Tag: expansion

Mordor: The deed mount

 

Since you’re probably used to my longer articles by now I didn’t want to post only a picture of the Meta deed mount and be done with it, so I waited a little bit for the first patch to go live. Must have something to complain about. 🙂

Before I start the complaining, let’s see this mount I speak of.

 

I was very surprised by the mount. At first disappointed, but later got used to it and learned to like it. For a moment when I received it I wrote a ticket because I didn’t get the gear to equip on my war steed. But the “gear” was there. All the gear is actually a hide. There is no gear on it, it’s just a mutated Agarnaith horse, hence the name The rescued steed of Agarnaith. I ride it now in both versions, war steed and regular mount and I named mine Groot.

 

The patch notes you can read here.

Probably one of the best changes is the cooldown on a travel skill to Allegiance halls, which I spoke about in the last article. The issue was that one quest could take you several hours if you didn’t have hurried traveler bought. The skills have now been renamed and their cooldown is on 5 minutes.

Did I find something to complain about? Well, of course I did.

While fixing one of the daily quests it seems like one in Lhingris has been broken – Trapping the trackers. It remains to be seen after I pick it up again will it be working and was there something that required for it to be picked up again. But while I was able to do it the day before (I didn’t finish it), when I went back after the patch I wasn’t able to do anything to advance the quest.

Some things getting broken in the process everyone should be able to understand. It’s an expansion and there will be some fixes in shorter intervals than usual. But what I do mind is that SSG has never stopped rolling out some hidden changes to the game. Some are more important, some less. But I think we should be made aware of them at least and not play explorers, detectives or what not. In the past floors have been changed, the spider queen in Big Battle Glittering caves was moved a little bit back to not aggro with its adds, in Defence of Minas Tirith the first spawn of soldiers that attack was moved by several seconds, in the Wastes a ramp was added in one of the crafting instaces so that we can go back to start if needed, and one of those hidden ones for now is that the crafted item that was giving you Allegiance Points has been changed to not give 2000, but 1000 AP.

I want to remind you once again that you can finish the introduction to all the Allegiances, it doesn’t have to be just one. If you do this, once you open the crafting instances the optional quests for each allegiance become available. With these you will be able to earn 2000 AP untill you finish the chapter 7 of the Allegiance. Once you finish chapter 7 the quest for that Allegiance becomes unavailable. So, if you hold back of getting that cloak, you can earn more AP and finish the other 3 Allegiances faster or you can earn 2000 fewer points with each chapter 7 you finish. I still didn’t hear back from MoL if this is intended or just a glitch in the matrix.

There is a small complaint I have about the access to Allegiances and crafting dailies. To do this you need to do all of the content, which is no small feat when we’re talking about an expansion with 5 regions. You need to finish the Epic Book, which is a small feat, so I guess those two cancel each other out. And then you need to finish the Black Book of Mordor. This looks very similar to Minas Tirith deeds for trait points and very unfriendly for people with alts who would like to do the instances eventually.

The lava AoE reach in Anglach has been reduced, but the same effect while questing in Dor Amarth remains. We will be taking damage on at least 3 obsidian nodes. They may have tought that in Udun we still do not have enough morale, but by the time we get here we should be able to live through it? I don’t mind it, just not sure if it’s intended.

One of the signs we are supposed to find isn’t really in the marked quest area, so you may want to be aware of that too.

 

And this item has also been fixed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another bad news for Beornings. The might cloak is heavy armour.

 

Mordor: What they didn’t tell you about allegiance and more

So, what do you do when the update first comes out? If you ask me, usually it’s the Epic Book or the epic story. But since this update came with increase in legacy tiers I waited a little bit and finished my legendary items first. It is certainly a big help in an area like Mordor. After that… Epic story. But, where did the story go?

Where is the story?

I will probably become even less liked than I already am for writing like this about a developer who is probably the favorite child of the player base, but so be it. Made of Lions, or as you can recognize him in some of my articles – Voltron, has told us on many occasions that the pinnacle of the story has been in the works for probably more than ten years. He has envisioned it, worked on it, dreamed about it, etc. I believe this is said in several interviews. In the last developer interview he even says that we have probably paused the previous chapter of the story seconds before the ring is destroyed. And he wasn’t kidding. As soon as we start it, we kill a few orcs and then… THE EAGLES ARE COMING. The words that will make some fans wet their pants, but what comes next, not so much. A little bit of running around fields of Cormallen and the story… the anecdote… is done in 15 minutes. The rewards at the end? A miniature model of Mount Doom. An emote called Strength of Sauron, ironically shortened /sos, looks nothing like the eye of Sauron as is more of a quest ring. The emote is ridiculous, but you can certainly have some fun if you go to a festival and mess with people trying to click on you. What else is there? 1 trait point and 5 LOTRO points. No mount, no cosmetics, no special items, nothing. From here you will continue on to the Black Book of Mordor which is also hiding an extra trait point behind its completion of chapter 4. Again, no special items at the end.

Some of you may want to jump in and say that it is not about the items, it is about the story. But, like I said, I am missing both. I am missing the story and I am missing the items to remember this point in time by something.

Allegiance, Crafting, Fushaum Bal and other quests

 

What is Allegiance?

Allegiance is this big mystery that nobody tells you what it is. No developer interview, diary or anything for that matter, a regular forum post for all I care. No, we are to guess how it all works. Well, it works like this. At level 110 you can start an introduction quest to Allegiance of your choice. But what nobody tells you is that you need to go do it or where to do it. What ever happened to those letters we used to get? Is it hard to make an invitation now? The introduction to Allegiance system starts in the camp of Udun Foothold by speaking to Eomer. Eomer will then send you to behind the Black Gate to speak to one of the faction representatives. After finishing these quests you will get a travel skill to the Allegiance of your choice. What the quest tells you in red lettering is that you can advance only one Allegiance at the time, but what it doesn’t tell you is that you can finish all the intro quests if you like. By finishing all these intro quests once you hit level 115 and the crafting instances become available you will be able to gain 2000 Allegiance Points for every faction weekly by doing just one crafting instance. Or 2 in case you start with Barad Dur, which has one relic bugged in a wall. So, potentially, 8000 AP daily from these untill you finish the 7th chapter of an Allegiance, which then for some reason makes the quest for it disappear. So, if gear is not an issue, I already suggested you don’t finish these and collect more points daily to finish the other ones faster. But how in Eru’s name do you start the crafting instances and the daily quests?! Well, these will start only after you have reached rank 30 with one Allegiance and finished the Black Book of Mordor. Which makes no sense, because you will have to go through almost 100% of the content to get one Allegiance to 30 by questing, deeding, etc. And what content is that? Well, in order to finish the level 109 Lost Lore of Dol Agarnaith quest you will need to go through a camp of level 115 mobs and with 100 shadow that you can in no way counter on that level. Then and only then will you be able to start the crafting instances and nothing else. Only after you restart the game will you get the landscape granted quest to visit your expedition leader and you will be able to pick up daily and weekly quests. Travel skills to Allegiance halls are also a different kind of headache. If you didn’t buy the hurried traveler and reduced the cooldown to 5 minutes you will be doomed to wait for 50 minutes to advance or turn in a quest. So, one quest can take you several hours. For some reason there is a travel option from the hall to Mordor, but nothing from Mordor to the halls.

Fushaum Bal and other quests

Many quests are for some reason very unintuitive. Allegiance to start. Fushaum Bal are also in that group. Once you start with FB you are considered to be very close to an enemy. Even though I do not know why you don’t get attacked right away then. After questing you will eventually become an outsider. Once you reach this standing you will open  your second set of quests for these groups. First set is available from landscape. Then after reaching neutral nobody tells you that there are new quests, you need to find this out on your own and check all the NPCs. And when this quest line is done you won’t be able to go back to the dailies they offer and fix it. Most quests when turning them in give positive reputation with one and negative with another faction. If you are using reputation accelerators you will gain double than you lose. There are also one or two quests that do not have this negative reputation, so you can use them to top of the reputation, reach neutral standing with both sides and then finish the quest FB resolution. Many have complained about this quest, since you are fighting the chieftains of the camps at once, so my suggestion is that you skill Talath Urui (or only do the start and skip Fushaum Bal) and go to Agarnaith and then come back. You will have some nice rewards and possibly a bit more Ash to trade in for other items. Watch out for the quests that can fail if you are seen by the Fushaum Guard. These are not properly shown on the radar and sometimes it’s even hardly noticeable in the quest description. Some have the red lettering you shouldn’t be seen, some don’t. There are few occasions where you need to talk to a statue. You know, like talking to SSG. But in this case, the statue reacts. But nobody tells you that you need to do this other than the quest ring on the radar. But you may have this turned of or have it very small or something else. You choose.

Missed opportunities

I think that SSG has missed a lot of opportunities to give some nice rewards in this expansion. In total there are maybe 3 or 4 good items that you can get from questing that you would use for your gear. Everything else is not really something you would want to use, just disenchant it to Ash right away. The Wastes for some reason had 3 or 4 dogs, but here zero pets. We can even have a person as our pet, a Loyal Swan Knight, but the goblin that says we will be the bestest friends doesn’t become our friend. The number of statues that gave us quests, we could have gotten one for housing.

Bugs or whatever it is

Through the whole region I did have the new kind of lootboxes drop, but I also had the Anorien ones. Black keys do not drop, but Steel sturdy ones do. I do not understand why instead of buffing hunter scrolls for Doomfold crafting the Anorien crafting ones were nerfed, but the +all stats food in Anorien was buffed. Crafting instances are still bugged. You are unable to finish anything except the main quest now. And it seems like they don’t reset properly, as the Alliance quests don’t appear either. I do not know the money issues with SSG, but the trailer they have put out has reached a very bad reaction and I would have expected them to take it down by now. I don’t mind some outtakes from the game, but some of those don’t even look like real fighting, just some posing of auto attacking while “a shot” is made. Some GM paning through Mordor and someone as a narrator speaking about it would have been much better than what goes for a trailer at this point. People are still very disappointed there are no High Elves in the game after promoting them as a part of the expansion and the disappointment isn’t small. Remember when I proposed they fix this item, due to its description on the item and in the quest? It should have been teal.

 

Well, they fixed it now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bellow is a gallery with some of the curious sightings in Mordor.

And for the end, the best Mordor boy band. You are…. My fiiiire. My ONE… De-sire… Believe when I say… I want all your money.

Mordor Delayed *Breaking News*

 

Executive Producer Severlin posted on the forums, about a delay with Mordor

 

Mordor Launch Date Shift

We are as excited as many of you to get into Mordor, but we have some unfortunate news: we have to adjust the release date. While preparing over the weekend to release the expansion on Monday, we discovered an issue in the build that impacted the ability of monsters and NPCs to move around correctly. This problem was specifically identified in older content.

While correcting this issue is not a problem, the process to correct it takes too long to be able to release Mordor on Monday. So, we have to adjust the release date. We will have more info on the release date soon. We will know a lot more in the next 24 hours or so, and will pass along the info as soon as we can.

Sev~

 

 

Sounds like it won’t be long, but it’s a delay none the less.

Insert “One Does Not Simply Walk” joke here.

Mordor beta 6: A trick to leveling Allegiance faster

 

As far as the Allegiance is concerned one thing that has changed is the location of King Eomer. Now it is a little bit easier to start the allegiance quests and even easier to stumble upon if you don’t really go that much back and forth to the Black Gate. Also, in this build we now have Allegiance repeatable quests that put to use the regional task boards, or as you may remember them from some other regions of the game, bounty boards. You’ll be happy to hear that there is a daily quest which rewards you with one new key for the new kind of lootboxes. Apart from the daily, there is also a weekly quest that will reward you with 10.000 allegiance points. But let’s leave the Allegiance for a while and see what hasn’t changed.

What hasn’t changed is:

  • The quest The silent one is still bugged and Legolas is not there to turn the quest in, even if it will port you to the location using Mithril Coins.
  • Speaking of Mithril Coins, when using Mithril you also don’t get ported to the statue that grants you quests in Nargroth.
  • Crafting instances are broken in a way that there is some content that locks it after you completed it. I have leveled to 115 by questing and if it isn’t bugged or out in the latest build I have finished it, so it can’t be locked behind that.
  • After Tybur has removed some of the prereqs on the crafting instances we could see that what we assume is prospecting one can still not be entered. And the other 4 are still split into 2 woodworker and 2 historian resource instances.
  • Instance with Sam could not be finished.
  • I believe I have seen people still complain about the Elf Allegiance intro instance.
  • The cosmetic cloaks still do not have their appearances at the barterer.
  • There are 3 new gold rings that cost 2750 Ash and it seems that their level is shown wrong as it is only 300 and the stats aren’t as great. But some say that the same thing may happen with these rings that happens with Pelargir rings and they would scale to your level when you barter for them. I don’t believe you’ll have 2750 Ash to spare at 106, but just in case barter for these only on level cap.
  • It’s a small thing, but there are also no potions for fear, wound, disease and poison for level 120.
  • Metalsmith still doesn’t have any recipes for the shields, even though they have recipes for RK Chisel and Riffler.
  • Cosmetic appearance of the “exclusive” armour is still too similar to the armour in game.
  • Buffs from food and self-buff skills, like Forced March, will cover the bar that shows the level of LoE/Shadow.

So, what else has changed? Well, you can see the full beta 6 notes here, but the final ones you will be able to read on Monday. I will just mention three more things. Since there will probably be a lot of people on Monday asking where to start a book, you can see it on the picture bellow. I may be imagining things, but Aragorn may have moved a little due to the Free people doing a little construction work and making bridges so the slow horses could ride to the camp in the Slag Hills.

 

Another thing that has changed is the Virtues and the Racial traits. Both have been scaled up accordingly to have more impact on the stats due to the bloat in those in the newest update. So, instead of 20 will for Man of the fourth age you will now get 109 at level 115. Which isn’t a lot compared to some stats, but it’s a much greater improvement than 20 and we welcome this change.

 

What should you be doing from the start?

Well, if you want you can always stock up on some experience by finishing some of the quests before hand and turning them in when you update your client on Monday. Why would you do this? I’m not suggesting you rush to 115 or anything, but as you quest you will be coming across some resource boxes and they can be very common. You can open these on level 106. I believe the treasure cache’s also have the level requirement. So, instead walking around with full bags and not being able to get the treasure cache, I suggest you get to at least 106 a little bit faster.

There still aren’t any potions for fear, disease, wound and poison at the healer, but this is another little thing you shouldn’t be forgetting. Sometimes the mobs like to disarm you, silence, fear you, etc. This may very well be the difference of you staying alive or not. And while you’re at the healer sell your bounties, repair your armour and be 100% ready for adventure.

The resource chests will not give you your specific crafting materials, but all of them at random. So you will need a lot of bag space. If you are having issues with bag space, like I often do, then you can buy the account wide slots for bags, shared storage or vault. Speaking about the store… I am not sure if the travel skills for the various allegiances will change their cooldown, but it was pretty long. So if you don’t want to get stuck doing a quest for 2-3 hours maybe you’d want to have your traveling skill cooldown on 5 minutes.

Like in U20, in U21 we have again a lot of reputation factions, so you could supply yourself with some of the reputations tomes again and have them handy in case you deplete your rep acc boost.

Park yourself at the location shown above and be ready to start the Epic Book right away. You can read Voltron’s interview about it here. I am very curious what the rewards in the Epic Book will be like. Not so much because of the rewards, but because of the point in Book and time. I would imagine it could be something like the end of Vol. I, I believe, when we were getting a mount and a lot more of other stuff. Don’t want to get my hopes too high up, but it really would be a shame if there wasn’t something to remember this part of the story by – mount, housing, cosmetic, strong item, etc.

The first item you should get? That is likely the Flame of Ancalmir. This is a great item to keep your bags clean. It is like a portable relic master for LoE items. It will be properly introduced with a quest, so I won’t write too much about it here. I will say that in the meantime it now did get some sort of an animation and now your cursor has the crystal next to it when active.

A trick to leveling Allegiance faster

And now the reason you came to read this. How will you be finishing Allegiance faster? It’s not so much of a trick, as it is a discovery. Well, the obvious part would be doing all the quests that have a relic that will award you with 2.000 allegiance points. There are only a few of those quests. Also, some deeds will award these same relics. Some will even give 5.000 allegiance points. You will be doing the Allegiance repeatables not only for allegiance, but I suppose to also clear out the deeds if you’re that kind of a completionist. So, that is covered also.

What I have found is that even though there are some nice rewards in the final chapters, you should not be rushing there. You can see the cloak from Allegiance of the Kingdom of Gondor chapter 6 and 7. Why should you not be rushing there? Because as of right now, if you get to level 30 with an Allegiance you lock yourself out of the daily 2.000 Allegiance Points for them by doing the crafting instances. For instance, I have finished the Kingdom of Gondor last week and in the crafting instances, apart from the secondary quests, you also have a quest for the Allegiances also. And as I finished Gondor, this week now I had only three of those to finish. Speaking of which, one of the relics in Barad Dur is still in a wall.

I actually believe that this quest is gated by mistake and should be available later when a hotfix comes out, but for the time being, I’d say stay at 29 with the Allegiances and then finish them all at once.

The Sound of Silence

I have had great feedback on the article I written about the story behind the disappointment. You all have been a great support. Even disagreeing with some of you in a constructive manner was one of the better things to share with you and not just you reading or even not reading what has been written. Thank you for that.

But it has been pointed out to me that SSG and the older version of it – Turbine – and the developers that work there have given us many good things in the game, many great features and many great moments. And I do not disagree with you here. Not only were we given some great things, we have also been given some things that were previously said to be impossible. Cosmetic weapons and off-hands, new premium housing area, feature that lets us move the housing items outside of their usual hooks, various cosmetic items, some great stories and quests, some good Epic Book quests, good instances and raids… I am a person who was converted to actually liking housing when the premium ones came out, because suddenly I didn’t have to live in a shed. Some couples have even met thanks to the game and married. But the fact that SSG has had some good decisions, ideas and products in the past does not mean they didn’t also have bad ones and that because of the good ones it would now be fine to retroactively charge for all that. Especially because all that was paid with VIPs and LPs. Having done some good things in the past does not make anyone immune to the critique in the present or the future. The players won’t start paying for a dating service now too, will they? Those who prefer virtual relationships may visit websites offering AI Girlfriend services.

This article isn’t even the “aggressive” one, I am just very saddened that SSG has actually chosen to ignore the entire player base that has voiced their concerns in various channels. We have participated in threads on the official forums, there are comments on shares in the social media, some have participated in chats in-game, various written articles in unison that this expansion stands out, and most recently – the +Cord of the Rings stream.

The threads on the forum actually stopped for a while to see if there will be some official reaction to what has been happening for the past few days since this has been announced. Nothing. Not even a mention of the situation, an acknowledgment of some sort. While some of the participants have been asking questions about it and about some other in-game „stuff“ the team comprised of Cordovan and QuartermasterU was more interested in some casual talk about the lucky duck title, food, trash metal and „what shoulders are those“. Only thing Mordor related, as far as I remember, was the talk about the Aria of Valar, and QU, when asked about the new bridle LIs, I even feel bad pointing this out, suggested there will be new ones, confused or not knowing that there hasn’t been new LIs in a while and that we are now using a different system.

When SSG announced that they have parted ways with Turbine people were hopeful that something would change and in their hopes they forgot that the team working on the games has stayed the same. SSG, now an indie studio, a smaller company should have been using advantages that every smaller company has over a large one and a big advantage is – communication. The very thing we are lacking now.

At its size we should be able to have a conversation SSG to consumer, but we don’t. For the second time, at least, we are getting ignored and we are left to vent and hopefully calm down on our own. The silence is deafening. I attribute this to not knowing really much about running a business. No content you put out, especially a rushed one with bugs and a more expensive one than previous expansions even though it was said in countless streams it would be in line with those, can replace the value a company places in its customers. And a customer will always show his appreciation for this by paying more. Customers do pay more for a product based on how they are being treated. If you had exactly the same steak in a great, expensive restaurant and in a cheap restaurant, you would be fine paying more for it in the expensive one because of the treatment you got.

When speaking about the communication with the players, I have to mention the complete lack of developer diaries/letters. Even these could have been used as a great form of marketing and in a longer pre-purchase period they would be introducing the expansion to the players, building interest and intrigue. Recently we have gotten two short ones. These 2 interviews have left the players after reading them more confused than informed. So much so that a thread on the forum with my own „developer letter“ linked has been started under the name „Actual Crafting Dev Diary“.

Maybe the SSG is satisfied by the sales they had so far, I have no way of knowing. What I do know is that quite a decent number of players are spending the money not because of the quality, but because it is LOTR and because it is Mordor, because they want to experience what we have been building up to for over 10 years, in support of the game, etc. There are also those who will just play the epic and be done with everything. But I am convinced that had this been approached differently they would be making a lot more money with a lot less unhappy people.

After canceling my subscription after what happened with the Wastes – not the lag, the lack of communication then too – I was really hoping to buy if not the highest, then maybe the 2nd highest package and go VIP again, none of which is happening, again, not because there will be bugs in the early release, but because as a part of the group that has voiced the concerns and got no answers I do not feel I have been heard, appreciated and valued as a customer.

I do hope that this piece gets to someone in SSG somehow. Not so I could „give them a piece of my mind“, but just to say that there is no shame in saying you have made a mistake or that you were wrong or that you do not know something. You can not do everything perfectly, nor can you know everything. But what you can do is nurture a relationship with the people who have stayed with the game through thick and thin, communicate what is going on with the game a little bit better and a little bit more often, because a lot of what has happened and what has been said was not because of the price (or any other reason, for that matter), but because the company has made a choice to not inform the player base that they are turning 180° and that all the consistency up untill now has no meaning. Actually, at times we have been told the opposite would happen and it didn’t. And all that information has been thrown at us only a couple of weeks from the release date. There certainly were some players who expected something that was unrealistic, but they were not in the majority.

So, do I think that the players should let go of this because nobody has reacted to what is happening? No, I really hope the forum posts continue. I have no way of knowing if there are some legal issues that you can not discuss, but this situation could have certainly been mitigated if we weren’t surprised by it and then ignored. Just someone to come out and say „You know what, you have been heard“ would alleviate a lot, I believe.

I just hope that it is evident that everything that is being done and said is not out of spite or hate towards SSG and certainly not LOTRO, or any part of the team in particular or anything like that. Even if it sometimes comes with harsh words, it is so because we do love this game and want it to be good and even better, it comes with good intentions. Not everything that is good comes in a nice wax sealed letter with gold font, like you just got invited to Hogwarts.