Filling the Gaps: following in the footsteps of the Wildwood and the Angle

[YamydeAragon]

Let's leave the hillside now and head west to explore another part of the new region. Some of you may be familiar with the Fishing Hole; it's a hidden area south of Maur Tulhau with a little fishing pond, a hobbit house, and a fellow named Aled Madcorf. There's a path there that leads southwest past Aled's house into the new zone; the path is currently blocked by rubble, but I assume this rubble will be cleared when the new region is added to the game.

If you go to the Fishing Hole in the live game and jump on top of Aled's house, you can get a peek at a pond on the other side. At the far side of the pond, there's a waterfall tumbling out of sight. This waterfall tumbles into a steep, narrow ravine. Along the north side of the ravine, there's a well-hidden hobbit village, which I'm going to call Cliffsburg.

Cliffsburg is built into the nearly verical side of the ravine; a series of wooden bridges allows you to climb up and down the cliff to access the various houses. It's a really cool village. I've included some images below. Unfortunately, I took these images at night; I forgot to go back and take screenshots during the daytime. Still, these give you sort of a sense of what the village looks like.

I've also included a screenshot looking town from Cliffsburg. You can see the river below as the ravine opens up into a wider gully, as well as a water-mill far below. (You can also see a slab of rock danging from a rope; this is part of a crane in Cliffsburg.)

Wow! Thanks (to you & other prior posters) for sharing all your findings & screenshots of that new area. I think your screenshots of that hobbit town at night will not look so awesome at daytime. The glowing windows help appreciate better the quantity of hobbit holes that are build on it. Also Cliffsburg if a perfect name for it.

[Jargonaut]

Cliffsburg is a bit to the west of Maur Tulhau. I wonder if they'll eventually be connected somehow, but at the moment the only way to access Cliffsburg is through a short, well-hidden tunnel. The tunnel leads to the gully formed by Cliffsburg's river. There's a network of paths running through the gully. One path leads up to the hillside where I was taking screenshots before. Another path follows the gully as it slopes down to the valley below. I've included several screenshots from the gully. I again met an invisible wall, so I was only able to follow the fully for a little while.

And where is the tunnel? Is this from a production server? Or from a build on Bullroarer?

[Phantion]

And where is the tunnel? Is this from a production server? Or from a build on Bullroarer?

It was an unintended mistake that ended-up in the Live Build for Update 33. But SSG's world-engineers figured out the issue and "closed the tunnels" last night with the new patch. So now, it is impossible on Live to go to those areas in the screenshots, which I find very appropriate given the situation.

Of course, what surprises me the most is that they even mentioned it in the recent patch Release Notes, which prompted intrepid adventurers to seek out the gaps! *Laughs* I'm sure they are thinking, "We should not have been that transparent. OOPS!" LOL!

I think it's a blast to see we're getting a sizeable chunk of landscape next. It would've been revealed eventually

Cheers!

[Jargonaut]

Sigh... I wanted to see at least the village in person. It used to be possible to reach that tower of Maur Tulhau by jumping certain areas of that rocky ridge that was accidentally smoothed, but then replaced. I wonder if we will be able to reach it legitimately when the new area is released?

As far as the comments about the sheer size of the region, this is Eriador! It's a vast empty land with little population according to canon. We could see a renaming of the whole space including current Enedwaith and Dunland to put them all under the umbrella of "Enedwaith" since that's the right name for the whole swath between Arnor and Gondor. Then this 'new area' could consist of several regions approximately equivalent to Wildwood but different in character. That would be the right way to do it. There is no reason they could not or would not release several such areas in a single package. There is not much justification for a strong centralized story here. It's the empty space between two more populated regions. Several moderate-sized blocks with their own little specific character would be just right. Even Tharbad is a bunch of ruins slowly being re-absorbed by the Swan-fleet marshes.

[seekingerin]

And where is the tunnel? Is this from a production server? Or from a build on Bullroarer?

The tunnel is not currently accessible in-game. It connects Cliffsburg with the gully formed by the river that runs below Cliffsburg. Both are currently out-of-bounds, so there's no way to access the tunnel. These images are from the live server; I happened to be able to access Cliffsburg, the gully, and the hill overlooking the new area because the cliffs on the north side of the Gloomglens had been smoothed out into a sloping hillside, probably as a result of terrain work that wasn't meant to go live; the hillside was reverted to a cliffside in the latest patch.

Everything I was able to see I accessed by climbing the hillside. There's a path from the hillside leading down into the gully, and while trying to get around the invisible wall I accidentally stumbled across the tunnel to Cliffsburg. I was also able to drop down behind the King's Way Gate and to the pond between the Fishing Hole and Cliffsburg.

Calling the tunnel a tunnel, btw, is probably a bit of an overstatement; it's maybe 15 meters from one end to the other. I just couldn't think of a better way to describe it. Below I've included a few images that kind of show the tunnel. You can see that it's fairly well-hidden, just like Maur Tulhau is. The hobbits of this area seem to have survived through secrecy.

Sigh... I wanted to see at least the village in person. It used to be possible to reach that tower of Maur Tulhau by jumping certain areas of that rocky ridge that was accidentally smoothed, but then replaced. I wonder if we will be able to reach it legitimately when the new area is released?

We will! Or at least, I'm almost certain we will. In fact, there's a path that may be intended to climb directly up to it. It should be very easy to walk up to the tower either from the Gloomglens via the hillside or by climbing up the gully from Cliffsburg. I'm standing next to the tower here:

[Phantion]

FYI all- Garan just updated the Terrainmap plugin recently; while it doesn't reveal much in the way of new landscape details, it sure reveals the scope of the new zone. It looks like it will indeed connect Andrath / Bree-land to Enedwaith. There's even an area that looks about where Tharbad should be in there.

Cheers!

[seekingerin]

Garan has updated the terrain map plugin, which now shows the Plains of Greyflood area, as well as the areas I've called the Cardolan Marches and the South Downs. The map appears to be from a much earlier stage of development than what I saw; most of the features I saw aren't clearly visible on the map. Still, it gives us a better sense of how large the area is likely to be. Looking at the map, I'm more certain of my guesses about the Plains of Greyflood. The Cardolan Marches and South Downs appear to be smaller than I was expecting, though, so I imagine they may end up being a single zone.

I've included some images of these areas from the terrain map at various scales. I've also attempted to roughly map out what I saw. Note that I'm not a cartographer, I'm working from memory, and I wasn't able to get very far into the new area, so these are very, very rough guesses. I've marked out cliffs and hills in red, roads in yellow, and rivers in blue. I attempted to show where Cliffsburg was with orange, and I've added a note pointing to where it is. I've also marked out the areas where I took the first four screenshots I shared, the ones overlooking the valley; I've indicated the general direction I was facing when I took the screenshots.

I've also included an image showing what I expect the general boundaries of the area to be.

[Phantion]

Ty for posting those


Only 1 thing: I just don't think it would make much sense for them to be fiddling around with terrain south of Bree-land if it wasn't going to be part of the new zone. Perhaps I'll be proven wrong in the future- but as of right now, I'm convinced the new zone's much bigger than the circled purple area - that it'll go from Andrath all the way to the Gloomglens and up to the Angle / the missing part west of Eregion (*Scenario did say their next area is ambitious landscape-wise).

It looks roughly the size of a Forochel-scale mega-zone.

Now it does look like, from the rough mapping there, that they might keep the area between the Swanfleet and the Lone-Lands inaccessible, which would make sense with those extensions of those hills southward.

Cheers!

[Valather89]

That is truly impressive, you could fit several Wildwoods or Angles in there (4? probably more), even with the hills making the southern border of the Lone-lands remaining inaccessible. Of course, those areas probably had more abrupt terrain, nooks and crannies, and verticality, but still.

If it's true that it's going to be released all at once, I'm really wondering how they'll go about designing all that big space between the Brandywine and the Greyflood rivers. At least the lands to the east of Greyflood had slightly more source material to draw from and more diverse landscapes: the Swanfleet, rest of Eregion (although I'm still not 100% sure we'll get that infamous gap separating it from the Angle, but let's cross our fingers here), possibilities for surviving hobbit villages before their migration to the Shire...), but little to nothing is known about the "south downs" aside from the course of the North-South Road and Tharbad on the far south-east. Just a big swoop of nothing with some scattered Cardolan ruins here and there? I know lore-wise it's supposed to be something like that, but how will they make that area interesting and unique enough without it feeling like an even more desolate -and arguably boring- Lone-lands region? As I said earlier I was a bit skeptical on that, to be honest, but if what you guys said is true about them working on it for many months, then I guess there's no reason for me to doubt its quality, since I'm loving all their recent additions to Eriador (aside from small nitpicks on connectivity with other regions ).

Thank you for all the pictures!

[seekingerin]

Ty for posting those


Only 1 thing: I just don't think it would make much sense for them to be fiddling around with terrain south of Bree-land if it wasn't going to be part of the new zone. Perhaps I'll be proven wrong in the future- but as of right now, I'm convinced the new zone's much bigger than the circled purple area - that it'll go from Andrath all the way to the Gloomglens and up to the Angle / the missing part west of Eregion (*Scenario did say their next area is ambitious landscape-wise).

It looks roughly the size of a Forochel-scale mega-zone.

Now it does look like, from the rough mapping there, that they might keep the area between the Swanfleet and the Lone-Lands inaccessible, which would make sense with those extensions of those hills southward.

Cheers!

My thought is that we're seeing two separate stages of landscape work here. It seems like they've shaped most of the terrain and laid down the frills and a lot of the trees and other vegetation east of the Gwathlo, but they probably still have to put down a lot of the buildings and NPCs and baddies and props and all of that. While the later-stage work is being done east of the Gwathlo, they're doing the initial terrain shaping and some of the initial vegetation work west of the Gwathlo so that the area west of the river is ready once it's time to do detail work on it. It's possible that one developer or set of developers does the terrain, texture, and vegetation work while another group of devs lays down the buildings, objects, and NPCs. Even if it's all the same people working on all stages of world development, though, they need to have at least some work done west of the Gwathlo by the time the area east of the Gwathlo is released, because people will be able to see some of it from the east side of the river. That's how I've always kind of imagined the workflow going for SSG, that they do some initial prep work on the next zone while they're working on the current zone. Even with the very unpolished landscape we can see in the terrain map, it looks like the terrain is much more carefully shaped east of the Gwathlo than west of it. The terrain looks fairly detailed east of the river, but it's still very rough west of the river, which reflects the idea that they might be at two different stages of development because they're not going to be released at the same time.

I would love it if I were wrong and you were right, though. It would be incredible to get this much terrain at once! It just feels like it's probably outside of their capabilities as a relatively small development team. For reference, it looks comparable in size to West Rohan, if not a bit bigger, and they likely had a bigger staff when they developed Rohan.

One interesting thought I had after I made my posts earlier, though. As Phantion points out, you can kind of see where Tharbad is going to be. There's actually a large circular space that stretches across the Gwathlo; I wonder if Tharbad is going to take up that entire circular area. If so, that would be very ambitious. It would probably make Tharbad one of the largest (former) cities in the game, if not the biggest; the only city of comparable size is Osgiliath. Tharbad would be bigger than Minas Tirith, about twice the size of Fornost, several times bigger than Bree. That in itself makes for an ambitious goal for landscape development. It would be surprising if they made Tharbad this big, but perhaps not SO surprising. People have pointed out that the towns in Yondershire are much bigger than the rest of the Shire, even though the Yondershire is suppsoed to be less populated than the Shire proper. LOTRO's scale has never been entirely consistent, and it's possible that they're taking a different approach to scale in their newer zones.

More to the point, if Tharbad does indeed end up taking up the entire circle, I think it might tell us something about their places for this part of the game world. As Valather89 points out, there's not much going on in this part of Eriador; it's supposed to be largely abandoned. I fully believe SSG is capable of taking an uninteresting bit of real estate and telling amazing stories with it; they've done that again and again and again. They need a story hook, though, and a giant Tharbad that serves as a big hub of badness might serve as that hook. Imagine the nazgul washed up in Tharbad after the elves of Rivendell swept them away from the Fords of Bruinen. All the baddies in the area were drawn to Tharbad by the presence of the nazgul. The nazgul travelled eastward when they were recovered enough, but they left some powerful lieutenant in charge of Tharbad, and now it's this swirling mass of darkness in central Eriador. The bandits who were attacking the Bree-Lands start to converge on Tharbad. Dunlendings and other servants of Saruman swarm go there after Helm's Deep. Angmarim and Dourhands trying to rebuild after Angmar go there. Maybe Saruman himself even stopped there on his way to the Shire. Now it's turned into a hub of evil on par with Angmar or Gundabad or Isengard, one that's capable of casting its shadow over the entire region. And this all happened beneath the free people's notice... until the Grey Company discovered it on their way back from Gondor to Tornhad. So they send messengers to Gondor, and Aragorn sends us to help them deal with this new threat. And now we have a story for the Plains of Greyflood, for the South Downs, for areas further to the southwest, one that could keep us busy for several years while hopefully being less suffocating than the War of the Three Peaks.

That raises the possibility that they COULD actually release everything east AND west of the Gwathlo as a paid expansion rather than as two or three free-for-VIP regions, especially if they sell it as "A new threat arises in the heart of Eriador! A massive city filled with unsurpassed danger! Raids and instances galore in the very heart of darkness! The biggest landscape addition in a decade! An epic new chapter in the history of Middle Earth!" They could easily release River Hobbits as part of the expansion. It's a lot more compelling than "I dunno, here are some areas you've never heard of I guess. You've been playing this long, so you might as well keep going."

Just a thought.

[Tirian-Hammerfist]

Thank you very much for posting these (and thanks to Garan for his work as always!)

While there's a possibility that we will get all of this terrain at once, I think seekingerin's proposal is the most likely one - that we'll get the Swanfleet zone first, before getting the rest (all of the land between Tharbad, Sarn Ford and Andrath) as an expansion (probably this autumn).

My two major concerns here are:

1) That the area between the Angle and Eregion won't be accessible. While I know it isn't just a little addition (like the hills north of the Rushock Bog would have been), the spirit of the proposals I made earlier in this thread would be very much against leaving it inaccessible. I'm hoping that Scenario continues to consider this part of the Swanfleet zone as a whole, given what he has previously said.

2) As others have said, it looks like the area between the Lonelands and the new 'Greyflood Plains' zone won't be accessible. It looks like there will be access points to the Lonelands at Harloeg and at Andrath, but that there won't be a contiguous line of contact between the two. Ideally, this would be connected up to give awesome views out over the Lonelands towards Weathertop and southwards towards Andrath. It will make Eriador feel properly massive! If it isn't fully connected, then a few more pathways through the hills would be great to give some of this sense of scale.


On another note, did anyone else notice that there appears to be a fair bit of landscape shaping in the Southfarthing? This may not be new, but it is the first time I've spotted it!

[Jargonaut]

The sunken area that the river flows into will be the Swan-fleet marshes. Tharbad will be a smaller part of that, probably towards the southern side. We can't expect a city used as an industrial hub to be all that elaborate in the same way as Minas Tirith. It existed to produce lumber for Numenorean fleets and will have large lumber yards around it, and a crumbling dike system that once held back the marshes, but the city itself will likely not be anywhere near as large as Annuminas or MT. No need for much culture or other resources when all the residents are busy chopping up trees and shipping them to the homeland.

The prospect of so much land being released at once is very exciting, though. Different people play this game for different reasons. I am not much of a raider., though I do them occasionally. It's tough to manage all the mechanics and 'win' at raiding. I like to see Middle-earth. LOTRO has got to be the most complete (and getting more complete!) realization of Tolkien's world anywhere. My motivation for leveling up is to be free to wander the map peacefully. If we will soon be able to ride straight up the Greenway that's the best news since the release of North Mirkwood/Erebor, another huge map expansion.

The central area near the Lonelands, probably to be called the South Downs, may be reserved for a special addition like the central area of East Rohan was kept back for Wildermore. This could turn out to be a homeland for the Earthkin, since we first meet them in the Lonelands. The changes near the Shire are very interesting too. We might have some ability to reach the Shire from the south, at least from the eastern side of the Brandywine. Letting us enter the Old Forest from the south, still technically in Breeland, might be the way they open that up without developing the South Farthing before they are ready to do the Scouring of the Shire.

[Phantion]

My thought is that we're seeing two separate stages of landscape work here. It seems like they've shaped most of the terrain and laid down the frills and a lot of the trees and other vegetation east of the Gwathlo, but they probably still have to put down a lot of the buildings and NPCs and baddies and props and all of that. While the later-stage work is being done east of the Gwathlo, they're doing the initial terrain shaping and some of the initial vegetation work west of the Gwathlo so that the area west of the river is ready once it's time to do detail work on it. It's possible that one developer or set of developers does the terrain, texture, and vegetation work while another group of devs lays down the buildings, objects, and NPCs. Even if it's all the same people working on all stages of world development, though, they need to have at least some work done west of the Gwathlo by the time the area east of the Gwathlo is released, because people will be able to see some of it from the east side of the river. That's how I've always kind of imagined the workflow going for SSG, that they do some initial prep work on the next zone while they're working on the current zone. Even with the very unpolished landscape we can see in the terrain map, it looks like the terrain is much more carefully shaped east of the Gwathlo than west of it. The terrain looks fairly detailed east of the river, but it's still very rough west of the river, which reflects the idea that they might be at two different stages of development because they're not going to be released at the same time.

I would love it if I were wrong and you were right, though. It would be incredible to get this much terrain at once! It just feels like it's probably outside of their capabilities as a relatively small development team. For reference, it looks comparable in size to West Rohan, if not a bit bigger, and they likely had a bigger staff when they developed Rohan.

That's true I think its a 50 / 50 chance either way. To be fair, we really can't see the western side of the Gwaithlo (*yes, I'll admit I did some "wandering by accident" myself). The Enedwaith stuff was far too south and east. The Angle mostly has anything that would've been visible shrouded in distant mist. I think it does matter though that a mountain is visible from the very southern tip of the Angle when standing in the water that wasn't there before (*I had checked between updates), and so, its very possible that they had some members of their Team working on the southeastern reaches of the new zone while the rest finished up Yondershire.

The chance for the other side of the 50 / 50, which is my view, is from Scenario's own words in the Yondershire livestream. I'd have to re-listen to it and track it down again. But this is something that's taking 6 months of development as opposed to 3, and it is something that is very markedly ambitious when it comes to the chunk of landscape.

As for the small Team, let's remember that this is the same Team who did Gorgoroth, all of Eryn Lasgalen / Dale-lands / Long Lake / Erebor in a single update, all of Ered Mithrin / Iron Hills in a single update, and Vales of Anduin, all of which were pretty huge zones of this scale.

I think the reason why we've been getting smaller updates since then has less to do with the size of their Team and far more to do with their division of efforts. I've been listening to these "Casual Stroll" livestreams carefully. It sounds like they had folks working on Minas Morgul AND Wells of Langflood and maybe even part of Elderslade at the same time, which would explain why Minas Morgul was a smaller expansion landscape-wise. It sounds like, after War of the Three Peaks, they were working on Blood of Azog and Gundabad at the same time too, which explains the size of those updates. Let's also not forget the Missions, which had a fair amount of stuff to develop sub-divided between smaller instances.

It also looks like they were working on the Angle, Yondershire, and Swanfleet at the same time. This explains why the Angle is the smallest of the three. Yondershire was much larger than the Angle, and it matters that the "Plains of Greyflood" comes out at the same time as Yondershire as something visible in the distance.

So, when I piece all of this together in my mind: we don't know what's going to happen as the kinds of stuff we would have needed to see to really know are well hidden by invisible walls and mountains south of Bree and the Lone-Lands. But I think......... the surrounding terrain around the Bree-land Homesteads......... just got a lot taller, and I bet that is where the landscape bug came from. Which tells me: They are up to something down there

But if we are really looking at a September or October update (*late August is possible though I'm not sure, it'll depend on when Scenario's "6 months of development" actually started!), there is theoretically enough time for them to keep filling stuff in. They may simply have tasked some landscape Devs to work on the southeast while the rest finished polishing Yondershire.

This would also explain why they didn't want to get into paths to Annuminas from Yondershire or dealing with the Bindebole Wood between the Shire and Yondershire- if those Devs are already tied-up with Swanfleet, basically.

It all remains to be seen! It's fun to speculate! I don't think it'll be a level cap area though. That would mean putting level 140 mobs between level 61 mobs in Enedwaith and level 45 mobs in the Angle and level 20 mobs in Bree-land, and I just think it would be a big trap for wandering lower levels. I have a feeling it'll be an alternative to Moria or something of that nature, which would make some sense. I also think, story-wise, they could do a lot more in there with Saruman's pipeweed supply from the Shire when Saruman is still in Isengard and powerful, prior to the Battle of Helm's Deep. It would make a lot more sense and tie-into some of the Shire stories pretty well.

That's another reason why I'm hoping it's just 1 bigger mega-update; I'd want them to get back to level cap stuff sooner than later, even as a winter update, and to hopefully move that more toward Rhovanion, Mordor, or Gondor again. I think Middle Mirkwood / East Bight and perhaps Fields of Celduin would make sense for a new level cap area coming out of Gundabad, *shrugs shoulders.* Or who knows? That female Orc villain in Gundabad made it sound like there was some bastion north of Car Bronach or something. So, we'll have to see!

Cheers!

[Phantion]

Thank you very much for posting these (and thanks to Garan for his work as always!)

While there's a possibility that we will get all of this terrain at once, I think seekingerin's proposal is the most likely one - that we'll get the Swanfleet zone first, before getting the rest (all of the land between Tharbad, Sarn Ford and Andrath) as an expansion (probably this autumn).

My two major concerns here are:

1) That the area between the Angle and Eregion won't be accessible. While I know it isn't just a little addition (like the hills north of the Rushock Bog would have been), the spirit of the proposals I made earlier in this thread would be very much against leaving it inaccessible. I'm hoping that Scenario continues to consider this part of the Swanfleet zone as a whole, given what he has previously said.

2) As others have said, it looks like the area between the Lonelands and the new 'Greyflood Plains' zone won't be accessible. It looks like there will be access points to the Lonelands at Harloeg and at Andrath, but that there won't be a contiguous line of contact between the two. Ideally, this would be connected up to give awesome views out over the Lonelands towards Weathertop and southwards towards Andrath. It will make Eriador feel properly massive! If it isn't fully connected, then a few more pathways through the hills would be great to give some of this sense of scale.


On another note, did anyone else notice that there appears to be a fair bit of landscape shaping in the Southfarthing? This may not be new, but it is the first time I've spotted it!

If the area between the Angle and Eregion won't be accessible, why did they bother weaving-in their "newer assets"? I share your concern but am more hopeful. I don't think it would've made much sense for them to update that area with "Swanfleet" / Dunland trees and the like if they didn't have plans for it.

With Lone-Lands versus Swanfleet, I honestly think it depends on the level gap between the new area and the older ones. They may want to "shelter" those level 20s - 30s between Bree and the Last Bridge from accidentally wandering into, say, a level 55 mob or something; so, it really depends on what level they have in mind, I think. Limiting the access points would make sense if there's a larger gap between levels.

As for South Farthing, are you basing this on the Terrainmap screenshots or something you've seen in-game? I ask only because, from the terrainmap screenies, it honestly looks like you're seeing much older landscape stuff they haven't touched for almost 15 years. There's a very light green shade of grass-texture with that, and that tends to be from the older era when all of Falathlorn and the Shire had that sub-texture. The newer stuff tends to be in that "darker green" you see with the Swanfleet area and also with quite a bit of Yondershire's borders along with Falathlorn.

If anything, I'd predict a larger Great-River-style shape to the region; it might have the landscape to the west of Andrath as its borders, just extending those hills south of the Barrows / Old Forest southward, and we might not even reach the Brandywine. The "South Downs" might get the same treatment the "Far Downs" got with Yondershire (e.g. Foxden Heath): a little taste of it but nothing extensive. The zone's "southern border" looks like it might be a long diagonal border going down to Tharbad, with the rest of it bordering on Enedwaith and Eregion before looping back around the Angle and south of the Lone-Lands to complete the loop at Andrath. They'd probably also want to barricade the "game world open" version of the Bree-land Homesteads that same way.

Cheers!

[seekingerin]

Various thoughts:

1. I think the Eregion extension will probably be accessible in-game. It looks to me like there's been a lot of development in this area recently that's visible in-game. I think it would be odd to leave this out given SSG's current philosophy on filling in the game world's gaps. And yeah, Scenario referred to this as part of the Swanfleet and cited it as an area he would like to see, so I think we'll probably be getting this area.

2. I'm actually not sure the hills south of the Lone-Lands will be inaccessible from the south. We're calling the area south of the Lone-Lands and the Bree-Lands as the South Downs, and that was Tolkien's name for this area. Downs are gentle, largely treeless chalk hills, and if you look south from the Bree-Lands and the very eastern end of the Lone-Lands, that's exactly what you see. While this area looks pretty hilly on the new version of the terrain map, I don't think that means these hills will be inaccessible. I think we could actually see something very similar with the Lone-Lands to what I saw between the Gloomglens and the new area: a gentle slope on the south side and a steep, unclimbable cliff on the north side, allowing us to access these hills from the south but not the north. There may be two good reasons for doing it this way. One, there's a lot going on in the hills on the south side of the Lone-Lands, and having a gentler slope here would probably mess with a lot of quest areas. And two, if the South Downs are an end-game zone--which I think is quite possible--it makes sense to make it difficult to access from the north in order to keep low-level players from accidentally wandering there. I expect all of the entrances to the South Downs and the Plains of Greyflood to be a little out-of-the-way. This is certainly the case with Andrath, the King's Way Gate, and the path from the Fishing Hole. Even the sharp drop-off between the Gloomglens into the Plains of Greyflood discourages players from accidentally wandering too far north. So I imagine the intent may be for us to be able to reach these hills from the South Downs but not from the Bree-Lands and Lone-Lands.

3. I've found at least one more likely entrance to the South Downs. If you go to 36.1S, 39.8W, near the entrance to Annunlos in the Lone-Lands, you can see what appears to be a path leading south that is currently blocked by a landslide. I'm guessing they'll remove the landslide when they release the South Downs and make this an entrance. It looks like this path might slope up into the hills, which would suggest we'll have access to them.

4. I don't think the development around the Southfarthing is new. I've been looking at this area on the terrain map recently, especially since it became clear to me that they're doing work in the South Downs, and I think it looks the same to me as it looked before Garan updated the terrain map. Though I would, of course, love to see the Southfarthing added to the game.

5. I've always imagined we might experience the Scouring of the Shire in the Southfarthing. I'm beginning to wonder if we might experience it in the same way we've experienced Mordor Besieged, Tales of Yore: Azanulbizar, and the War of the Three Peaks, as a cloned version of the Shire that takes place during the Scouring and is not accessible from the open world. Either way, I'm eager to see what they do.

[auximenes]

I'm sure you all noticed the odd trio of small flat ?hills? at the SW corner of this image. I wonder what that will turn into?

[miriadel]

I love this thread!

[Yansansan]

Came across this thread, which inspired me to pop on over the border and see what it looks like myself. Here's a pic with the draw distance increased so that you can see Weathertop in the distance.

[Jargonaut]

"Pop over the border"? As if it's something you can do casually?

[Yansansan]

"Pop over the border"? As if it's something you can do casually?

If you know where and how, then yes. =)
There's invisible walls to keep you from getting too far outside the borders, and really the only reason is to spot what they're working on.

[Phantion]

All very interesting. I do notice that the landscape distance between Andrath and the Angle is in the same ball-park as Yondershire from, say, the River Lune to Evendim. So that part does look feasible. If the zone includes the missing part of Eregion and all that land between Fordirith, Wind-fells, Gloomglens, and the Gwaithlo plus the Bree-land areas.............. it'll be pretty remarkable.

I have a feeling that the northwestern part will be very Breeland-ish, and it'll be interesting to see how they "phase out" the Bree-land climes and "phase-in" the Enedwaith and Eregion-ish climes in the middle. The South Downs could probably be like the North Moors in Yondershire.

I'm looking forward to it. For me, I think that when it comes to milestones in LOTRO, there are a lot out there.

One thing that's been true these past 15 years is that we've really only had a 3rd of Eriador. It's strange to think of it that way, but it's very true. When you add-in the coastal lands and Lindon and the missing stuff say between Forochel and Angmar and Forochel and Ered Luin / Yondershire, and then if you follow the coast down via Harlindon and the South Farthing area is more inland from that, and then keep going down Minhiriath to Eryn Vorn and Lond Daer and of course Tharbad far more inland from that and the Druwaith Iaur and where the Isen flows into the Sea and the missing Westmarch of Rohan and all the stuff leading down to Andrast and ultimately via Far Gondor to West Gondor........................ .............................. ........:

That's a ton of areas. Granted, not much happens in those areas that we know of, and so, like Enedwaith, it would probably mean a lot of "inventing original stories" to zones. But that's really a ton of territory - never-mind the whole East and South. I also kind of wish they'd at least add-in a little more terrain to connect the Withered Heath with the Iron Hills from the north, rounding off Erebor, and using the eastern reaches of Ered Mithrin as the "firm bounds of the North" out there.

Well, anyways, I'm hopeful for the Swanfleet and any kind of ambitious "landscape expansion project" of that sort. It really helps make an amazing game even more amazing.

Cheers!

[auximenes]

I can't wait for this terrain to be open. The Lone-lands is such a narrow bottleneck. Not having to travel through there every time will be refreshing. I am so ready to travel all the way from Fornost to Pelargir by royal road.

[Valather89]

Any insight on what is that small lake doing in there? I remember we could see that place briefly when Scenario took one of his big leaps during his casual stroll through Yondershire, too.

It's probably nothing, just them using that place as a testing ground. Still, it made me curious. After all, we still don't know where were they going to take Avorthal if we hadn't rescued him in Kheledûl, do we?

Just some food for thought, even if there are many more urgent places to visit.

[Aleziana]

Very nice predictions over there guys good job.

Thank you Garan for updating google map as always great job.

Now SSG have to do something with this highlighted spot below . It looks very disturbing from above :P



To be honest guys. I know that is exited to make the world bigger and bigger and fill the gaps, but the Widwood type areas feel like empty to me lore wise. What i mean is that they don't have place on the main book stories and if they have to make more areas like those and maybe bigger i believe they need to fit those areas with the books. Maybe add new chapters inside Volume 1, especially if they plan to make a huge regions like North downs. Or what they can do is to make a new Book quest chain apart from VOL1 with characters that our toons can follow a path through those new sub-regions.

[provamail10]

Thank you for the thread, guys, which IMHO is the best in the forums.

I'd love to see a zone in Eriador being level cap. There should be no problem at all, as you can follow a broad path from Lothlorien (lv 60) to Vales of Anduin (lv 120) and nobody has complained about it.

It seems likely that first we'll get Swanfleet.