Say hello to your old friend the Faction Grind.

Turbine has a new developer diary out which discusses the addition of a reputation system to their popular Tolkien-inspired MMOG, Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. They describe the new system in detail and address potential concerns that they're adding a "grind" to their game.

The amount of effort required to pursue reputation rewards tends to be fairly high, but we try to keep it as accessible as possible. Most of the reputations can be pursued by solo players fighting non-elite monsters on the landscape - indeed, they can even be pursued by crafters or simply by buying faction trophies from the auction house and turning them in. Call it the "slow but steady" approach to end-game rewards, if you will.

For the full developer diary, head over to the official LoTRO site.