Dev Diary: Update 10 Instance Cluster

posted this on February 26th, 2013.
Categorized as dev diary, Dev Team, Instance, instance cluster, instances, Joe Barry, jwbarry, LotRO News, Raid, Sleepy, Update 2.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/ql-OduG_R0I/

battle_erebor_03Today’s Developer Diary by Joe “jwbarry” Barry and Sleepy centers on the instance changes coming in Update 10.

The New Instance Cluster

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Turbine Dev Chat Questions and Answers

posted this on December 20th, 2012.
Categorized as aaron campbell, Budgeford, Dev Chat, developer, Horsedev, Joe Barry, jwbarry, lotro, LotRO News, Rick Heaton, Rowan, Sapience, Scarycrow, twitter.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/yqgOnVomg9c/

Thursday afternoon Turbine hosted their first ever Dev Chat over Twitter. I thought it may be helpful for those who were not able to watch or give it their full attention to give a listing of the questions and answers from the chat.

All these come from the @LOTRO account and are limited to 140 characters so if they seem a little brief, there is a reason!

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Turbine Dev Chat Questions and Answers

posted this on December 20th, 2012.
Categorized as aaron campbell, Budgeford, Dev Chat, developer, Horsedev, Joe Barry, jwbarry, lotro, LotRO News, Rick Heaton, Rowan, Sapience, Scarycrow, twitter.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/yqgOnVomg9c/

Thursday afternoon Turbine hosted their first ever Dev Chat over Twitter. I thought it may be helpful for those who were not able to watch or give it their full attention to give a listing of the questions and answers from the chat.

All these come from the @LOTRO account and are limited to 140 characters so if they seem a little brief, there is a reason!

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LOTRO Developer Twitter Chat – Thursday December 20

posted this on December 18th, 2012.
Categorized as aaron campbell, Budgeford, Dev Chat, developer, Horsedev, Joe Barry, jwbarry, lotro, LotRO News, Rick Heaton, Rowan, Sapience, Scarycrow, twitter.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/8VG5mD9Uo7E/

LOTRO is hosting a live developer Twitter Chat this Thursday, December 20th at 3pm Eastern.

As far as I am able to remember, this is the first time such a thing has happened. They’ve done dev chats before of course but this is the first twitter hosted one that I can recall.

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Riders of Rohan Dev Diary and Harvestmath Screenshots

posted this on September 26th, 2012.
Categorized as epic, epic storyline, Harvestmath, Joe Barry, jwbarry, LotRO News, screenshot, screenshots, video, Videos.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/Nl1_XfAXApU/

Today Turbine released a Video Developer Diary focusing on the Epic Storyline as well as some Harvestmath Screenshots.  The video itself discusses the epic storyline’s return to the core story set forth by Tolkien.  Specifically, the storylines will focus on the the turmoils of Rohan and the Fellowship and how they interplay with one another during this time period.  Featured in the video are Joe “jwbarry” Barry, Todd Demelle, Chris Pierson, and Lucas Slominsk.

Also released today were some screenshots of the Harvestmath Festival, which is in full swing on the live servers!

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Dev Diary: Hytbold

posted this on September 20th, 2012.
Categorized as dev diary, Dev Team, Hytbold, Joe Barry, jwbarry, LotRO News, Riders of Rohan.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/70Z_tuhPhf8/

endgame_07The Developer Diary for Hytbold was released today. For those who may not know what town this is, this is the town that Ten Ton Hammer mistakenly reported as Snowbourn (which is another town located in Rohan).  Hytbold’s creator, Joe ‘jwbarry’ Barry describes it as “a new solo-able endgame experience being delivered with Riders of Rohan.”  The town will feature “a large suite of rotating, randomized, daily quests” that will focus around the rebuilding of Hytbold.

If you’re like me and hear the words “endgame” and “daily quests”, visions of World of WarCraft start to surface in your mind of where you spent endless days grinding out a set of the same quests repeatedly until you finally reached the point where you could purchase a steed, a set of shoulder enchants, or some other single reward that usually meant that you were now ready to grind out the next faction.  So why as a LOTRO player with these horrible memories should I bother with this?

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Dev Diary: Fornost

posted this on May 11th, 2012.
Categorized as dev diary, dungeon, Fornost, Joe Barry, Jon "Rock" Steady, jwbarry, LotRO News, Update 7.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/_0EWEzzExKM/

Fornost instanceYesterday, Joe “jwbarry” Barry and Jon “Rock” Steady released a Developer Diary that covers the revamp coming to the Fornost dungeon in Update 7.   Joe Barry opens up the diary discussing the history of Fornost’s initial design.

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Massively Covers Update 5

posted this on November 15th, 2011.
Categorized as aaron campbell, Adam Mersky, Jeff Libby, Joe Barry, LotRO News, massively, syp, turbine, Update 5.

Shorthand Link:
Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/vdqrkwequo8/

In continuing coverage on Update 5, Justin “Syp” Olivetti has written an article covering an interview he did with Adam Mersky, Aaron Campbell, Jeff Libby, and Joe Barry.  In the article he not only covers the Instance Finder (including a screenshot of the UI!), the upcoming Epic Book, but also the fight with Saruman himself!

Of particular interest to me were the quirks that Justin talked about that come along with the Instance Finder; specifically that you can’t seem to choose a specific instance when you queue up in the Instance Finder.  Instead you pick a category and once everyone is matched you get ported to a  dungeon.

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