It has been an interesting week for those of us who dig deep into the bowels of the internet to find news regarding our favorite MMO’s. With World of Warcraft continuing to dominate the #1 slot in the market and patch 2.4 on the horizon, most of its younger and slightly disgruntled brethren are being swept under the rug. I guess it’s up to me to get my hands dirty and bring this news to you. It’s a public service, not something I enjoy. I swear.

Okay, that’s a lie. I love this stuff, can’t get enough of it. Join me after the jump!

We’ll start off with an expansion for an MMO that many people didn’t think would make it against the big guns of World of Warcraft: Lord of the Rings Online. LotRo will get its first expansion sometime before the end of the year, titled “The Mines of Moria.” Seriously, how can a game fail with a name like that? Much, much better than “The Burning Crusade.”

As with many expansions, this is going to bring a lot to the table for fans of LotRo. The level cap will be raised from 50 to 60, there’s a new Legendary loot system, which sounds like some of your gear will level up along with you, and two new classes join the ranks, Warden and Rune-Keeper. Of course, that’s not all. As the name suggest, players will now be able to trek deep into the Mines of Moria to battle goblins, monsters, and even the mighty Balrog itself. I bet that fight will take you an hour, Gandalf did it in 2 minutes.

Next up on the list is City of Heroes. The news came out on the 19th that NCsoft will start offering paid character slots shortly after the release of Issue 12 (The City of Heroes equivalent of patches). It looks like if you absolutely need more character slots, you’ll be able to buy them. While some people may scoff at this, I think it’s a great idea. City of Heroes isn’t the most popular MMO on the market, and if their fans want to dole out some extra money to keep their favorite game alive, I salute that. I don’t know if this applies for City of Villains, but it seems logical. The Villains will probably just beat up the heroes and take their slots anyway.

Onward to Age of Conan, which had its system requirements revealed. Even though the game looks awesome, your machine isn’t going to need a whole lot of muscle to run it. Required is a 3 Ghz Pentium IV, 1 gig of ram, and a video card with shader model 2.0 and 128 ram. Recommended Settings bumps things up a little bit, but you get the gist. Looks like the 12 of us out there interested in Conan, should be able to run it without much trouble when it hits on May 20th.

That’s about all I can cram into it this week. Other news includes an update on the Warhammer Online Beta, Pirates of the Burning Sea gets a nice, big patch. Last but certainly not least, my pick for “Best Upcoming MMO,” Stargate Worlds is showing off a couple new screenshots and concept arts. Tune in next week to see just how far the depth of my nerdom goes.

Sources: Massively (LotRo), CoH Forums, Yougamers.com(AoC)