I've spent the last few weeks exploring Mirkwood, leveling up my main character, replacing old legendary items, collecting new ixp runes, acquiring the +25 radiance armour pieces, running skirmishes and pioneering the new Barad Guldur 12-man raid with my kinship. In other words, it's been busy, and in that time I've sampled pretty much everything that's available in Siege of Mirkwood. So? Personally, I think this has been the best expansion since before Mines of Moria - in fact, the best expansion since the one which brought us the Rift - and I believe it vindicates those of us who insisted that the game would eventually get its act together again.



First of all, the visual design is absolutely brilliant. The various regions of south Mirkwood are all different in interesting ways, both visually and in terms of content, but they all share a common eeriness. I was particularly impressed by the way that the woods are, well, murky... In other words, they're not pitch-black, causing you to keep walking off cliffs, but actually communicate the feeling that something could be lurking in the gloom just a few yards away from you - as, in fact, it probably is. Actually depicting gloom rather than darkness is no mean feat, graphically, so congratulations yet again to the landmass designers at Turbine.



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