There has been a noticeable shift in design philosophy in LoTRO since MoM launched. The most visible culprit being the radiance system. There have also been a lot of odd experiments, some of which worked out well (e.g., letting designers from DDO create new three man instances that feature puzzles) and some of which frankly haven’t (e.g., the first iteration of the Lothlorian gift box system). We are also seeing a lot more bugs creep into patches than we are used too. Finally, we know that Turbine has gotten a lot of outside funding for one or two “secret projects” that they are going full steam ahead on.
All of these observations indicate that a new team is likely in charge of LoTRO these days, and that the "A team" that designed it is off doing something else. It's also very likely that some of the more experienced "live team" devs from DDO have been been brought over to try and take up slack from the departure of the A team. As an aside, the major revamp of DDO that is underway also implies that fresh blood is likely in charge of that product these days.
I don't see the fact that a new team is running the show as a bad thing in of itself. It does mean that we are likely going to continue to see surprising design decisions come down the pipe, as well as slightly buggier patches than we got in the SoA days. However, bugs in patches don't bother me as long as they get fixed quickly. And surprises can be good or bad.
