LOTRO Players News Episode 74: Update 15 Review

To help support LOTRO Players, simply go to the donation page where you can support The Players Alliance on Patreon. There you will find rewards including a mention on the podcast of your choice, or even guest for an episode on LOTRO Players News or Adventures.

Feedback

Reviews

This week we did not receive any reviews on iTunes.

Featured Comments

Kaleigh left a comment on this week’s poll:

I voted D, for two main reasons:

What was in U15:

Quest areas

Solo/Duo Pelargir battle, in which half of the objectives were impossible to complete and also impossible to earn a Platinum overall medal.

What was supposed to be U15:

Quest areas

Solo/Duo and Fellowship Battle

Music System upgrade (this is getting reverted)

Level Cap increase, which was later changed to the Imbuing system

Something else which is escaping me at the moment….

What was there seems very small. There cannot be any more than half as many quests as their were in Western Gondor, can there? [Now someone will actually provide quest counts for each and make me feel silly :)]

Don’t get me wrong. What was there was quite good. There is just very little substance to it, to my mind, at least.

Tinybel left a comment on this week’s poll:

“With the music revamp I’d give the update an F, that whole thing was horrible for the community.

Leaving that aside though I gave it a B also it might as well be a C.

Despite the bugs and it being too easy I do enjoy the Pelargir battle.

I really do enjoy the new quests and zones also I would agree it looks a bit small.

Heard good things about the beorning although I haven’t gotten one myself.

So because it’s somewhat too small and quite buggy I’d say a C but I’m having fun and that’s the most important so I opted for a B.”

Emails

Ali writes:

“Hail Friends! It’s been long time since I got the chance to write you guys and girls but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been listening to you. I had been busy with studies and some extra volunteering work that I started but I did get the chance to log into LOTRO and tried out the beer-man, arggg bear-man. So far I am loving it, but my only complain would be that he doesn’t look that different from a man captain. I hope Turbine changes its look a abit to make it taller and make the bear also more unique and bigger.

Speaking of bigger, somebody told me recently that my kin Casual Raiders is now considered one of Branywine’s bigger kins. Yay!! It’s been a fun experience to gather casual gamers on a server like Brandywine.

Speaking of fun, as some of you know from my twitter, I have been writing part 4 of my poem saga “Estel” and I am sending it along with the previous parts (Hurrah Pineleaf!) Hope those 4 fans of LOTRO Poems aren’t disappointed 😉

Speaking of disappointing,listeners of podcast please feel free to send me their LOTRO/Tolkien inspired poems, even short ones, tolegendraiderx@gmail.com , I’d love to feature more poems from other fans of the podcast.

As always, excellent podcasts, love them and keep up the good work.

-Ali”

Kazren wrote in saying:

“Hi,

I saw you were grading the last update. I have been very disappointed in their treatment of Beornings since just after level 70. Suddenly, no more Beorning armour. I thought I would have my Thane from Hytbold go and barter for the Beorning armour, which looked to have good stats. Surprise! When he got the armour it was bound to him (my Thane) and he couldn’t give it to the Beorning, even though he had gotten it for all my other alts as they leveled up to 85.

Another horrendous experience; in Western Rohan trying to do battle on horseback with warg and half-orcs riders is so frustrating. They run from the mounted bee swarm attack, they run right out of whatever their invisible boundaries are, then suddenly you can’t attack them and they streak back to their own little zone, their health fully restored to max, and your poor Beorning has to start from scratch. It took me over an hour near Orsely to kill 12 mounted mobs. I never want to do mounted combat against humanoid enemies again! It was terrible and not fun at all. I have alts of every occupation and I’ve never had to deal with that before. Having them flee in terror from bee swarms does NOT do the Beorning any favor.

So there’s no armour with might, only Hunter/Burg/Warden armour. In fact, if you try to get armour from the skirm camp, it says quite clearly that’s all they sell for medium class armour. Beornings might as well go naked.

Turbine has failed us seriously by not thinking things through and not planning for armour past level 70. They also need to do something about the awful experience mounted combat is for the Beornings. It’s not bad if you’re chasing down an animal, but when your mounted foes get to regen themselves because they’ve ridden too far, that stinks.

Thank you,

Kazren”

Contact Us

Email us!

podcast@lotroplayers.com

The Players Alliance @PlayersAlly

LOTRO Players @LOTROPlayers

Andang @PvMP_Andang

Braxwolf @Braxwolf

Cithryth @Cithryth

Draculetta @Draculetta_72

Ethelros @Ethelros

Lilikate @LilikateBuggins

Mysteri @Mysterixox

Pineleaf @PineleafNeedles

Final Thoughts

The Players Alliance LIVE Shows

Mondays at 8:30 p.m. Eastern – DDO Players News

Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. Eastern – Guild Wars Players News

Saturdays at 8:30 p.m. Eastern – LOTRO Players News

Join us for our live shows at lotroplayers.com/live

You can also join us on Landroval for LOTRO Players Adventures each Saturday at 5 p.m. Eastern.

Thanks for listening!

2 comments

kaleighstarshine / December 2, 2014

A very nice review show 🙂

I do have a bit of a concern regarding how Essences were portrayed, however. How the Essence system is seen by someone is largely dependent on their play style [Imagine that, right? :)]

For those that really only quest through new landscapes and do little else, Essences can easily be seen as not being worth the time to pursue, or even as an incomplete system. The same could be said of Legendary Items as well, or any other system that provides a basis for improving one’s character. These things simply are not needed for questing once through landscape which is intended to be the least challenging content one will see.

However, in my opinion, once someone decides they will engage in content beyond a once-through of the landscape, Essence quickly become more appealing. The two main factors are the effort needed to acquire the essences, and how much use one can get out of them.

With my suit of Essence Armor, I sit at around 7,900 Agility, maybe 74,000 Physical Mastery and nearly 19,000 Critical Rating, which about doubles and a half again what one will have with normal questing gear. This makes doing daily quests a lot more fun and also cuts the time to do them in half, since can defeat foes twice as fast, if not more so. And, the more you put the Essences to use, the more worthwhile they are and worth the effort to acquire 🙂

And the effort is not really all that much now, to be honest. It takes around 6-7 hours of questing to get a full suit of the best Essence Armor available (or none if you just buy it, or the coins to get it, from the auction hall). Purple essences sell for only silvers there as well, from what I have seen.

Perhaps even more importantly, however, I hope, hope, hope that the Essence system is evidence that Turbine has realized that the ‘eye of the needle’ restriction on choice forced on us with Helm’s Deep (Forced class specializations, no difficulty options in Epic Battles, oversimplification of skills, itemization, stats, and so on) was the wrong choice for everyone.

Braxwolf / December 2, 2014

I probably would have given it a “B” just on the strength of a 1-100 new class (and the solid implementation of that class) alone. Having said that, I didn’t find the new landscape all that interesting, and the transition to the “dark” Central Gondor area too jarring.

LOTRO Players News Episode 74: Update 15 Review

Game News