Chapter 12), but I've kept an eye on the Epic Quests via the wiki and have seen a few of the quests.

My biggest issue with the story going forward is that we're living in a post-Sauron Middle-earth. Saruman only has until the Scouring of the Shire, and then he's dead. So of course you'll never be able to come up with a villain with the same menace and threat as Sauron...or so you'd think.

I know that SSG doesn't have access to The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales, but that's never stopped them from getting creative, or making thinly-veiled references that anyone who's familiar with the books will be able to spot.

Let me explain. We know that Morgoth couldn't create life, but he could mutate and corrupt existing forms, and was able to draw multiple Maiar to his side (the balrogs, Sauron, and several others). He bred not only orcs, trolls, and dragons, but werewolves as well (I haven't seen any werewolves in LOTRO, but I've seen plenty of wargs) and almost certainly some other, more obscure monsters.

We also know that Morgoth wasn't the ONLY source of evil in Arda. There were plenty of Lovecraftian creatures that existed independently of him -- Ungoliant was evil before Morgoth's influence, and the Nameless in Moria were much the same. We've already faced Shelob and the Nameless, so we know that ancient evil not related to Sauron or Morgoth can exist in the game.

Thus we're left with a few possibilities: either a monster left behind from Morgoth's original experiments, or something completely unrelated to him. Sauron's influence stretched far, but even he had his limits, and with him gone, it will be slowly fading. What lies in the jungles of Far Harad, or the frozen reaches of Forodwaith? For all we know, the Haradrim and Lossoth of those regions joined with Sauron not because he promised them riches, but PROTECTION. What if there's some ancient, unfathomable monster roaming in Far Harad that Sauron's influence was holding back??? And now that he's gone, it's free again, and is terrorizing the Haradrim, and has the potential to make a new war on Middle-earth???