During today’s Take The Hobbit To Isengard event, Executive Producer Aaron Campbell Dropped a little hint on what they are thinking about for the Beroning class
They are mulling over starting the class around 50 and in the Misty Mountains
There should be a Fourm Post to discuss this soon..
What are your thoughts on this???
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Would be nice if they made this an option(included with the purchase of the class, preferably) as opposed to a requirement.
I definitely would NOT want to have to start at lvl 50 on any new toon. The journey is the best part of the game to me.
ditto, having to start at lv 50 would be a dealbreaker for me
I still don’t understand how this was the right idea for a new class. It would be the same as creating a new class based on Tom Bombadil. As with the previous two classes, upon released everyone is going to trying out a new beorning. At the time of the war of the ring there may have only been one example of a beorning still alive. That in itself breaks lore. It’s also the reason why we haven’t seen a “wizard” class. Starting the class at lvl 50 makes sense as this class should already be fairly powerful. However, they would almost have to create compelling content specifically for this class. Inserting them in the middle of the epic and of course scaling up virtues, equipment, skills etc is going to lead to a ton of lvl capped beornings lacking in virtues, lacking in the understanding of the class that comes from taking a character from lvl 1 to cap and the much loved journey that keeps us making alt after alt. The only way I can see this working “well” is to create entirely seperate quests and content specific to this class, and I don’t see Turbine investing that amount of dev time and money doing that.
Actually, there were many Beornings by the time of the War of the Ring. From the wiki: During the War of the Ring, while wearing the One Ring at Amon Hen upon the seat of seeing, Frodo Baggins saw many things from afar, including the land of the Beornings aflame.
… it is said that for many generations the men of his line had the power of taking bear’s shape, and some were grim men and bad, but most were in heart like Beorn, if less in size and strength.
– The Hobbit
And since Beorn passed before the War of the Ring and his son Grimbeorn was their leader it seems safe to assume there were more than one and therefore not really lore breaking.
Now it is becoming quite possible that it will be premium class (ie buyable and surely not cheap one). Add rune keeper and Gift of Valar and you have Beorning – new way to make money for keeping game alive.
For me, nothing interesting. Class that do not fit lore starting from level 50? If you ask me, it is funnier to make second champ/hunt/lore/minnie and start from 0 to experience first regions once again. As Southi wrote – the journey is the best part of the game.
If they started them off at level 50 (or even level 60), Turbine could avoid having to implement class quests and the majority of class-specific equipment sets. This would give them more time to spend on getting the class to actually play well.
I think Turbine could just do a private introductory instance set in the Misty Mountains to introduce the class and its skills, then drop them off right in Mirkwood.
With only a year to develop this, and in truth only about five months of practical time before something close to gold, this seems the most likely direction they could go. And in truth while I continue to loath the use of a shape shifter I continue to hope that what it boils down too is little more than a new toy for combat with little visual or practical impact.
If they go the pre-leveled route we’ll likely see other races we’ve seen elsewhere pop-up. The Lossoth, people of Angmar, Gondor, Rohan, and the list goes on. Could actually be interesting.
Of course if this is only a store package we see and they link it to Mitril coins…..lol, yeah. Looking forward to that.
If nothing else ruining the journey feels like Karmic justice.
I’m scared I am being a bit catty but TURBINE needs to get the classes they have to actually play well let alone the new teddy bear!
Unless it is tied to a gift of valar, or is of similar price, I am still looking forward to giving it a shot…
Personally, I’d rather start from level 1. I would have a rough time learning a new class at level 50 and have 15 or so skills to start with plus the 3 different trait lines. It would really mess me up for a month or two.
So have the starter area in MM. At the completion, have some sort of story line that gives us a reason to go to Archet.
If they did decide to go with them starting at level 50, I wonder if they’d do a package deal as far as virutes.
+5 to all virtues from the starter area’s
or
+5 to five virtues of your choice
After we finish the starter area in MM,we get a letter in the mail that has us start into Volume II, Moria.
I’m surprised I’ve yet to see/hear anyone bring this up but a “beorning” seems like it should be a playable race instead of a class. I suppose for game mechanics it would be a mite too powerful with shape-shifting skills, but for the sake of reconciling with classes I don’t imagine it would be too much a hassle to make the race traits involve the shape-shifting skills (with pros and cons to each). Additionally, carve out a section of Misty Mountains or a zone attached to Mirkwood that could serve as the home – Have the intro quests deal with that zone on the 1-5 level and end them with travel to one of the Eriador cities – I’m sure something reasonable could be written into the quests to lead that way.
I don’t think the main idea is bad, just that having it as a class doesn’t make much sense to me lore-wise or game-mechanics-wise. (Though, to be fair, it would be another source of over-abundance of Hunters…)
In one of the recent live streams, Aaron mentioned they are thinking about it being its own race. This is because it is not exactly human but also not exactly a new race.
I think this increases the likelihood of a new starter area since each race has one. I hope they go ahead with only letting the Beorning go from level 50 on. I don’t see why it is an issue of skipping content that you can get on the other 9 classes. I think it would be interesting if they gave a new light to an existing story in the 50 range of quests with the intro and then let it flow right in to the rest of the events.
Regardless of everyone’s thoughts on the class, lets me glad it is not a panda :D.
I would be curious as well how such a pre-leveled class would be introduced into the epic line and how things like virtues and class skill deeds would be handled. Would the class basically skip all of the volume 1 epic?
But I was rather ‘meh’ on the idea of a Beorning class to begin with so I suppose it is neither here nor there to me.