Kiarane posted this on July 31st, 2010.
Categorized as charity, General.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/Ehi3YF8S-uc/
I’m proud to announce that CSTM is now officially supporting its first cause: Child’s Play. Seeing how this organization brings together two of our great love, namely Hobbit Babies and Gaming, nothing was more natural to us then helping them out and permanently add their banner to our website.
Child’s Play is a group helping out sick children in hospitals. They rely specifically on the gaming community to raise money and buy movies, games and books for hospital’s playroom. You can either contribute with a cash donation via paypal on their website, or you can select a specific hospital in need and buy toys for them from their Amazon wish list.
From their website, Child’s Play explains:
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Goldenstar posted this on July 31st, 2010.
Categorized as Classes, poll, Weekly Poll.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/MkwGgML9Z4M/
In an interview with Mordor or Bust, Executive Producer Kate Piaz stated:
While we have a lot of ideas for new classes, nothing has entered production yet, so I really can’t give a timeline right now for them.
So lets speculate a bit. What role do you think the next LOTRO class should be?
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
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Veneration posted this on July 31st, 2010.
Categorized as General, kinship.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/FFX9mp26lpI/
Now before we get started on this article I’d like to lay down a few basic statements to help you understand where I’m coming from, as well as my experiences with this topic.
For the past 5 years I worked extensively with online gaming communities to better their appeal, organization and overall cohesive interaction. This means doing everything from event coordination to designing and maintaining heavily used, community driven websites. In this time I have discovered a number of effective ways to reduce overhead for the community leaders, increase user activity and provide efficient communication between members.
In this article (and hopefully additional articles if feedback is positive) I plan to highlight ways for Kinships leaders to design and maintain a community website driven by its members with minimal cost and coding. All of the options and ideas listed bellow are do-able with a basic budget of around $50 or less!
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Xusia posted this on July 31st, 2010.
Categorized as lotro caption contest.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://www.misadventuresinlotro.com/2010/07/all-new-misadventures-in-lotro-caption.html
I've been doing some statistical analysis on the traffic to this blog and there appears to be a respectable amount of regular visitors (for which I am very grateful). Bearing this in mind, I thought it may be fun to run some sort of audience participation activity. So I came up with the idea of a caption contest. Simply come up with an amusing caption for the above picture and post it in the comments section. That's not exactly difficult is it? I then get to pick the winner as it's my blog. I have an extremely broad sense of humour, but keep in mind the usual legal disclaimers about what is and isn't suitable.
Hopefully, the response will be as good as that for my previous poll, which received over a dozen votes (Yes I was somewhat overwhelmed by the degree of interest shown!). Unfortunately, at present I cannot offer any sort of prize due to atmospheric conditions and the recession. The winner will simply have to content themselves with "15 minutes of fame" etc. However, if this competition proves successful, then there may be scope for a "Misadventures in LOTRO" T-shirt, as a prize in the future. The competition is open till 19:30 GMT Wednesday 4th August, which is a purely arbitrary time I just plucked out of thin air.
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Goldenstar posted this on July 30th, 2010.
Categorized as achievements, Player Achievements.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/T6VyzvDQ4Es/
Each week we ask you to share your successes in Middle Earth with the rest of the community. Post a comment letting us know what you’ve accomplished this past week. We will pick comments at random to read on the podcast giving you a chance for a little shout out for yourself!
Our shout-outs are only as good as the information we get so remember:
- Don’t forget to add your character name, what server you play on and if you like, add your Kinship if you have one. Hard to give you a Shout-Out if you don’t include it!
- Please keep your posts brief. We won’t be able to read full novels of your adventures. At least make it so we can easily sum it up!
- Do not be afraid to post any of your achievements. We don’t care if you just saved Archet or cleared out Dol Guldur. We want to hear from you!
These shout outs will appear in Episode 48 of A Casual Stroll to Mordor Podcast.
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Goldenstar posted this on July 30th, 2010.
Categorized as DDO, F2P, Free to Play, General, lotro.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/hVYBtNHLU1g/
I don’t read the Wall Street Journal myself so that’s why I have to say thank you to Massively for posting their article mentioning the WSJ article on the new trend in Free-To-Play among MMOs.
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thekhazadguard posted this on July 30th, 2010.
Categorized as Game Ideas and Suggestions, Just for Fun.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://thekhazadguard.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/fantasy-new-class-league/
This post was actually something I wrote ages ago (April 2009 to be exact) on my ‘non-dwarf’ kin: Heroes of Eriador’s forum (Eldar-EU), and to be honest it was great fun to do. At the time I wrote it the we had a discussion about if there was room for more classes, and generally we decided it would be either hybrid, or some serious lore stretching as most the bases had been covered. However for fun, I came up with a class of my own, and it gave me a great appreciation for game devs job challenges.
Wednesday last week I was cleaning my desk at work and I found a piece of paper with some notes I had made about it (yes sad I know! 
) And I thought it might be fun to go back over it and edit it and refine a little for a blog post. I was logged on to do a little more editing on Saturday night this weekend and Imagine my surprise when I saw this post on CSTM. I thought it was pie in the sky, but sounds like they still haven’t written off potential new classes. I think I generally a lot of people are right in saying that they should stick to refining and developing the classes with have… but then again I have serious altoholism.. so one more can’t hurt surely!
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DocHoliday posted this on July 30th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, gambits, gear, group, legacy, legendary items, lotro, Mirkwood, moors, Raids and End-game, threat, Warden.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/tell-the-community-team-wardens/
No surprise here, I have some thoughts on this one 
And I strongly recommend all you Wardens to post your thoughts as well. I’m going to just copy/paste what I have here into the thread on the live forums.
Question 1
Give three examples of changes or improvements you would make to improve the Warden class (e.g. skills and abilities). Please limit your responses to 3 brief examples. Wardens only please!
1. Lower the power costs of the gambit builders themselves, we have lots of ways to drop the gambit costs but they don’t apply to the builders which are the big problems.
2. Another ranged attack would really help us fulfill a secondary ranged DPS role.
3. Some way to recover threat after a death. Something on a long cool-down that pops us back to our pre-death level, or even pre-death level minus some percentage.
Question 2
If you could create one new legacy to add to the Warden’s Legendary Item pool, what would it be? Please specify whether you feel it should be a Pool A or Pool B legacy.
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Merric posted this on July 30th, 2010.
Categorized as General, Interview, live, Lore-Master, podcast.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/m14b4vpm53w/
July 30, 2010 9:00 PM EST (-5 GMT) we will be having a roundtable discussion with several Lore-masters. Joining us will be:
- Urailas
- Ricardo (@wickedpt)
- Requinn
And of course, you! You can participate by listening in live and joining us in the chatroom. All you need to do is go to The LOTRO Network or to our live page and you’re done! If you want to chat, just put in a name and that’s it; otherwise you can just listen.
However, we need your questions! You can either submit them here in a comment, or email them to us at podcast@casualstrolltomordor.com. But don’t worry if you can’t think of one, we’ll be taking questions during the chat as well!
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Merric posted this on July 30th, 2010.
Categorized as class, Codemasters, Community, feedback, turbine, Warden.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/vOoa-idwtqk/
“Tell the Community Team” is where Turbine asks for the players to give them direct and specific feedback about a specific topic. This is really a fantastic opportunity for you to give your thoughts and opinions about the game directly to Turbine to think about.
These “Tell the Community Team” questions focus on Wardens. They plan to focus on all the classes (creeps too) in time so don’t grump if you don’t have a Warden; you’ll get your turn! They have three questions they are looking for you to give them feedback on:
- Give three examples of changes or improvements you would make to improve the Wareden class (e.g. skills and abilities). Please limit your responses to 3 brief examples. Wardens only please! Other classes will get their chance in coming weeks.
- If you could create one new legacy to add to the Warden’s Legendary Item pool, what would it be? Please specify whether you feel it should be a Pool A or Pool B legacy.
- Thinking about set bonuses, what bonuses do you find most useful? Least useful? Please give 2 examples of each and please specify which set you are referring to.
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