Late to the party.
The response to this from the LotRO gaming community has been quite mixed, but I'm generally in favor of it. Of course, there's also rumors of other MMO's Turbine is currently hush hush on, but many folks are wondering if this means they might be granted additional privileges considering Warner Brother's LotR game rights. For example, any events that reference the Silmarillion or anything outside the narrative texts of the LotR series, Turbine can't do anything with.
For those LotR nerds, for example, instead of "Annatar", we have "Anatherion" or somesuch, for the simple reason that the exact story of the forging of the ring is found in the appendixes and the Silmarillion.
I've found that LotRO's been pretty creative and clever with its use of ingame resources to recreate events and quests. If this means more money or manpower go into any of their existing properties, right the fuck on.
