As Lord of the Rings Online turns the page from 2025 to 2026 this week, it heads into its 19th year with a lot of possibility and unknowns. The developers are no doubt tired after getting a major expansion out the door just a month ago, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a little while before we get any sort of producer’s letter or roadmap for the game as the team recovers.
That said, there’s been a curious development happening in the background that needs some discussion. And that is the fact that Standing Stone Games is quietly rolling out improvements to the user interface after years of talking about it. It’s not making a big deal out of this, probably because it’s all work-in-progress stuff, but for those of us who’ve been asking for such features, it’s hard not to get excited.
If the storyline of Tolkien’s novels was couched in the overarching War of the Ring, perhaps we can look at this as the War of the User Interface. When LOTRO came out in 2007, the UI was elegant and thematically tailored to a more refined fantasy world. It was “Ye Olde” UI in a way, with cup stains on the maps, a proper typeface, and a whole lot of artwork crammed into icons.
But almost from the launch of the game, the UI garnered some criticism that only grew in amount and amplification over the years. The initial limit of only five quest or deed items to be tracked on the screen at any given time was far too low (this was increased to 10 a few years back). Too many important screens were buried in menus or unintuitive places. There were some in-demand features that were blatantly absent. And perhaps the worst offender, none of the UI scaled up even as monitors and resolutions got bigger.
The need for UI improvements — or even an overhaul — became a constant talking point among both the community and developers. Players noted, for example, how hard it was to see the details on any of the teeny tiny icons. And some people left LOTRO unwillingly because they simply couldn’t squint to read the quest text on their larger monitors.
To its credit, SSG hasn’t been sitting still on the UI issue — just struggling to come up with good solutions to a system that wasn’t ever designed to be modular or scalable. Several years back, we did get the option to scale up quest text on a per-session basis. That wasn’t elegant, but it helped address a big issue.
In recent years, we’ve seen the collections panel grow into a versatile interface used for pets, emotes, stable unlocks (which includes one of the most useful, and underrated, maps in the game), birding achievements, and baubles. Then in early 2025, SSG tried to present a much-needed overhaul of the deed panel. This, unfortunately, bugged out hard and was pulled within a week or so after its release, never to return (yet).
But the devs hadn’t given up on figuring out ways to make the UI bend to their will, and in the latter days of 2025, we’ve seen a couple really cool developments that portend a brighter future for the game as a whole.
First, the expansion quietly added the first iteration of the kinship calendar — a tool that the community’s been asking for years to see. SSG didn’t make a big deal out of this, as the calendar is only bare-bones at this point, but it’s a good sign that kinships are getting better tools in the coming months.
Second, late-December testing for Update 46.1 included actual scaling tech for larger resolutions. The normally finnicky LOTRO community unified into generally positive statements of praise about the feature in practice, and I can’t wait to see it actually go live myself. The small UI has been a deal-breaker for a lot of players, and this could re-open the door to lapsed gamers.
Together, these recent steps show that the devs are addressing critical issues and laying down a better foundation for long-term health and growth of the MMORPG. I have a laundry list of other UI improvements I’d like to see done (and I’m sure you do as well), including a complete revamp of the default button layout so that we have quick access to many necessary features such as the collections panel, the legendary reward track, and the new kinship calendar instead of having to delve two or three screens in to find the button to click.
But as I said, this is a positive move in the right direction for the game and a wonderful way to turn into the new year. So here’s to LOTRO one day winning the war against itself… or at least its antiquated user interface design.
Every two weeks, the LOTRO Legendarium goes on an adventure (horrid things, those) through the wondrous, terrifying, inspiring, and, well, legendary online world of Middle-earth. Justin has been playing LOTRO since its launch in 2007! If you have a topic for the column, send it to him at justin@massivelyop.com.