How low can they go?

Yeah, that’d be someone getting to level 10 in under 5 minutes through opening Hobbit Presents (with xp boosters.)  The xp scales with level as well. “Oh, it’s a bug”, the staunch Turbine defenders immediately exclaim as this being WAI would be a blow to them, yet DDO’s daily dice has given XP for some time now.  But a blue name came in and pronounced it WAI.  Lotro seems to be going the way of GW2, giving you XP any time you even glance at something, which is fine, I guess… except that downleveling exists in the later and not the former.  But wait!  There’s a handy XP disabler called Stone of the Tortoise, for only 495 TP per character in the store!!

Assassin’s Creed in Middle Earth

So this came out the other day, game play of the Shadow of Mordor game:

If you’ve played AC2, there were some definite “Huh, that looks way familiar” moments.  And you’d not be alone.  Randall does go on to tweet that he wasn’t accusing anyone of theft, would like to know if the code got licensed out and that the game looks awesome.

I can’t agree with the later. 😛  After seeing that trailer, my thought was that it looks like it could be a really fun game… if they entirely scraped the Middle Earth setting and storyline.  Instead come up with an original story.  Right now it looks like a blatant cash grab using the popularity of Tolkien’s work (which really, really bothers me as it’s so against the spirit of Tolkien’s work).  It seems there’s excitement out there from “regular” gamers, but any who also tend to love LotR haven’t had many positive comments nor plan to play it.

 

Why u no give for free!?

So hurray, Turbine has benevolently listened to the wishes of their players!  Hurray again, right?  Some players have wanted an XP disabler and it looks like they may get their wish come RoR.  But there’s a catch.  Here’s a description from the Bullroarer store:

“Feel like you’re leveling too fast, and want to slow your character’s progression down? When used, this item disables experience earning from monster kills and quest completions. The item remains in your inventory, and can be used again to dispel the disabler effect, allowing you to earn experience again. The item can be continually used to disable and re-enable experience until the item expires. This inventory item lasts seven days.”

It seems we’re definitely to the point that anything that will improve quality will be monetised by Turbine.   The 6th bag is coming! …but you need to order the legendary RoR edition or pay TP later.  We’ve improved the barter wallet to be what it should have been to begin with! …that will be 995TP please.  You can use your skirmish soldiers on the landscape! …cough up some TP again.  We’re improving the relic system to where you can easily obtain the best relics, so much to the point you can just throw away the ones you currently have when you’re deconning, though lolz, we’re not really gonna do that as it’s gonna take you weeks and weeks to grind out the shards sooo… here’s a super duper Relic Removal scroll in the store for your convenience for some more TP plz!  New Harvest Festival with fun games where you must quickly gather eggs or mushrooms and these games will be tied to deeds! …oh you think those games are fun?  Yep, you know the drill.  Moar TP if you want to play moar!

There’s more coming too.  You know how we have 6 LI slots?  You know how we’re getting legendary bridles for our war steeds?  Those bridles go into your existing LI slots.  So Turbine has added an additional LI but they ain’t giving you additonal slots to make up for this.  I believe there are different types of bridles depending on the sort of war steed you’d like to use which would mean multiple bridles (I could be wrong though!).  Now most classes already need multiple LIs and have at least 4 slots taken up with the remaining two used for leveling other LIs for legacies, etc.  People will be forced to buy additional slots if they want to make use of these bridles.  There’s a thread in the beta forums complaining about this.  One can hope Turbine will do the right thing but after all the other jerky, greedy moves, I won’t be surprised if they don’t.

It’s frustrating to have junk like this reducing my love of the game.  I just wish the store would be used for convenience like they said it was going to be.   I wish Turbine had the attitude that Colin Johanson over with GW2 expressed:

We do appreciate that you’d like to buy lots of new content, but we’d prefer to give a lot of it to you for free, cause that’s what we think a responsible MMO company does!

*sigh* [/rant]

 

Instance News

Sapience on the official forums:

We are working on an instance cluster. Currently it is planned to be part of an update due to release after the Riders of Rohan expansion has shipped.

*sigh* Why? I’m not fond of this method of supposedly giving us new content through the year.  It feels like they’re purposefully stringing things out to make it look like they’re updating more frequently.  To me that will be a faux update, one that should have come out with the new expansion.

So it looks like we’re going to be in for the same problem as RoI.  Hit level cap in a couple of weeks and then have to wait around.  Lame.

My Thoughts on the Riders of Rohan Pre-Order

Mostly it can be summed up into:  What the heck are they thinking?

When I first looked at the different packages my first reaction was astonishment which then changed into disappointment and a bit of anger.  I’m not really disappointed with the game since I like it as a whole.  Sure it has some big problems (non-legendary Legendary weapons and the corresponding grind, boring and neglected pvp, watering down the game, and most importantly the lag and bugs that are becoming frequent) but no game is perfect.  When it comes down to it, I like running around Middle Earth. But, I’ve found it more and more difficult to enjoy the game in the face of Turbine’s increasingly, glaringly obvious greed (or perhaps this is better directed towards WB).  I love Tolkien and his work so it upsets me to see it twisted and used by a greedy company.  A fair bit of what they do is antithetical to his work in my humble opinion.  Yes, I know companies exist to make money and that yes, they should make money.  But I suppose the better ones don’t plainly display their greed and usually at least back up the price with a good product and/or customer service.  Turbine has always lacked in customer service but lately its product is becoming shoddier as well.  I feel they’re being awfully bold to be charging the prices they are given the current state of bugs we’ve seen lately.

They released a video Riders of Rohan Teaser Trailer along with this pre-order announcement:

Okay, so there’s some mounted combat, which I didn’t find too exciting looking unfortunately, and a few shots of new areas.  And what else? What about endgame content? Instance clusters and raids?  Class updates?  New class skills? Crafting? How many quest hubs?  I’ve seen the arguments that Rohan will be three times the size of Moria!! Okay, so… that doesn’t mean much?  Moria was vertical as well which made it feel even larger but this land will be flat.  Also I can look to areas such as Dunbog or Forochel and find a large area with lots of dead space.  When I look at that video I sure see a lot of space… a lot of open space with not a lot in it.  I’m thinking they need all this open space for the mounted combat.  And perhaps areas are not finished (yet with a September release date, I find that quite worrying in regards to polished content.) So size tells me nothing.

Aside from the lack of information, I’m struggling to see why the legendary edition is worth $70, which would buy you a whole new game such as Guild Wars 2.  They seem to be charging a lot more for a lot less  In the past we’ve had new game mechanics introduced:  Moria and its legendary weapons or Mirkwood and its skirmishes, shared storage and wardrobe. Yet those expansions weren’t this expensive.  I believe RoI’s top tier package was $50 and people got a lot more goodies.  Let’s take a look at the extras on the legendary edition:

•  Armour of the Eastemnet – It’s sorta cool but I can do without it. Not paying $30 extra.

• 6th Inventory Bag – I’d wanted this and was glad to hear of its arrival, but I can do without it. I honestly think this should have been in all pre-order versions as supposedly this was one of their incentives to get people to pre-order.  Instead this is just like the expanded wallet.  “Oh we’re listening to our fans and what you’ve asked for is finally coming!” *a few weeks later*  “Here is it but you need to cough up money for it! Hurrah!”  Apparently you can buy this as a stand alone account-wide purchase for 995TP.  More about that later.

• Crystal of Remembrance – It would be nice to have an extra major legacy, but this pay to win stuff turns me off.  You receive no extra points on your weapons to spend on this legacy, so really they’re a glorified legacy replacement scroll or stat scroll. This will also be available in the store.  The store version will be per character though whilst if you buy the preorder, you get one per character I believe.

• Exclusive Rohan Content – Now this is the only thing that makes me go hmmmmm, because this content eventually leaves you with a skill for your warhorse.  We’ve not heard what it will be and a lot of people are worried about it being a pay-to-win skill for our horses.

All  in all, this expensive edition doesn’t look that exciting and has left quite a few people upset that Turbine is charging so much for even more in-game advantage.  But many of us are upset at the $40 for the basic version because at this point it seems we’re being sold a glorified quest pack.

So why is Turbine going against somewhat industry standard for expansion pricing?  How can they justify the increasing costs in the store? Jadzi on the official forums made some great points:

What bothers me is that here we have a pretty clear-cut comparison between RoI and RoR, which make many of the same kinds of offers. Yet, one is exponentially more expensive, despite giving comparatively less. It just feels like we’re being charged a premium without getting much to show for it.

Moreover, how on earth is it justified to charge 495 for Bags 4 and 5, then suddenly double to 995 for Bag 6? Yes, vault upgrades get that high, but at least those are relatively consistent, and inch up by 100 TP per box. How did we just suddenly jump to 995?

And Crystals of Remembrance? 995 a pop? Why? Scrolls of Delving are 195, while Star-lit Crystals and Empowerment Scrolls are 495? What is the justification for these sorts of pricing jumps?

For all of the negative that I’ve ranted about, the one thing I’m positive about is Turbine’s ability to make a great looking area with a good storyline.  They most definitely did that in the Great River area.  I was really pleased with it.  I think that’s what makes this all so difficult.  I don’t want to give in to their greed but I want to keep playing in Middle Earth.  So I’ll wait.  I’ll wait for more information.  It seems that’s what most are doing.  Let’s just hope it’s forthcoming and that they can show us that this is all worth it.

Well done Turbine…

So Update 7 hit this past Monday.  You’d think an update would improve the game, right?  Well, not in Turbine’s case. *sigh*

Introducing a new class: Super Invisible Loremaster!!  No Turbine Points necessary, it’s free to all!

Anytime a Loremaster uses Light of the Rising Dawn or Cracked earth, the character disappears.  You can also see another bug in the 2nd picture.  Something has gone wrong with all legendary weapons across all classes. Firstly when you’re running, it bounces all over your back and even more spectacularly the LI glow doesn’t sync with the weapon.  Characters don’t even hold their weapons properly anymore either.  I had to laugh when I first saw it because it’s so bad.

Stealth characters now appear to have super stealth as well.  I heard players reporting that they could barely see their wargs, that basically they’d turned into floating names.  So I checked out my burg and it was affected too:

I’m really quite astonished at the amount of things Turbine broke and are now being classified bugs:

-Invisible LMs during two frequently used skills

-increased opacity on stealthed characters so that they nearly go invisible

-LI weapon placement and corresponding glow unsynced with the characters

-female hobbits suddenly gaining A LOT of weight overnight

-Ettens pots go from 10 pots per 125 commendations to 5 pots per 125 commendations

-Cosmetics changing colours

-Rep horses changing their look drastically

-Deleting physical masteries, crit ratings, morale and bleeds from already obtained crafted weapons

-Champion Swift Strike taking on the combat animation and speed of Blade Wall, rendering it neither swift or a strike.

-Release star-lit crystals knowing they do not work on champion runes or burglar tools.  Also said crystals drastically increase stats on 3rd/2nd agers (to the point that 2nd agers are nearly as good as 1st agers) yet 1st agers do not enjoy the same increases when crystals are applied.  Crystals are also not rare, so unless your group remembers to change the loot rule, the first person who opens the chest acquires the crystal.  If that member isn’t honest or kind enough to let everyone roll, well, you’re screwed.

Oh you rolled need on that because you needed to sell it on the AH?

I’m sure I’ve missed bugs.  All the old ones are still there as well.  They’ve also made more changes that water down the game but more on that in another entry I think.  But seriously, I cannot fathom how these things came to be messed up… things that were fine before this update.  It seems like Turbine has this need to mess with stuff that isn’t broken and in the meantime, break it, all the while there’s real stuff that needs fixing.  Yes we got a new skirmish (though my boyfriend and I tried it on t2 and it was facerollingly easy. Granted we’re geared about as good as you can get on a LM, but still…), the new maps are very pretty, but overall this was a fail of an update.  I don’t understand how they couldn’t catch this stuff, why they don’t test more, why they need to rush out buggy material.  A kinnie said in game that he doesn’t play the game for its graphics, but for the people.  Sure, but when a company can’t professionally release a working product, that will drive people away.  Diablo III was just released, GW2 and Secret World are coming out soon.  I understand the need to keep up and give players new things to do, but releasing it in a bugged state and breaking things that were previously fine isn’t going to keep people around and will only further damage their confidence in Turbine. [/rant]

Success!

After a fair few nights, lining up for a lot of tries at Shadow Challenge Mode,

many times purposefully wiping in order to preserve the challenge,

Innocent finally prevailed and conquered the challenge mode with a few seconds to spare!

For the first time I actually remembered to get a screenshot of the deed completion popping up on my screen. 😛  We don’t have a video unfortunately due to our camera man not raiding with us that night.  It was such a relief to finally get this done.  I was starting to feel like we were banging our heads on the wall.  It’s quite the stressful fight for an LM as well.  Also your pet won’t stay on the boss even when you take it off assist.  It makes me feel dumb when I notice my bear is sat in the middle of the room doing nothing!  The last thing I want to be paying attention to is if my pet is attacking the boss or not!  Anyway, Innocent is now 3/5 for the challenge modes, which is basically all that is possible until Turbine fixes the Fire and Frost and Saruman fights.

I also received my 3rd(!) first ager.  It’s sorta weird to have what feels like so many to me as never before have I been lucky enough to receive a 1st age token while it’s still currently the best in the game.  I decided to make my rk a new fire stone.  I lucked out with my legacies, but the base stats were a fair bit of a let down.  I don’t get why the devs do this.  You can see the difference between my new stone and my 2nd ager.  It’s going to be hard to give those passives up, but on the whole, the 1st ager is definitely better.  But seriously:  what rk wants agility or parry rating?  or how about might on an LM staff?  Why even bother having these useless things ingame, especially when it deflates players a bit after the elation of getting a new weapon?  Ah well, I’m certainly enjoying the higher dps and menacing tanks even more. 😉

lolz

Great post by RedNeckRonin at the CM forums:

Do you honestly think the majority of players derive any satisfaction from having to complete old content (same old horse race every festival) even more times (three times now, instead of just one) for a horse that looks like Stevie Wonder designed it?

lmaorofl. 😛

And just found out there’s a deed associated with the housing maps…to collect them all. I don’t see how that’s going to be physically possible at 20 tokens each. I have to work, eat, and sleep you know. *rolls eyes*

Seriously Turbine?

The new horse is so ugly! 😛

I’m a horse collector, but I’m seriously thinking about skipping this one because of the amount of grinding it’s going to take to get a horse I’ll never, ever use. It costs 30 anniversary tokens and 3 race tokens. The only way to get said tokens is to do the beer fight or run the races once a day. That’s it. They’ve got some new housing items which look like they’ll be cool (but are also far too expensive). Those I’d actually want. But having to do 30 beer fights for that horse? Meh. They really need to have some alternative activities for earning the coins. Otherwise it seems the beer fights run every 10 minutes. Say I wanted to get one of the housing items that cost 20 tokens. That’s several hours worth of grinding, which just isn’t going to happen. A major grind isn’t the nicest way to celebrate LOTRO’s 4th anniversary, though I suppose it’s keeping with the spirit of the current game.

A wee bit crowded… and the update

A shot of the crafting hall in the 21st on update day of people puzzling over the new LIs. 😀

I’m mostly okay with the new system. I was finally able to make the perfect staff, perfect dps book and perfect raid book. That part took minimal effort given ixp is very easy to get in the new instances. There was one bit that really made me grumble though. I extracted t6 legacies and replaced t6 legacies, but I got a t2 legacy instead. So I had to buy 8 empowerment scrolls which cost me around 14k in marks. I’ve calculated that my new raid book is going to need 15 empowerment scrolls. The bill for that comes to 29250 marks. 😮 I suppose this is what I had wanted though: more control over my weapons with the tradeoff being it takes longer to work on them. Though given we’ll be replacing these weapons with first agers and then when we’re level 70 we’ll start the whole process all over again, I still feel it’s a bit too much work being put into weapons that will be thrown away. I’m still waiting for those legendary weapons that will grow with us…

The relics are easier to get now, but I’ll still be having to buy the relic removal scrolls from the store as the best combination for me is old and new relics. I really do wish they would have kept the old ones. Alts that never got high tiers or that are leveling up will never have the opportunity to get them.

All in all it’s been mostly a good update. The instances have been plenty challenging though my only gripe is that they are overly long, especially the spider boss in the Farm and the final fight of the Temple. I found the new book to be highly enjoyable, especially the session play. It was fantastic. All in all, I’m not sure this update is going to hold people for very long. I know people in my kin have been going quite hard at the instances. At least the raid will keep us busy for quite a while. 🙂