DocHoliday posted this on January 24th, 2012.
Categorized as Equipment, F2P, Free to Play, gear, lord of the rings online, lotro, Raids and End-game, store.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2012/01/24/turbine-finally-talks-about-the-store-armor-issue/
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View
Sapience today put up quite a lengthy post on the armor store issue today, and while there’s quite a bit of PR-speak in there he does address a couple issues. I honestly don’t think this will change anyone’s perception of things, but at least this is a post from Turbine acknowledging the issue and admitting that they went a bit too far.
First off, he pretty much admits that they never intended to say “we’ll never sell armor in the store” like many are upset about. I imagine many will take issue with this statement, but as I talked about earlier (my podcast discussion) I firmly believe they were planning this all along. Not to mention that he also references DDO (just like the Massively interview) which further reinforces my belief that they just poorly communicated their intentions from the start.
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DocHoliday posted this on January 13th, 2012.
Categorized as Equipment, F2P, Free to Play, gear, lord of the rings online, lotro, Skirmishes, turbine.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2012/01/13/counter-point-to-the-lotro-store-armour-argument/
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View
Normally I don’t pay too much attention to what’s in the LOTRO store and more or less ignore the sale emails. If there are things in the Store I want, I’m more than happy to go and get them, and most sales of items pale in comparison to the point bundle sales they do frequently.
For the record, I’ve bought multiple TP packs (and I’m a VIP with my 500 TP/month stipend) and mainly purchase traits and tomes, and the occasional relic removal scroll. For me, these items in the store are purely items that allow me to better enjoy the game that I want to play as I could mostly get them in game if I had enough time and/or patience. They allow me to maintain multiple characters at the end-game and not get totally burnt out on things that I barely enjoy doing once, let again multiple times.
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DocHoliday posted this on December 9th, 2011.
Categorized as Armies of Isengard, Developer Diaries, End Game, Equipment, gear, group, instances, lord of the rings online, lotro, Prince of Rohan, Raid, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Update 5.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/12/09/update-5-barter-currency-dev-diary/
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon
I know many, including myself, have been wondering how all these marks, medallions, and seals will work out and how our current stuff will transition to the new. Luckily Zombie Columbus puts it all out for us with a nice Q&A section to describe all the new currency changes coming with Update 5.
Overall I like the goal of consolidating and unifying between the new instances, the old scalable ones, and skirmishes. I think the biggest concern so far is with the availability of seals which are needed for the top tier armor sets.
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DocHoliday posted this on November 21st, 2011.
Categorized as Armies of Isengard, End Game, Equipment, gear, group, hard-mode, instances, lord of the rings online, lotro, Raid, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Update 5.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/11/21/bullroarer-updates-for-instances-and-skirmishes/
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon
There’s been quite a stir of late regarding the upcoming changes to skirmishes and instances regarding loot and the instance finder. One thing I did want to point out as I’ve done a little skirmishing on Bullroarer – Medallions are rewards from completing Encounters in any skirmish, and I’m guessing those will scale up with the number of people, but they’re available in Solo skirmishes.
We’ll probably never know how much of this was accidental or what was done to respond to the community but Zombie Columbus posted the upcoming changes which will either hit Bullroarer or when Update 5 hits live:
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DocHoliday posted this on November 18th, 2011.
Categorized as Armies of Isengard, End Game, Equipment, Free to Play, gear, group, instances, isengard, lord of the rings online, lotro, moors, podcast, pvp, Raid, Raids and End-game, Rise Of Isengard, Update 5, Warden.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/11/18/interview-with-the-lotro-team/
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon
Once again I’m scheduling some time to chat with folks from Turbine about the various pieces of LOTRO that we all love, and some that we’re not so pleased about 
I’m still gathering my questions, but wanted to give folks an opportunity to get their questions in.
I can’t guarantee I’ll get to everything, nor am I 100% sure who I’ll have access to, but if my last interview is any indication they are open to pulling in people necessary to answer the questions.
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DocHoliday posted this on November 15th, 2011.
Categorized as Armies of Isengard, End Game, epic line, Equipment, gear, group, instances, isengard, legacy, legendary items, lord of the rings online, lotro, Patch Notes, Raid, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Update 5, Warden.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/11/15/update-5-armies-of-isengard-release-notes/
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon
I’m sure many have already found these but I at least wanted to toss in a few comments as I go through them. I will be going through the armor sets and the Warden class here in the next day or so. And remember, these are just the first set of notes so get on Bullroarer, test, and submit those bugs!
Some of the big items in this update are (many talked about here):
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DocHoliday posted this on November 14th, 2011.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, gear, group, hard-mode, instances, lord of the rings online, lotro, Orthanc, Raid, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Update 5.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/11/14/instance-finder-coming-to-lotro/
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon
In an interview with Adam Mersky and Aaron Campbell, TenTonHammer is able to get some interesting information regarding the next update, still tentatively named Update 5. The big items coming are:
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DocHoliday posted this on November 2nd, 2011.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, instances, isengard, lord of the rings online, lotro, lua, Raid, Raids and End-game, Rise Of Isengard, scripting.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/11/02/lotro-lua-updates/
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon
One of the main unsung portions of the Isengard expansion has been the new changes for Lua, but it was one of those that I was very excited for. Granted, those updates also broke Lua (fixed with the recent patch), so that gave the system quite the black eye. After that patch, I’m back to running all my plugins and many (Palantir, Inn of Forsaken, Manager, AltInventor, and Mouse Cursor are the main ones I know of) didn’t require any updates at all to work properly. I have yet to have any issues with the plugins I run – Palantir, BuffBars, TonicBars, Mouse Cursor Highlighter, Inn of the Forsaken, Combat Analysis, AltInventory, and Manager. However, there’s been a couple of small but nice changes that I think once someone starts to play with will result in some VERY cool plugins.
The first thing I wanted to point out was that the chat system is now able to be parsed in-game. While many might not realize how big this is, the initial LOTRO Lua application of this was bringing the popular Combat Analysis plugin fully into the LOTRO client. No longer do you need to run some external executable, and as such not only is it more secure, it is MUCH faster. If you’re at all interested in keeping track of your damage (outgoing and incoming), healing, or power sharing I can’t speak highly enough about this plugin. You can read my review of it in the link above, or head straight to the download page.
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DocHoliday posted this on October 27th, 2011.
Categorized as Draigoch, End Game, Equipment, expansion, F2P, Free to Play, gear, group, Instance, isengard, lord of the rings online, lotro, Raid, Raids and End-game, Rise Of Isengard, store, Virtues.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/10/27/lotro-draigoch-guide-rant/
Normally I’m a pretty big fan of the things Turbine puts out and am generally not too bothered by the LOTRO store, however this last “guide” from Turbine really annoyed me. I’m sure you’ve all seen mention of it as it was blasted out to everyone as part of their normal email communications. It wasn’t until we started chatting about it on twitter that I really started to realize why it was bugging me so much and decided to rant about it a bit.
The guide starts off with some actual decent spoiler free tips, so I thought this would be good. But then it derails quickly into a bunch of store items that can help with your fight without any mention of the fact that many have craftable equivalents. I don’t have a problem with talking about the store, but when that becomes the focus of the article, it really rubs me the wrong way as it makes it seem like Turbine wants you to believe you need these items to succeed in the raid.
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DocHoliday posted this on October 27th, 2011.
Categorized as Equipment, gear, lord of the rings online, lotro, lottery.
Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://docholidaymmo.com/2011/10/27/interesting-lotro-lottery-news/
A couple of recent posts by Sapience point to some new cool toys coming out in the Lotteries. A new lottery is currently running for a new kind of emote – horse emotes!
In addition to the horse emotes, Sapience also chimed in on a pretty big (10 pages) thread on what the community would like to see from the lotteries. He points out the following:
