LOTRO Players News Episode 88: Mr. Needles

Started rebuilding Hytbold
With Teriadwyn’s help, plugged the holes in my Hunter Taxi Service
Watched Aratheart, Teriadwyn and company lead an unfortunate chicken to the Hornburg

Teriadwyn

Mythgard Monday! Completed Lone Lands Explorer deeds on my burglar.
Level 50 group 4-manned Urugarth.
Terifluffz reached Rank 4 and Audacity 12.

Pineleaf

Beorning at level 98. Stonedeans was completely blocked due to my preference to avoid killing bears. Finished Gondor and quested in Western Gondor. Ruingalad turned out to be easy in the tanking stance (with an herbalist),
First meeting of the TSO for the year.

Skirmish of the Week

Topic: Which is the best depiction of the Fellowship departure from Rivendell?

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Featured Comments

Berenthalion left a comment on the Former Employee article:

“It’s easy when seeing things such as this to focus on the rather poor development decisions the studio has made over the years, Another that sticks out was from the world building video turbine put out with Corey where the world builder explains how the exec producer demanded a love story was made with a balrog on his whim. But It’s all the invisible good decisions that we enjoy everyday when playing that its easy to forget that keep us coming back for more.

There’s some truly awesome stories throughout the world, and some super cool encounters. Its impossible for any developer to get everything right all the time, so although all in all one has to accept that Turbine could have done significantly better, that doesn’t stop you from enjoying what they have got right, because there’s still plenty of that.”

Emails

Baldigar wrote in saying:

“I’ve been listening to the podcast for over a year now, and I just wanted to key in to let you all know how much I enjoy it. While it is sad to see some of the long-time members leaving or taking breaks, it gives a good opportunity for the podcast to see new perspectives and make it feel fresh. I have really enjoyed all of the new hosts, as well as the segments; everything fits in very naturally. I, in particular, have found the Skirmish of the Week to be a great addition.

Since in the past few weeks, there seems to have been a bigger focus on lore, it got me thinking about something, and I thought it might be a decent question to have discussed on the podcast. I am not a huge lore expert, and I don’t know if this has been answered by Tolkien somewhere, but I wanted to ask:

Do you think that, if Gollum hadn’t died at Mount Doom, he would have been let into Valinor (to heal)? Would he have gone? Would his corruption have been too great to recover from? Would he have been too thinly spread to be able to live without the Ring existing?

My personal opinion is that he should be granted access, because, while he did much bad, he was never what I would consider evil. He was used, but he never seemed to, at any time, want to be doing the bad things he did; it was all Sauron making him do it.

Gollum was certainly essential to the mission of taking the Ring to Mordor, and I don’t think that that can be denied. I think that in and of itself, all of his attempted attacks on Frodo and Sam aside (which weren’t really him), would be a big enough act of redemption to let him in to Valinor. Yes, the Sauron side of him was probably what made him guide them to Mordor in the first place, but that doesn’t mean that he himself didn’t want the result to happen, at least not deep down.

As for whether or not he would live after the Ring was destroyed, I really don’t know. There was still a part of him left, or else he would have been a wraith (as I understand it), but I don’t know if it was simply too little for him to be able to even breath without the focus of the Ring. I don’t think this part of the question could be answered as anything but speculation, unless it was officially said.

And as for if he would have gone… again, I don’t know. If he were strong enough to live after all of the corruption had left him, as I imagine it would (it having been put there by Sauron), then I think he would want to. But, there may be the issue of the corruption and malice either scarring Gollum’s body, which would kill him, or it having festered off of just what was placed by Sauron, meaning there still may be much hatred in him, which may either kill him, or prevent him from entering Valinor. Some say that his hatred of Elves would make him not want to go, or his “allergy” to elvish-made things would make him unable to go; I don’t know if either would still affect him if the Ring were destroyed, and I hope that he would realize that it would be best for him to go and heal, and not for him to wander hopelessly as the Orcs do, until they are cut down or die.

Any way though, I hope his soul wasn’t cast aside as Saruman’s was, because Gollum did far less damage and far less wrong giving the circumstances.

Thanks for reading, sharing, and discussing,

Baldigar Stumblefoot”

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Final Thoughts

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One comment

Kaleigh Starshine / March 9, 2015

Great show, everyone!

Two observations:

Regarding Fellowship Maneuvers… you may have heard the tale of that filthy rich hobbit, Bill Gatesburrow, yes? They say that he makes so much gold per minute that, were he to pause what he was doing to stop and pick up a gold coin at his feet, he would actually lose money?

This is the state of fellowship maneuvers currently. Fellowship Maneuvers have not been properly scaled to level for a long while now, and the great power the class changes have given to each class has further caused maneuvers to be set aside.

It is possible for a single character, with a single blow, to do more damage than an entire fellowship contributing to a damage maneuver. This can be easily verified by looking at your combat log to see how much damage your blow with the maneuver actually did. The bleeds put on creatures by Yellow maneuvers do Common damage, which is mitigated to a great degree.

To put it simply, with regards to Fellowship Maneuvers, the sum is far, far less than its parts. Each character, acting on their own, can do far more healing and damage than what can be done with Fellowship Maneuvers. When you consider the need to stay in the maneuver and do nothing for seconds, the difference is much greater even.

Fellowship Maneuvers are a very unique thing to LOTRO and MMO’s in general. They are a lot of fun to do and it is a great feeling when your fellowship can pull one off. It used to be, in earlier days, they could turn the tide of battle. Now, they are a trap the monsters use to lure unwitting adventures into stasis. It is a great shame Turbine has largely abandoned them.

Then, regarding the ‘secrets’ of Turbine being revealed…

I will again return to the decisions made with Helm’s Deep. In one year’s time, we have gone from a development team deciding to revamp the classes, putting a ton of effort into a non-content creating enterprise,and deciding to set aside traditional group content stating there was virtually no one using that content, into the decision to close servers, where that had always been stated to not be on the table.

Between those who will always point to such things as cause to belittle the ones who made those decisions and those who will say we have to take the bad with the good, and we should focus on the good things, there is a third group. That group is those who believe that such things should be brought to light, examined, and researched so that the mistakes that occurred are not repeated again.

Obviously, the changes brought about with Helm’s Deep were not received the way Turbine thought they would be.

But they should have been. Abandoning content that very few take part in, that costs far more than other types of content to create, and using those savings to make content for the vast majority of players should have been a clear winner.

Where was the mistake(s) made? Data-mining? Interpretation? A lack of true representation on the Players’ Council? Developers wanting more to do what they wished to do rather than what their players wanted? Any number of other things? All of these things?

It would be a grave mistake to dismiss Turbine as being ineffectual as a game producer and company. But it would be just as grave a mistake to sweep these mistakes under the rug and not examine them. By only choosing to see the good in things and ascribing these mistakes as just a part of being ‘corporate’ is a mistake as well, in my opinion. Not all, but a fair part of what is seen as being ‘negative’ in gaming communities is really just a greater willingness to explore mistakes that have been made, and why they were made, in a effort to not repeat them.

LOTRO Players News Episode 88: Mr. Needles

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