This weekend, Lord Of The Rings Online players gathered to commemorate the life of British actor Sir Ian Holm, who passed away aged 88 last Friday. Despite a filmography spanning over five decades, the late actor is best known by many as the definitive Bilbo Baggins – taking the role of the centenarian hobbit in Peter Jackson’s adaptation. Fitting, then, that the denizens of the venerable Middle-Earth MMO have come together in their own fellowships to pay respects.

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Unless you’re in one of those international versions of Big Brother that are still going on, you’ve probably noticed that we’re in the midst of a pandemic of something called the Covid-19 virus. I can tell it’s serious because my dad’s American girlfriend isn’t allowed to visit him, which means he’s bored and phoning me in the middle of the day. Haha, I joke. But he is 70, and has a weak heart, plus he’s immunocompromised on account of catching Lyme disease from a tick once (which is exactly the sort of ridiculous thing that only happens to country dads).

If you’re anything like us, you’re now at home, staring at the walls of your living room because of this social distancing thing. But it’s not just you. In fact, all of RPS is now working from home for the foreseeable future, too. So in the spirit of camaraderie, I’ve pooled some suggestions for video games to play while we’re self-quarantining. We’ve got some multiplayer ones, some board-gamey ones, and, of course, a healthy dollop of free ones.

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Daybreak Game Company, the H1Z1 and PlanetSide 2 mob formerly known as Sony Online Entertainment, have laid off an unconfirmed number of staff. It’s the second wave of layoffs at Daybreak this year, and a real tough time to be laid off. It’s the usual “optimising our structure” sort of reason. Daybreak say they’ll continue to run their current and are working on new games too.

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Things were better in the old days, you’ll have heard if you were born within the past four millennia. Children were more respectful, rulers were more divine, gods were more merciful, and expansions hadn’t changed your favourite MMORPG. Reader, you can go back. You don’t even need to hop in a DeLorean and drive to a Hot Tub Time Machine, as more MMOs are now resurrecting vintages versions (psst read our new impressions of WoW Classic). The latest is The Lord Of The Rings Online, which today launched a ‘Legendary’ server calling back to 2007. You’ll need to pay for access, just like the old days.

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The Lord of the Rings Online was due to finally add Mordor in its new expansion today, over a decade after the MMORPG first launched, but memesters will know full well that walking into Mordor is a difficult feat. The doorknob is at troll height, for starters. So it’s no surprise that developers Standing Stone Games announced at short notice that, contrary to plans, the Mordor expansion will not launch today. They’re busy squishing a bug and hope to offer an updated release date soon. (more…)

Oh! One newsbit we missed over Horacemas is the changes afoot at Turbine. The MMORPG specialists announced that they’re closing down Asheron’s Call, after seventeen years, and its sequel. Meanwhile, the teams behind Dungeons & Dragons Online and The Lord of the Rings Online have started their own new studio, Standing Stone Games, and taken the games with them. That leaves the remains of Turbine making… a Batman mobile game? Standing Stone plan to continue working on DDO and LotRO as before, though they’ve now teamed up with Daybreak Games Company (the former Sony Online Entertainment lot) to publish ’em. … [visit site to read more]