While last year Mines of Moria expansion to Lord of the Rings Online brought with it two new classes, a major ad campaign, and a big retail push, the fanfare behind 2009 big Middle-earth update is decidedly more tame and humble. Available only through digital purchase and at half the price of Moria when it launched, Siege of Kirkwood has many players thinking this expansion is more akin to a large micro-transaction than a full on content update. But as I have seen over the past few weeks, nothing could be further from the truth. One of the biggest features added to LotRO with this expansion, and probably one of the features in any AAA game that will be talked about and lauded for a while is what Turbine is calling Skirmishes. Fully scalable, repeatable, randomized and story-driven content nuggets of goodness, Skirmishes do for Lord of the Rings Online gold what Instances did for the dungeon years ago. It is an evolution of sorts for the dungeon crawl, and quite frankly I only see an upside to their arrival.
