You may be familiar with LOTRO’s 20 Questions, where Turbine answers some player questions, either via the official forums or Twitter. This time around they ended up answer far more than 20, 42 in fact, so they went ahead and renamed the whole thing. Naturally there are too many for me to go through here, so again I’ll make notes for some of the interesting facts and teases coming out of them, and if you’re curious I will link to the full response thread.
- Update 13 Details:
- Will contain a small slice of new area content
- Will contain revamps for the North Downs, Trollshaws, AND the Misty Mountains
- North Downs will have quest flow and level range adjustments
- Trollshaws and Misty Mountains will have quest amount and quest direction adjustments
- They are working on ways to allow players to customise the amount of slots in a given bag
- There will be changes made to weave Kinships further into the Housing system updates
- They are working on ways to allow players to contribute and pool their resources into the Kinship
- Player housing added to other regions; possibly.
- They are working on some form of an ‘Ettenmoors Pass’ so non-VIP players can participate in PvP
- Hoarsedev wants to see if he can bring catapults into the Ettenmoors(likely Epic Battle-style)
- The amount of points allocated and spent in Epic Battles will be adjusted through the rest of the year
- Answer regarding instance scaling; A: [JWbarry] – Carn Dum is not likely. It’s old, crufty, and huge, so it presents a lot of challenges that will take significant time to sort through and implement. ToO is more likely as it was built with scaling in mind. That said, there’s a bunch of work we like to put into instances when we scale them, and we’d like to do that cluster as a whole. There’s some reworking to be done in Dargnákh Unleashed and difficulty swings to be made in The Foundy, in addition to bugfix and polish passes through all the instances. While it is less time than making new ones, it is also generally less satisfying to the community as well. Having all instances available and relevant at cap is still something on the wishlist, but it’s not something we can commit to doing more of this year at this point.
- They have plans to develop for areas outside of the main LOTRO storyline, but they will be below the central plot in priority
- They have discussed possibly adding additional crafting abilities beyond our current allotment of three
- LI update is in the ideas phase, so a maybe
- A mail system update to allow more than one item at a time is in the works
- They are working on ways to streamline the server transfer process
- Applications for the new term for the Player Council may open up towards the end of February
- Sapience intends to do more streaming in 2014, beyond the ‘Take the Hobbits to Isengard’ events
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I always figured that ToO would be the next instance cluster to get scaled. Would have liked Moria but I’ll take what I can get.
The way the answer is worded makes it appear as though they might at some point during this or next year start working on scaling ToO, but it’s not a “yes, we will do it”, let alone a “yes, we’re working on it now”.
On the whole the answers have been very disappointing, especially concerning instances.
Right now the best we can hope for appears to be maybe a scaled RoI cluster next year, but no other work on instances old and new alike that are not “epic battles”.
Also, I can’t help feeling that when we hit Gondor with the next expansion we will get more “epic battles” and no other classic instances.
The way Turbine keeps dancing around the subject makes me very sad to say the least.
This game used to have a ton of fun and challenging instances, and at this point we not only don’t get new ones, but the existing ones are by and large ruined by the pervasive imbalance we got with HD (it actually started sometime before HD when they fixed that mob damage bug but totally overshot the target, making Sammy the definition of a faceroll).
As for the other questions, there is nothing there I am genuinely excited about.
🙁
I like seeing all these answers. Looks like there is some good stuff coming. We’ll probably see new instances in 2015 from what I can tell. In the meantime, there are like 90 instances in the game that can be played. Hopefully they continue to work on balance issues and the instances we do have can become more challenging, but its not like we’re lacking content. I play this game to hang out in Middle earth. I’m fine with waiting for instances if it means other cool stuff instead. I’m guessing the “small slice” of new area content will be a flooded version of Isengard. It would be cool to be able to run around in that area outside of session play, but I suspect we will see the actual event in session play. I also want to be able to walk between the Gap of Rohan and Westfold. Since Rhovannion and Eriador are considered separate (the location numbers for the fords of Isen on the Westfold side are way different than the location you get on the Gap of Rohan side) we’ll probably just get a little portal at some point, but it will still be nice. All in all I think this year is going to be spent making improvements to the game and hopefully we’ll get more instances and maybe another expansion next year. In the meantime, I’ll have fun hanging out in Middle earth just like I always do.
Trollshaws, AND the Misty Mountains… We called it!! Though to be fair, we did say Angmar as well 🙂
I was surpised by Misty Mountains as I have recently had lots of fun there …the Area is ‘up a mountain’ it shouldn’t be so easy to get around or stuffed with content…well maybe I am wrong and they improve it greatly…fingers crossed 🙂
A lot of people are complaining about the lack of new raid content – but this is really old news: The producer’s letter eluded to no new raid/instance content fairly clearly.
I love trying the older content in new and challenging ways. My kin on Riddermark is currently trying to get through ToO as a 5-man (of 95s) and are having a tough time of it. So there is challenge to be had. This will give us extra incentive to get the deeds finished b4 they scale it – we NEED the Orthanc model!
U13 will be full of “just the little things” which look like they’ll be appreciated. I’m glad I have some lowbies who will enjoy exploring the NEW North Downs, Trollshaws & Mistys.
I will now be saving my TP for additional crating vocations 🙂
I have not experienced END GAME and am in no rush to get there…so most of the major complaints sail literally over my low levelled head but I am really enjoying LOTRO since HD (ok it still needs balancing!)and really think it is stepping in the right direction with regards to ‘modernizing’ the whole game… they have to keep attracting new players and the MMO market is a different monster today than it was… If they keep sorting out the basics they will be ready to go crazy in 2015 with new content for all of the LOTRO player styles… and for all those new players it has… *crosses fingers and toes*
My biggest question that remains is: When will U13 be rolled out?
I think U13 is in March. I like your attitude of being in no rush to endgame. The journey is really what its all about.
Nothing has been done in 12.3 about facerolling of instances which has destroyed the game since HD.
Are they aware that several classes solo raids and skraids ?!!!
Are they aware that, because of that, the game is dying ?!
But what are they doing ?!!!
Lucky you are playing! I am new and i wanted to join the world but it will not let me. I can not even create an acount! Can anyone help me please? Customer support not responding. Can someone create me an account? I would be really grateful