DocHoliday posted this on July 24th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Enedwaith, Equipment, Free to Play, Mirkwood, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, Traits, Virtues, epic line, expansion, gear, group, hard-mode, legendary items, lore, lotro, screenshots, volume 3.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/the-news-pours-in-about-beta-and-enedwaith/
This past week has been quite busy on the news front for LOTRO and I will admit I’ve been quite behind. This has just been a pretty long week for me with my job and as such I’ve barely been able to keep up on the news, let alone comment on it. However, I wanted to touch on a few of the releases as there’s some good (and not so good) updates of late.
First up is the HUGE Developer Diary covering the new region Enedwaith which covers pretty well the new zones, their history and influences, their general storylines, and some of the kinds of enemies you’ll face. I’m looking forward to not only exploring all of the new spaces, but I really like the idea of pulling from Medieval Welsh and Briton influences. I’m also very impressed by the size (bigger and more quests then the North Downs) and all the new artwork as I will admit I’m getting a little tired of not only the darkness of Mirkwood but goblins and orcs 
There are lots of new screenshots in the diary, but these were 2 of my favorites:
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Goldenstar posted this on July 15th, 2010.
Categorized as Enedwaith, F2P, Free to Play, LotRO News, beta, volume 3.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/A870JyXew50/
Berephon released the first of the much anticipated developer diaries about the upcoming additions and changes for LOTRO coming this fall. His post is on the new region, Enedwaith and what sorts of creatures and stories we’ll find travelling through it.
Merric is working on a post on his thoughts from this dev diary but I wanted to make sure you saw it was posted so you can go read it for yourself!
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Goldenstar posted this on July 15th, 2010.
Categorized as F2P, Free to Play, LotRO News, character, quest, screenshot, volume 3.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/3br_U3UWi80/
Today Turbine released a new batch of screenshots from the upcoming Volume 3, Book 2, which will launch this fall. The screens depict the new Character Generation experience and Locked Quest icons.
Click on any of the images to see a larger version. Enjoy!
Character Generation Screenshots
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DocHoliday posted this on July 14th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Enedwaith, Free to Play, Raid, Traits, Virtues, beta, epic line, expansion, gear, group, lore, lotro, screenshots, volume 3.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/beta-and-enedwaith-re-cap/
There’s been a rush of news lately with quite a few putting out updates on the beta, new zone, and Turbine Store. Folks have covered some of these already but I will include my take on them as well.
First up is the interview Mordor of Bust conducted with Kate Paiz, LOTRO’s new Executive Producer who was also part of DDO’s transition to the Free to play model. A couple things that jumped out at me but certainly take a read for yourself:
- Since DDO went F2P (Sept. 2009) they’ve released 5 updates and they’re expecting similar frequency with LOTRO. Now we’ll see how big those updates are but 5 updates in 9 months is pretty darn nice.
- She does mention that they’ve already made changes due to Beta feedback, and that the stat tomes from the Turbine Store are also world drops which is nice to know.
- It is nice to see how much Middle-Earth Enterprises is engaged with the entire process, so I feel comfortable that things will still remain close to the lore.
- Interesting to note the LOTRO hasn’t released in China yet and that they’re still looking for a business model that will work over there. That should provide a nice revenue stream for Turbine when that kicks in.
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DocHoliday posted this on July 8th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Enedwaith, Equipment, Free to Play, General, Mirkwood, Raid, Raids and End-game, Skirmishes, beta, epic line, expansion, legendary items, lore, lotro, radiance, runes, volume 3.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/enedwaith-beta-and-subscription-news/
Well in some cases it does help to be a bit delayed in getting news out as sometimes numbers do change and fluctuate especially when subscription numbers are mentioned. Yesterday, Mordor or Bust posted an article from the PatriotLedger which originally stated 200K new LOTRO subscribers since the F2P announcement – but that has since been clarified to be 100K-200K beta applicants, via Turbine. Now, while not quite as impressive as new subs, when you consider that subscribers were automatically signed-up (and hopefully not counted in this number) that’s still a pretty good sign of new blood to the game. So my thoughts are this will be a pretty substantial influx of new folks to the game and some portion of those will certainly transfer over to subscriptions, or buy things through the cash shop, which will bring new revenue and resources to Turbine. Most people peg the current subscription base around 250K to 500K for LOTRO (still hard to figure out) this will most likely mean about a community twice the size it currently is. Which yes, will bring some annoyances but will all the tools we have to get around those, I’m more excited for all the cool people who will be joining us!
The other piece of news lately that has stirred some commotion was the article over on Massively where they get to sit and chat with the Turbine folks about the new toys and such coming with Enedwaith. If you haven’t read the article, I highly suggest it but I figured I’d share my thoughts on what we’ve learned so far.
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DocHoliday posted this on June 11th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Equipment, Free to Play, Mirkwood, Traits, captain, expansion, legacy, legendary items, lotro, volume 3.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/tell-the-community-thread-captains/
So it looks like the next wave of the Tell the Community Threads are focusing on the various classes. I’m cautiously optimistic about this as I’m not sure when we might see these changes, probably after the legendary item, radiance, and monster play tweaks Kate Paiz mentions in her letter from last week. So that would put this towards the end of this calendar year, but possibly as part of an expansion. But I’m thinking our next expansion is a bit further off as it appears most resources have been tied up in the F2P conversion, so hopefully one of the first couple of updates after the F2P launch will have these class tweaks.
Today’s thread covers the Captain class and since my captain was my original main I figured I’d share my suggestions. I would highly suggest folks contribute to these threads when they regard classes you’re familiar with, as Sapience’s post highlights. It certainly has gotten me thinking that maybe I should dust him off a bit which would give me something to do this summer.
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Merric posted this on June 4th, 2010.
Categorized as Codemasters, Free to Play, Kate Paiz, LotRO News, turbine, volume 3, volume III.
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Full link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cstmfeed/~3/JrT8ki8hxr8/
In conjunction with today’s announcement Kate Paiz, Executive Producer of The Lord of the Rings Online, released a letter on the forums to the general community concerning these changes and her opinions on the matter:
Today we announced a couple of big changes for LOTRO, and I wanted to take a moment to talk about them. Last year my esteemed colleague and friend Jeffrey Steefel moved over to a new project at Turbine and I am now the Executive Producer for LOTRO!
As far as my background goes – I have been a producer in MMO development for 10 years. My career began in the industry working on the social world of There.com, where I designed and managed the implementation of There’s new player experience and commerce suite, including There’s 5000 product in-game catalog. I joined Turbine in 2005 and helped launch Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach. I’d been leading the DDO development team for some time when we decided to transform the game with our hybrid business model, and after Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited launched I joined the LOTRO team as Jeffrey segued onto his next project.
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DocHoliday posted this on June 4th, 2010.
Categorized as Free to Play, General, Mirkwood, Skirmishes, Traits, expansion, lifetime, lotro, moors, pvp, radiance, volume 3.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/turbine-announces-lotro-going-free-to-play/
Ironically we were just having this discussion over on Mordor of Bust but Turbine made it official today with the official announcement that they’re adopting the same pay model as they recently implemented with Dungeons and Dragons Online. Needless to say, twitter has just exploded today with all sorts of discussions and comments.
I’m still a bit conflicted about it, but so far I’m leaning more to the positive side but more on my thoughts later, I’m just going to make this a news and summary post.
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DocHoliday posted this on May 17th, 2010.
Categorized as End Game, Enedwaith, epic line, expansion, lotro, screenshots, volume 3.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/new-zone-info/
So this information came out last week but I wanted to toss it out to give my take on it. I saw the notice on both the live boards as well as over on MMOrsel.com pointing to a PAX East interview with Adam Mersky their Director of Communication. I’m not sure if he was supposed to say this, but he essentially confirms the speculation that we’re headed to Enedwaith next on our way to Isengard which would make a nice smooth segue over to Rohan for an expansion. This forum post has some good pictures highlighting where this area is, but essentially is is the area south of Eregion and south-east of Eriador.
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DocHoliday posted this on March 11th, 2010.
Categorized as Book 9, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, Raids and End-game, Rift, Skirmishes, Warden, epic line, lotro, video, volume 3.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/challenging-adventures-in-the-rift-skirmish/
Since there are a few skirmish barter items I want from the Rift, I figured I’d go through a couple of test runs and capture them via Fraps and CStats to do some comparisons. I wanted to not only compare the archer to the sage to see how they rank for DPS but also see how things had changed with the new tier 2 drop rates.
A few notes first concerning my soldiers as they are a bit different, which will skew the numbers a bit unfortunately. My Archer (my Warden’s soldier) is only level 60 with mainly level 54 skills available. And my Minstrel has a 63 Sage with primarily level 56 skills.
I ran it first on my Warden and as the following 2 videos will show I really didn’t have too many issues. I was a bit rusty, but for the most part it was rather smooth.
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