Turbine has released the next video in its dev diary series, previewing its Menace of the Underdark expansion.

Dungeons & Dragons Online releases Update 13. Includes 6th year celebration event, 3 new free quests and many bug fixes.

Release Notes: http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Release_Notes_Update_13_Official

Well it has been a week of announcements for Turbine. First announcing the new expansion and level cap increase for Dungeons & Dragons Online, now Turbine outlines their plan for LOTRO in 2012. In an interview with Massively.com Turbines Kate Paiz shares will be a new anniversary event scheduled for April 2012 to mark LOTROs 5th year (replacing last year’s broken event). The interview also discusses Update 6 as well as the new expansion called Riders of Rohan which will feature mounted combat.

It looks like on top of the new expansion LOTRO will also receive a level cap increase (from 75 to 85), and we will be able to take our skirmish companion characters (Soldiers) out to the LOTRO world.

Having spent some time playing SWTOR (with their companions) I am fairly excited about being able to take my LOTRO healer soldier on open world quests.

Turbine releases their Update 5 Instance Finder Developer Diary. This new Q&A post outlines the details behind LOTRO's new Instance (Group) finder that will make it much easier to find groups for instance encounter & skirmishes.

Although this is a step in the right direction, the initial version of instance finder will not support Raids or have the ability to specify a particular encounter.

Read The Full Developer Diary