Exclusive News from SDCC

2025/07/31

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This year some of the RtM Team members took a trip to San Diego Comic Con to join a panel hosted by TheOneRing.net titled “Middle-earth: The Adventure Ahead” and meet up with players and fans of the game at Middle-earth Enterprises Hobbit-scale Prancing Pony booth!

As part of the panel, Game Director, Jon-Paul Dumont, shared some exclusive news about the upcoming paid story expansion for The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria™. The expansion, Durin’s Folk, will feature more than just a story expansion, read on below to learn about some of the exciting features shared with the audience at SDCC and don’t forget you can Wishlist Now on Steam (Don’t worry, the expansion is coming to all platforms at the same time and we’ll share more platform wishlist options as we have them!)

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Community Feedback

Over the past 3 years, dating back to early Beta tests, we’ve always had a great relationship with our players and tried to listen to their feedback and work that into our releases. It was our goal to create a game made by fans (we’re all big LOTR fans of course!) by using the input and feedback of the player community to make the game better. While we can’t always build everything immediately, we’re constantly inspired by our fans and the folks who have put in thousands of hours exploring Moria. The passion and support from our community fuels the RtM team and keeps us going!

We’ve updated the game 22 times so far, and we always aim to continue to improve the game based on feedback from our community. This year we wanted to take our player’s feedback even further, and as a result this expansion will contain some of the most common requests we’ve received…

‍Please note that while we aim to stay as spoiler free as possible, there may be some light spoilers about RtM gameplay below.

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Durin’s Folk‍

The expansion starts where the game left off and tells the story of what happens in Moria after the events of the main game when our players make it to the Dimrill Gate? There’ll be lots to explore in this additional story!

As you can see from our teaser trailer above, the Dwarves of Middle-earth are ready to roll up their sleeves and help to restore Moria to its former glory!

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NPCs‍

Yep, you read that right, NPCs are coming to Moria. We don’t think you have to look far in our community to find someone asking about NPCs, it is one of our top requested features from players.

Players can recruit as many as 20 Dwarves, from every clan, to join your small company. . While the story continues after the end of the main game, players who haven’t finished the campaign yet upon the expansion's release can search and rescue survivors, allowing them to add NPCs to their game during their adventure.

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Trading‍

Players asked us to add somewhere to trade the treasure of the mountain they’ve collected in their adventures through Moria, and now you’ll be able to do just that! As well as recruiting NPCs, players will be able to craft and trade with the Dwarves of Middle-earth once the Dimrill Gate opens at the end of the main campaign. So while elements of the expansion will appear throughout the campaign, you may wish to “Get to the Gate” before launch to avail of these trading opportunities!

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Left to Right: Matt Graf, Jon-Paul Dumont and Beol Miller

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More to come…‍

Keep an eye on our Discord for more information about other features and gameplay mechanics included in the expansion and a release date announcement, and we’ll share more with our community over the next few months! Of course you can also Wishlist Now on Steam to ensure you get a notification when the expansion releases.

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SDCC Round-up

We also wanted to take this opportunity to thank TheOneRing.net for inviting us to be part of the “Middle Earth: The Adventure Ahead” panel to share this exclusive news with fans of The Lord of the Rings. It was an honor to be part of a panel with others who love Tolkien’s world as much as we do.

To everyone who came to the Prancing Pony booth to meet Jon-Paul and Art Director, Bradley Fulton, during the week, thank you for taking the time to stop by and say “hi”! It was wonderful to meet you all and to hear how much you’ve enjoyed playing RtM. Connecting with the community has always been important to our team, and SDCC allowed us to do that on a whole new level!