So by now, I hope you have been in and enjoyed the anniversary event. There is a bit of controversy that has erupted in the community over the new “scavenger hunt” event.
You will find a new quest give by the party tree, and you will have a list of things you must complete. it’s meant to celbrate LOTRO and take you back to some places and foes you have faced in the past, in theory that sound great, but some of them are in higher level area’s, or your flat you locked out getting there, so low levels are feeling left out.
Dev DrOctothorpe took to the forums to address this backlash.
In the new Scavenger Hunt, we wanted to celebrate the length and breadth of Lord of the Rings Online. That meant looking back over all the moments, regions, and yes, level ranges that cover the ten full years we have run.
When we sat down to decide how to celebrate a decade of our game, we fell in love with the idea of exploring the aspects of the game that you, our players, have told us caused you to fall in love with LOTRO: the story, world, and the many adventures, small jokes, and bits of color–sorry, colour– found across our rendition of Middle-earth.
We encourage lower-level players to make use of the incredible player community in LOTRO and get a little help from friends, kinships, and even kindly strangers to complete quests that go far afield. Also keep in mind that most of the rewards come from completing a single quest for each year. Our goal was to keep the event light and fun, where you could dip your toe in and get something out of it.
But here’s the important thing: the Scavenger Hunt will be back next year. The quests you have completed will remain completed and the ones that remain will be waiting for you. Of course, there will also be an eleventh year to finish, but that’s time for you. It marches onward for all the free peoples, even the Elves.
Too little too late? Makes sense to you? What do you think? Did you think the event was planned out well? or was just poorly planned?
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I think the purpose of an Anniversary event is to have fun, meet new people organically, and run quest content that gives just higher than normal XP gains. I have a 102 so the spread wasn’t a big deal for me until I jumped on my 47, then I noticed it. Year one quests have ONE quest I could solo. I have an amazing Kin I could partner with and I’m a CRAZY altoholic that forms a self-sustaining crafting web, but if you’re just getting going in LotRO you don’t have that kind of support structure. This Dev just basically told new players that the answer to their problems is to just go get some friends, which is much easier said than done, even in our awesome community.
Plus I think swapping one of the Year One quests for the beer run in Year Two would have made MUCH more sense.
Definitely agree with the idea of swapping the beer run to Year 1. I do think that the lower level quests, while easier, should take longer than some of the higher level ones though (at least if each Year has 1 low-level quest), to make sure that the others are incentivized in at least some way.
As a new player, though, it is possible to find that support structure. I’ve been playing for a week and feel blown away by how kind everybody seems to be. Granted, I already have a few friends who I know through Twitter and blogging, but it is there.
Now the issue I do see is that it’s not necessarily fair to rely on other people to get your quests done for you if you barely know them.
I was wondering the same thing BUT we’ve seen you can take a chicken to Isengard & Minas Tirith so to issues at least I don’t think so.
Never really played LOTRO as a chicken, but am interested to know if Mob mechanics in higher-levelled areas are the same when playing as chicken or using a very under-levelled character?
If they are the same then people can do this, but it could be different if you are a chicken?
Does anyone know?
I have made the trip to Rivendell as a level 8 character AND as a chicken (which iirc is level 1). The agro mechanics are pretty much the same. You more or less have to have enough people with you to kill everything within a 20m radius to make sure that you survive. I do mean EVERYTHING. The mobs are more aggressive and agro from further away. The main difference between a lower level character and a chicken, is that there is a chance that the lower level character’s armour and virtues will mitigate some of the damage so that it takes more than 1 hit to kill you.
Actually, chickens do not generate aggro in the same way that under-leveled characters do. This was seen pretty clearly when Sapience was doing his Hobbit-to-Isengard runs. While chickens will certainly go splat if they run into mobs in higher-level zones, mobs from halfway across the zone will not come hunting the chicken the way they will a low-level player. The main hazard for chickens on the Rivendell run is the High Moor, which has stealthed lynxes that don’t show up as red dots on the map, making them harder to avoid.
When I seen the chicken runs…you get a Fellowship teogether and position them all around you…in front, on the sides and behind you so they pull and pick off all the mobs around you.
You can take a chicken to the Black Gate where it doesn’t suffer from the instadeath field because it counts as a Creep, if what I have been told is correct.
Doesn’t mean you can take a lowbie into Moria, or a bunch of other places which are level-locked 🙁
So i’m celebrating my 8th year as a lotro player this year (my othet half is celebrating his 10th) we duo together on some level 30 characters which we both use disablers for. Having retired our previous characters (my self level 86 he a 105) over the years i have played characters then deleted them as id had to take a long break and forggoten what id actually achieved. This character stemmed from a server move (evernight to laurelin) where we both wantes to start a new character to rp with. Because of this. We feel unable to do the scavenger hunt. I for one dont want my character to visit places she hasnt been before partly for my own excitement of reaching them on level and partly because where my rp currently is, my character wouldnt make sense to visit places so far out.
I do understand that ita supposed to be a reward for thosr that have worked hsrd leveling up over the years. But i think they under estimated how many veterans arent intereated in just getting to the max level and want to spend more time in the world the devs have made.
Having the hunt run againg next year lessens the blow a little. But im still incredibly dissapointed.
The 10th anniversary to me just feels like the 9th because of how little has been added for lower level characters.
I don’t see the controversy – yes, it is difficult for lower levels, especially for those areas where they are too low to be eligible for the Hunter ports – but if we can get Chicken to Minas Tirith we can get low level kinnies to Dol Amroth.
The whiners are having a field day. I feel bad that LOTRO have arranged this complementary event and yet been forced to defend it…
You left out the fact that to complete one of the hunts, you have to complete solo instances of Red-Pass and Retaking Weathertop. The problem lies in the fact that anyone who completed those instances BEFORE the solo instances were available are not able to complete this. I filed a ticket and 3 days later have still not had a response. Before anyone asks, no the fellowship instance does not count. I tried that, just in case.
As for the level issues, I have helped several lower levelled individuals to complete their quests. It was a great opportunity for me to make new friends and help out friends that I already have. My kinship is filled with people who enjoy helping others, no matter what that person’s level is.
I think solo instances are unavailable if you originally did fellowship one. On my 3 year old toon I have 1 of them available only solo, other one only group version. At the time I was doing them definitely both versions were available. Anyway it will be fixed in next patch and there is workaround for now. I don’t know exactly how it works but someone who has available solo version open it and step in then step out. Then he invite you and you can enter the same instance, and it counts for quest. On Landroval someone was offering yesterday this workaround almost all day.
I think someone—maybe Cordovan—said that the Reflecting Pool has been or will be fixed. Actually, that might be what today’s scheduled down-time is for: I’m sure I saw an article about that somewhere 😉
So has anybody worked out how to get into Moria before you unlock it yet?
This is not possible, you have to be at least lvl45 and finish Moria intro. But you don’t have to go there unless you want to do all quests and there are places like Dead Marshes which have much higher level requirement…
Well, the hunt is made of alternative quests, and I think, there should be at least one possibility for low levels to get to the next stage, like the Inn tour on the second year part. Because the scavenger hunt is just made of alternative routes, I can’ t understand why there is no route for low levelers. Otherwise, the boss-killing tour can be made with a little help from the community, I think.
Anyhow, I think it is valid to have also quests with high level content. It is “10 year LOTRO anniversary” and not “entertainment in low level areas for some reason”. You can’t expect to start at LOTRO and claim to fight at the black gate just right after you finished the intro.
I enjoyed the scavenger hunt so far, especially the long past memories and lore combined in it. I really like the love and passion it took to make this for us. Thank you! May all your stones stand strong – or whatever an appropriate hail would sound like. 😉
A little word of critic still remains, as all the little problems still show, like doing the instances solo for an example. I actually had the problem with my 105er to reach the dead marches. I had skipped the Dol Amroth content and went to Minas Tirith immediately, so I was not able to use the horse to get to the dead marches. It was no big deal, a friendly kinnie just called me in. Otherwise I could have made the quests to get in, which would be rather annoying so I was keen to finish the hunt of cause. Anyway, the requirements to use the travel-horse could be lifted, at least just for the event. But I am sure, this will be fixed next year. It surely is not easy to make such a content fail save under all conditions.
I have heard that the quest-lock for that horse has been lifted, so maybe you can finish that up 😉