Mines of Moria at PAX08: The two new classes
As you've probably already heard, there will be two new classes introduced with Mines of Moria: the Warden and the Rune-keeper. These will be welcomed with two additional character slots, bringing the total to seven. These classes are said to be developed with soloability in mind, as proven by the complexity of their new game mechanics.
Warden
The Warden is a medium tank who uses a spear as both his ranged and melee weapon. He uses a chain of skills and combos to unlock a Gambit skill that proves incredibly powerful. Once unlocked, these Gambit skills will remain open as long as you're in the combat stance, so fighting multiple enemies at once just got a bit easier.
Rune-keeper
The Rune-keeper is described as the first real magic-user of the LotRO world, yet Steefel says they're not a wizard in the traditional sense as you'd think of Gandalf. He's more like Galadriel where he can harness runes to cause DPS nuking abilities or moderate healing. The way this works is you have a separate bar that ranges from red to green. The further you go into the red half (by using DPS nuking skills), the more powerful skills you can unlock in that particular range. The same goes for the green side, but it works for healing skills. This is much like other chains of skills already in place with LotRO (think Minstrel song tiers), but works even more effectively with more user-friendly UI elements.