LOTR with improved print quality (preferably all-new hand-drawn art, will never happen but it's nice to dream) and improved sound quality. A killer game and a killer theme hobbled by poorly rendered art and sound.

And imagine all the friends Stern would make in Jersey if they got a LOTR Vault Edition out before The Hobbit!

Because we want improved playfield artwork and sound quality!

I don't know enough about Stern's costs to know if they'd need to charge more than $5k for a an updated LOTR. It's not clear to me that the higher cost of LEs is a direct reflection of additional manufacturing cost (though clearly there is some) vs a premium cost for a "premium" product. And of course, whether or not they need to charge more they might decide the market will bear a higher MSRP for LOTR than for IM or other titles.

Regardless, it would be fun to see what they could do with LOTR in a time of slightly looser budgets for pinball manufacture.

I mean like 2014! Hey, I wasn't following pinball actively in 2004 so maybe there was a reason other than money constraints that the LOTR playfields have fuzzy resolution and the callouts are less than stellar quality. What I can say is I remember thinking the playfield looked kind of cheap when I played the game in a bar ~ 10 years ago, and if they can make one now that looks and sounds better (and I'm pretty sure they can) then why not!