Server Downtime: Tuesday, March 6th

Community Manager +Cordovan posted on the forums yesterday evening:

The LOTRO Game Servers will be brought down on Tuesday, March 6th from 6:00 AM – 2:00 PM Eastern (-5 GMT) for an update to the game. Release Notes will be published on Monday. Thanks for your patience, and we’ll see you back in the game soon!

While Update 22 isn’t officially mentioned in this post, the expectation is that we will see it with this update.

Downtime Notice: Sunday, October 15th 7:00 AM – 11:00 AM Eastern (-4 GMT)

 

 

Community Manager Cordovan posted on the forums about some upcoming downtime

The LOTRO game worlds will be unavailable from 7:00 AM – 11:00 AM Eastern (-4 GMT) on Sunday, October 15th for a hotfix. Thank you for your patience, and we will see you in the game soon.
And the notes on what’s being fixed are as follows:

This update contains:

  • Incomparable armor from the Plateau of Gorgoroth Instances and Gorgoroth Steel-bound Lootboxes have their proper stats restored.
  • Cloaks that were incorrectly categorized as medium or heavy armor have been re-categorized as light armor.
  • German voice-over audio for the Plateau of Gorgoroth Instances is now correctly in German.

Public Notices:

  • If a quest is on your Filtered quest list, then you will be unable to interact with that quest’s items on landscape. To interact with quest items remove the quest from the filtered list (Alt+R) and relog.
  • Even though Monster Players can acquire Gorgoroth Steel-bound Lootboxes, the boxes do not yet contain appropriate loot for Monster Players, and thus Monster Players cannot acquire Black Steel Keys.
  • If you are using custom UI skins, the Filter buttons will not display properly in the Quest Log or in the quest bestowal UI.
  • Some game text is not yet localized (Fall festival items and new Mordor barter currencies), and some localized text is in fact incorrect in French and German (cursed items, Tome of the Gourd-lurker, mount source information in the mount collection, new fall festival daily and multiday wrapper quests).

Downtime Notice – Friday Friday, October 13th 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT)

 

 

Community Manager Cordovan posted on the forums about some upcoming downtime

 

The LOTRO game worlds will be brought down on Friday, October 13th from 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to release Update 21.2.1.

 

As you can see he also, kindly posted the release notes as well

News and Notes:

Crafting

  • Housing decoration crafting stations can be used by crafters of any proficiency to make items of any tier within their respective professions.

Events

  • The Harvestmath Festival Quest “A Spirited Harvest” will no longer be removed from your quest log, and reset during each login, if you have it underway.
  • The Harvestmath Festival cosmetic pet Tome of the Gourd-lurker no longer promises you a journey which it cannot deliver. It now accurately tells you it will grant you a Gourd-lurker cosmetic pet.
  • Harvestmath Festival vendors in Thorin’s Hall, Duillond, and at the Party Tree have been given new stock by Alf Mossman, and now carry gift box versions of the Autumn Leafmail Fall Festival cosmetics.

Items

  • Ash of Gorgoroth is now Account-bound. For this change to take effect, you must log in every character on your account that has Ashes of Gorgoroth in their inventory or Barter Wallet.
  • The item level 326 Legendary quality rings previously available from the High-enchanter (Iswa, Linta, or Turca) can now be exchanged, along with 800 Ashes of Gorgoroth, for the new item level 330 version of the ring. Note that this exchange only affects rings acquired from the High-enchanter and not any other rings of the same name.
  • Incomparable gear purchased from the High-enchanter at unintentionally low Ash of Gorgoroth prices have been reduced slightly in power to approximately match the item level 330 rare gear available for barter. All Essences slotted into that gear remain intact.
    • This gear can be distinguished because it now carries the named “Cursed” as a prefix.
    • Players can continue to use their Cursed gear without ill effect. When you choose to disenchant Cursed gear, you will receive its original purchase price in Ash of Gorgoroth and a number of Empowered Shadow Essence Boxes equal to the number of Essence slots on the Cursed piece. These will come packaged in a High-enchanter’s Item Exchange Box.
  • The High-enchanter’s prices for item level 330 Incomparable jewellery and armour have been adjusted. Incomparable pieces barter for three times the cost of the rare equivalent.
  • Equipment that was incorrectly using the values for rare heavy armour is now using the correct light, medium, or heavy armour values of the appropriate quality.

Quests and Adventure Areas

  • The Dol Amroth quest “Death from Above” should now be completable even after reaching level 110 or higher.

UI

  • Monster Players and Session Players can now access the new Filter UI (Alt+R).
  • German clients can now see the Small Fellowship text on the Quest Bestow panel.
  • Quest Log filter buttons cannot be pressed until a Quest has been selected.
  • Quest Log filter buttons should draw at the bottom left when using custom UI skins.
  • Players can now cancel and filter the quest “Hobnanigans is Here!”.

 

This patch, of course, is to mainly to fix the Ash Of Gorgoroth debacle. Another big thing is the ability to cancel and filter the quest “Hobnanigans is Here!”, I’ll admit I might miss seeing that message each time I level, I started to say that instead of Ding when I leveled 🙂

 

Downtime Notice: Tuesday April 25th for Update 20.1.1. 7:00am-11:00am Eastern

 

 

Community Manager Cordovan posted on the forums about some upcoming downtime

 

The LOTRO Game Servers will be brought down on Tuesday, April 25th from 7:00 AM – 11:00 AM Eastern (-5 GMT) to launch Update 20.1.1. Click here for the Release Notes. Thanks for your patience, and we’ll see you back in the game soon!

 

As you can see he also, kindly posted the release notes as well

 

News and Notes:

Anniversary Event

  • There are now no quest requirements to travel to the Dead Marshes from the Cave of the Avorrim.
  • The Lone-lands Reflecting Pool now offers any version of the quests for Instance: Red-pass or Instance: Retaking Weathertop that you have not already completed. This allows players who previously completed group versions of the instances to complete Year 2 Trifles: Reflections. This also means that if you want to use the Lone-lands Reflecting Pool to replay an Epic Instance, and you have not completed all versions of these quests, you will need to accept the quests before the Reflecting Pool will list the re-playable encounters. You can cancel any quest you do not want to complete after you are done with the Reflecting Pool.

Housing

  • Cape of Belfalas – Kinship House: The entire second story floor now accepts floor colour and floor surface appearances again.

Items

  • The original colors of The Ranger’s Cloak and the War-cloak of Isildur have been restored.

Quests

  • Evendim – A Formal Complaint: Defeating Will Tuffin in a single attack will no longer cause him to run back inside without properly updating the quest objective.

Miscellaneous

  • Fixed some German localization issues.

Update 20 to be released on Tuesday, March 21st

Hear ye, hear ye!

In last weeks Twitch stream Cordovan did say that since they had a release candidate version of the build this weekend will probably not see the build. Also, the update was, for some difficulties they encountered, moved to not-Monday. Now the update is announced to release tomorrow, Tuesday, March 21st. You can read the downtime announcement here. The release notes you can find on this link don’t say what has been changed since the beta 2 build we wrote about. With Update 20 coming out and some other events we may be looking at U20, spring festival and anniversary all coming out in the period of next three weeks?

It would be great to know two things, though. How often will the Ornate Inlay drop, since we didn’t really get to raid on BR much. But maybe what I would like to know more is what could we expect from the new epic quest line. Since this is a pretty important part of the book, the epic rewards should be massive. Is there a unique item behind it? The only thing not yet updated from the gear is the Class Item. Do we get a few upgrade items like star-lit or remembrance crystals? Cosmetic or housing items?

Or do we just get Sauron’s middle finger with a side dish of lag?