On the 18th of November a Q & A was held with Severlin Lotros Executive Producer. The below summary is an aggregated list grouped up by their type. As the LI and Gundabad has shown us nothing is set in stone.
Upcoming content
The upcoming expansion, classes and content plans for 2021
Gundabad
Probably the bigger revaeal was that the release for Gundabas is now slated for Fall 2021 instead of Spring 2021
Wanted more time for development, brawler class and too close to release of the mini-xpac and other plans they had.
Race, class and brawler
- Brawler to be in on around Gundabad release, but not tight to it.
- River hobbit is a plan, but not in 2021.
- Race change token 1 more double check for bugs away from being released (soon)
- No specifics discussed as they don’t want to fix or test systems as players set them in stone regarding brawler and other updates.
- Nothing on the agenda for a new creep class on 2021
New content before gundabad
- Landscape zone between Elderslade and Gundabad release
- Missions will be present in this zone (azu-nurzibar)
- New type of content “ lost tales”. Level agnostic playing through several different storyline tales.
- Trying to offer more frequent content (war of three was part of that, see looking back)
- A new 6-man and a raid is planned before Gundabad
- New zone that’s not level 130 (bree-land/evendim)
Revamps and current content
Looking a the current content and systems such as LI’s, Pvmp and class balances
Legendary worlds
- Once caught up to the normal worlds. It will be up to the server population by either leaving it as a seperate server or close it with server transfers.
- Level 100 internal release discussion about Imbuement and set bonus armour
- Tentaive internal date for relaese of level 100 legenary worlds.
Legendary weapon system
- First full internal pass of the whole system made it clear that 2020 plans couldn’t be done well. Back to the planning stage for the big update. Statements in earlier content done before finding out that coding was too complex to make quick updates.
- Starting an LI is too complex and hard to learn.
- Leveling experience of LI has to be better.
- Improve your LI on level or by running top end instead of going back. New things at top end
Pvmp
No overhauls planned for the Pvmp System in it’s total.
- Don’t want to change underlying code now that it’s being looked at the background in U28.2 update
Servers and transfers
Questions regarding servers, issues and transfers
Looking back at server issues and stability
- Infrastructure work done by better protection against malicious attempts.
- Improvement by moving control/master servers to newer hardware
- Redefine server infrastructure caused the team to be behind on the upgrades and converting closed servers.
- The “Evernight” fix was master server upgrades. The loading screen was server based index being off. Causing server and chat traffic to be out of sync.
Server Transfer from closed servers
- Some necessary delayed work to enable these transfers planned for the next week
- All work needed to be done before enabling transfers. No 1 server at a time released from captivity.
Current systems
Comments and questions about Carry-alls, 4k and other UI support, LUA changes, class balance and mounted combat
UI, and 4k support and LUA
- Realise some work is there and trying to realise engineering time for this. Font scaling not working in the current engine.
- Misschenailous UI work such as deed panel, quest tracking or colourisation if they could get extra personal to work on these in 2021.
- 4k work before any LUA work
- No major lua changes planned for 2021. Filtering spam or ddos like triggers in LUA before expanding LUA capabilities
Class balance
- Ongoing process
- We want to make sure the tank-balance on the endgame is there. It’s gotten better, but some work is still to be done.
- All trees should be useful or have a place, but out of scope for the near future.
Mounted combat
- No plans for New mounted combat content
- Dial down sluggish turning
- Work has been done on the backend to address some issues.
Carry-all
- Sell from carry-all won’t happen.
- Task item sale part of “a holiday sale”
Looking back
At several points questions were asked looking back the communication in general and more specificley about the release of the War of three peaks. Lotrofreequest, gifting and event server and how they ran then and in the future.
Tournament of the twin /event servers
- Now that the tech is there Severlin sees them doing it again.
- Lots of players at the start, only hardcore players towards the end.
- “Do we want a different legendary server with the current Eye of sauron rules as mentioned”? A different legendary world with another set of rules being discussed
Communication
Severlins call regarding content “We don’t talk about specifics about packages or major updates before an official page is up for it”.Always our policy due to players not having a resource to get their info once they have questions etc. Due to the change in store and issues during that work being done our official info couldn’t be released.
Knowing what i know now, would i have this information available on a forum account page as a placeholder. Yes, we would have done this. At that time we were trying to follow our policy.
War of three peaks smaller scale xpac
Planned as a smaller release, but large enough to bring in people. While still freeing up people to work on other content as opposed to a larger xpac such as Minas Morgul. Content drought player wise is worse than smaller frequent updates.
We feel players didn’t react negatively on the size, but on other regards to the release of the war of three peaks.
Lotrofreequests
Done as Covid free months we’re given as a freebie. And didn’t want to abruptly stop these times. But it wasn’t a marketing master plan. May do it in the future, but for now it’s a one-time thing.
Gifting LP or xpacs and VIP comments
Work being done on allowing players to acquire LP or xpacs on the new storefront that would allow them to gift these players.
Always looking at the value of VIP. Need to update our pages to provide a better overview about all the perks you have.
One comment about keeping VIP perks after VIP ran out. This was done by Severlins predecessor. Players forget about these. He doesn’t want to take away from players, but this is the first time the “ex-vip premium accounts” have discussed this.
Quick bits
- Short single-topic questions that didn’t fit in at other spots
- Shorter dwarf champion animation is a known timing issue.
- Guardian shield-legacies too specific to discuss at this time.
- Paysafe card method in store being worked on
- Payment region specific issues still being looked into. Get in contact with account support.
- Kinship revamp still at the discussion stage
- Alt-friendly activities such as 5-virtue emphasis, mote barter for scrolls and crystals mentioned. Quick experience gain is ok if you wander off the trodden path.
- Tier 5 in the next major update (U28.2 planned)
- Mac OS client eyeing Wine to see how that goes
Fellowship maneuver no update planned. - No new hobbies planned.
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I think “azu-nurzibar” should be Azanulbizar. As in the place where the Dwarves fought the Orcs outside Moria in the Dimril Dale.
Bit hard to be 100% positive from the stream but that sounds closer to what Cordovan said and it fits with the idea of telling “lore stories” and Missions.