Unfortunately Lakshman would not comment much to us on the actual game itself, as Turbine is keeping details about new gameplay features silent for now. He did tell us that the game, which now has a 2006 release date, will be shown and talked about in much more detail at May's E3 event. However, he did talk about how the new publishing deal came about. While specific financial terms were not revealed, Lakshman said it came down to VUGames, Turbine and the right owner Tolkien Enterprises "trying to do the best they could for the license,".He added, "They (Tolkien Enterprises) had a lot of faith in what we could do." Lakshman admitted that taking on all the responsibilities for making, marketing and publishing such a high profile product has risks involved. "It's a little scarier for us because of the added responsibility but the rewards are greater as well."

It terms of Middle Earth Online's overall design, Lakshman said that the development team is changing some things in the game, putting things higher up in priority while making other things less of a priority since the departure of VUGames as a publisher. He said that sometimes publishers that are public companies tend to be "middle of the road" in terms of games and Turbine wants to try to be more innovative in design. The team also plans to listen to both the Tolkien fans and gamers for their input.