At Digital Life this weekend, we got a chance to sit down with Adam Mersky of the development team at Turbine who works on Lord of the Rings Online. We talked about the general aspects of the game as well as new features in the upcoming Book 11 update.

If you’re not familiar with the game, Lord of the Rings Online allows you to immerse yourself in the Tolkien universe as a member of one of the main races in the game. You interact through a storyline that takes place during the Lord of the Rings books. You’ll get to meet up with Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, and even Gandolf. The game is much more about exploration than player vs player combat, unlike many other MMO’s out there.

Adam walked up through the updates in Book 11 and what we can expect from the game in the coming months. The update will bring housing to the game for yourself and your kinship. You’ll be able to settle down in a town with your kinship and create your own house and yard and decorate it to your pleasure. Each player can own one house, but anyone in the world can visit your home. You can give other players permissions to make changes in your house, so don’t be surprised if you come home and find your walls a different color. The options for changing the interior of your house are very simple, and each element can be changed on a room by room basis. You can add many different types of furniture and artwork to each room. If you want to add a stone troll head on your wall as a trophy, it’s there for you to put up. Pricing for housing and different items will be determined in the next few weeks as development wraps up on the update.

Along with housing, the Book 11 update will bring a new environment, Goblin Town, and new instruments: bagpipes, cowbell, and more cowbell. How can you go wrong with more cowbell? The update will also give the game DirectX 10 support, so those of you with Windows Vista and a fancy new video card can take advantage of better shader models and textures.

A new twelve person raid is being added in this update where your party can fight a Balrog. Yes, you can go after a Balrog! According to Adam, it would take around 6 hours with a party of 12 to take down the beast. So strap in and get ready for a long fight. Gollum will also be added as an NPC to the game in Book 11, so get ready to go hunt him down as well.

One concern raised during the discussion was an increase of gold farmers as the housing market expands in the game. It is inevitable that more gold farmers will show up, but the team at Turbine is looking into measures to minimize this for their players.

Overall, we’re very impressed with the game and the Book 11 update, which is due either in late October or November. Stay tuned as well have a full game review coming soon as well as a Book 11 review when it’s released.