01:14 Get To Know Raninia
05:19 15th Anniversary
07:41 Yondershire Timed With Anniversary?
09:56 Are there any special announcements related to the downtime from yesterday? *Note this episode was recorded April 21st, the day after the Runekeeper Satchel Issue*
17:00 Now that the Yondershire has been released, are there any serious plans relating to River hobbits?
21:40 Any hints about where we would be going next?
23:20 With the first LI rewards season winding down, are there any lessons you have learned that we can expect to be applied to the next iteration?
26:53 Any chance for a friendlier interface for the rewards track?
28:16 Anor is expected to head for Gundabad in three months. Has any decision been made yet on the plans for when Legendary worlds catch up with the main worlds?
33:09 Speaking of other worlds, how is the progress going for allowing transfers off the retired worlds?
36:28 Any hope for a boost to the skirmish soldiers?
42:03 Any plans to look at power scaling?
45:40 Raid Drops So You Get What You Need? RNG FIX?
54:50 Hobby horses for the Shire stable masters?
Questions From LOTRO Players Readers/Listeners
71:11 Are there any considerations about revamping the movements and animations for our characters to make them feel more weighty and grounded?
71:12 What can we expect in terms of graphical changes for LOTRO?
74:40 Server Issue/Lag
82:22 Can we expect any changes to Mounted Combat after the Legendary Item changes?
85:39 Console?
86:07 Any plans for more evergreen and challenging solo or small group content?
89:27 Any plan for returning 1-off content such treasure goblins, Event servers like Bombabil?
Reddit Questions
91:31 Customer Support
93:44 Automatch LFG?
98:05 Any new hobbies planned?
99:44 Any plans to make all instances scalable?
104:04 Will birds and small critters ever be able to rest on the player’s shoulders?
105:39 The burning question of Treebeard, are they ever going to fix 105+ ixp runes dropping in lower level instances?
107:01 When will we see UI scaling?
107:41 Brawler trainer at 21st hall and a brawler Moria set
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.
Overachiever 18/15
Twins
Floating node
Died in Mordor
Fumarole in a rock
Fumarole on a rock
Floating chest
Floating crawler
Loyal wall
Again with the chest, someone doesn’t like scholars
Another brick in the wall
Hillarious
40m CD to advancing the quest
There’s still DNT’s?
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.
There is a wonderful interview up over at LOTRO.com with fantasy artist, Ted Nasmith.
For those that do not know,
Ted Nasmith is a Canadian artist, illustrator, and architectural renderer. He is best known as an illustrator of J. R. R. Tolkien’s works — The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.
Sample from the interview :
You’ve done 2 pieces for Lord of the Rings Online – the art for our Battle of the Black Gate update, and now for our Mordor Expansion! What are you exploring with these pieces?
I wanted both of these works to reflect both the dynamic ‘in-motion’ experience of the online version of the books in game format, while focusing also on the aesthetic beauty and intricately designed ‘sets’ players’ experience, hoping I’ve blended my characteristic realism effectively with the architecture that game designers have established.
This article is satirical in nature and does not represent the official developer interview allowed by the SSG… The original interview has been used and built upon to provide you with more information. The facts about Allegiance are accurate.
Hello, everyone. This time we are bringing you an interview with our developers UnfriendlyCat (UC), DrHashtag (DrH) and Voltron concerning the new Allegiance system.
What is the Allegiance system?
UC: The Allegiance System is a way for players to earn endgame rewards, new cosmetics, and experience four distinct storylines in a post-Sauron Middle-earth. After joining an Allegiance, players earn “Allegiance Points” to advance within their faction. Players will not be limited to only one faction. You can, in fact, finish the introduction to all of them, but making one of the allegiances active you opt for working on that one allegiance. The first allegiance you opt for will be faster to finish and the later ones will be slower. The speed is determined by the amount of points you will need to advance through the levels of the later allegiances.
As they level up within the system, they unlock barter currency to buy endgame rewards, special items, and story moments. You are gaining a special kind of tokens through the Allegiance system for barter and another kind of tokens are „Chapter tokens“ (let’s call them that) that will unlock the next chapter in your respective Allegiance.
DrH: You will be able to embark on the Allegiance System once you make way into the Mordor Expansion, but it will really pick up after a first tour through Gorgoroth, where it ties into the endgame.
+Arred: When you reach level 110 two things will open for you. You will be able to go just behind the Black Gate and speak to Eomer to start your Allegiance quests. At the same time a new series of quests will appear, The Lost Lore of NameOfTheRegion. These quests will have an acorn for a reward, that will help you advance your allegiance. The Allegiance isn’t your classic reputation system. Even though you do need to advance your standing to gain Allegiance tokens and experience various Chapters from each one, this is more imersed in the story rather than only earning standing and being done with it.
Voltron: One of the things I’ve been dissatisfied with about Reputations in the past is how story-agnostic they could feel. Yes, you’re helping various factions with their problems and becoming more and more respected in their society, but there was no real progression in a story sense. They respected you more and more, and offered you more rewards, but there was no real sense of a continuing storyline for most of them. Allegiances do have you filling up a bar, and there are repeatable quests and rewards, but for me the significant addition is that each of them tells a continuing story. I think of my Allegiances like Bingo Boffin style quest arcs, but instead of funny hobbit shenanigans you get dwarf- or Gondor-themed problems and stories, and instead of them advancing weekly they advance as you gain AP.
How many factions are there?
UC: There are 4 Allegiances:
– “The Kingdom of Gondor”
– “Hobbits of the Company”
– “Durin’s Folk”
– “The Court of Lothlórien”
Voltron: It’s about choosing the Allegiance to which you want to lend your skills, not necessarily the race you play.
You mention chapters. How many are there?
Voltron: Seven chapters per Allegiance, and whether we expand it will depend on whether the players like it.
Where did the ideas come from?
DrH: We modelled the Allegiance System after the oaths of service Pippin and Merry made to Gondor and Rohan, respectively. We wanted a system that would feel like it was part of your character’s story, a way to tell and remember the adventures that took place during their time in Mordor. We were also very clear about the fact that we didn’t want to create a ‘gimmick’ way outside of the core game loop. The goal here was to provide good, satisfying reasons for adventuring further in Mordor, and worthy rewards to take home with you.
Do I get to experience something unique with each?
UC: DrH can speak more to this but each Allegiance has its own unique storyline.
DrH: The storylines are the big difference between each allegiance, but that’s pretty major. There is a unique story about Gondor, the four hobbits, Gimli & Durin’s Folk, and the Elves—that you will only get from playing that faction line.
UC: Your choice order of Allegiances will not affect the availability of endgame gear. Your choice really just affects the order in which you experience story and gain certain cosmetic appearances.
How will the players advance and get the Allegiance Points?
+Arred: The players will have a few options to advance through their respective Allegiance. We have made it so that they can earn acorns, something like a reputation item, that will allow them to advance their chosen Allegiance. These acorns can be acquired via certain quests, deeds and daily quests in the new crafting instances, which is why we have advised you in our crafting diary to get introduced to all four Allegiances right away.