Tag: ssg

Update 21.3. Almost.

 

Missed me?

 

As you possibly know, I usually cover the Bullroarer, but this time I wanted to try a different approach and see how that works out instead of writing critique after critique to some issues that might get changed and it seems like this was a good decision this time. For example, a nice feature was introduced to raid loot at first, but it wasn’t really sustainable. There were tradeable items that had a one-hour cooldown before they became tied to a character (or account, I don’t remember). But after the cooldown expired sadly we could not click those to add them to our wallet. I did not waste much time in later builds, so I’m not sure how everything was changed other than following the forum. It seems that the separate items have been replaced with boxes to be opened and select items. So, let’s go directly to the Update notes for the 21.3.

Content

 

Since the High Elf was introduced earlier in November, the main reason for this update is the new raid. Which, according to the new information, we are actually not getting yet. The issue has arisen with the Original challenger title, which isn’t available in the game right now for this raid. At first, the option was to introduce the raid but without the title. So, players could eventually beat the raid, but not get the title and would need to play for it again at a later date. So, after some thoughts from the players and probably a meeting at SSG, it has been decided that the raid won’t be introduced until the title issue has been fixed. Which is a very good decision by SSG.

Cordovan

As we took a look at the Abyss of Mordath over the weekend on Bullroarer and read your feedback, we uncovered a couple of issues that we do not want present when the raid opens to the public. We have decided to temporarily make the Abyss of Mordath raid inaccessible when Update 21.3 goes live on Monday, to give us time to correct these issues. This also allows players to compete for the Original Challenge title when the raid is first opened to the public. We will have more information about the raid’s opening soon. Additionally, the new raid Barter Vendors will not provide their services until the new raid opens to the public.

It remains to be seen how long this wait is going to take, but as per Cordovan, it should be measured in days and not longer.

Cordovan

I don’t want to commit until people get into the office on Monday and do the work on it, but the likely scenario is in the realm of days rather than anything longer.

A good thing is that they have actually changed some of the armour sets for some classes, but sadly a majority of them seem to not be addressed and remain to be not as useful as some previous ones.

There is a variety of other updates available, but I won’t be covering them all. Instead, I’ll just go into several more important ones for those who like to play the cap content. These issues are with the so-called instance cluster and the Ash of Gorgoroth system.

The issue with the instances is that SSG has supposedly fixed the drop rate on these instances so much that they had to introduce daily locks to them, similar to the featured instances. The locks are not transferable and are tied to boxes. So, a player could have a lock on the box for boss one, but not for boss two and three. Also, there are different locks for tier one and two. Similarly, this has been explained by Tybur.

Tybur

Chest locks are NOT inherited and are specific to a given chest. So for example, opening the Naerband boss 1 chest on tier 1 will give your character personal locks for that single chest. That daily cooldown will not transfer to any other character and will not affect the Naerband boss 1 chest on tier 2, or any other chest. Note that chest locks can be applied either when a boss is defeated and the chest spawns, or when the chest is opened, depending on the logic behind the specific chest. The ‘/raid locks’ command will give cooldown information for every currently locked chest on your character.

The chances of receiving an incomparable piece of gear instead of a rare piece of gear in tier 2 Naerband and tier 2 Seregost was increased.
Independently, the chance of receiving a piece of gear at all from any and all Naerband and Seregost chests (tier 1 and tier 2) was greatly increased.

It remains to be seen what ‘greatly’ really means, but it is certain that it will be an issue for people who used Court of Seregost to get scrolls of empowerment for their legendary items. These locks are further accentuating the issue that only now, with the raid coming out, has the instance Dungeons of Naerband been fixed. With the raid coming out and the issues the instance has had in the past, Dungeons of Naerband will probably remain unplayed or at least barely played. Court of Seregost also had some minor details added to remove confusion around resetting the fight with Lhaereth.

Further issues this update introduces is regarding the Ash system. The killing of Ash has started even sooner and it continues in this update as well. First the chance of getting items has been lowered, then removed from some mobs, now it remains only in resource instances. Now, months later, Cordovan has stated that the company has never intended for Ash to be the primary way to gear.

Cordovan

We have tried to be clear that Ash of Gorgoroth is meant to be a non-primary way to get gear, with the primary method being running the content. We are working to better align with that principle in Update 21.3 through guaranteed or near-guaranteed drops depending on difficulty in the Update 21 instances.

Sadly, this statement does not hold when you consider how bad the quest gear is and that they have removed landscape drops of better gear. The only thing that remains to get gear is instances and rare boxes, some of which are behind 115 camps that pull too many mobs for leveling players and some areas are very hard to do with too much Shadow.

This is only made worse by putting the cap amount to Ashes of Gorgoroth to 10.000 Ash, similar to Commendations in the PvMP area. This way ensuring that players can not get the newest gear as soon as it hits the live servers. But most of all, ensuring that players need to spend time or preferably money to get the Gorgoroth lootboxes and keys so they can get Ash and best-in-slot items. Players who already have over 10.000 Ash will not be able to disenchant new items, so they will need extra slots in bags, vault and shared storage, this way spending more with SSG. Some countries have already started addressing this lottery system with their laws and it remains to be seen how SSG and entities behind it will react to this.

Review of 2017

 

At the start of 2017, we have been very happy to see SSG part ways from Turbine and WB, thinking that things may turn for the better now. The new old team had a big task in front of them. Or even several. Celebrate the 10-year anniversary, release a long-awaited expansion, walk into Mordor, destroy the ring and create another raid.

I also started writing for LOTRO Players this year and I have been very positive in one of my first articles when I wrote… But Lord of the Rings Online has fought against the odds and either won or drew a tie in its battles. What is keeping LOTRO alive? Is it the quality of content, design or lore? I would assume that the deep story Tolkien has provided and the developing team has even filled in at times is actually this games biggest treasure. We play and come back sometimes after years of breaks from the game just to relive some moments from the books and movies, to explore the new content, be a part of the world we so much love and possibly beat some of the newest challenges. And since we do enjoy these challenges too, we can not ignore the work that goes into content creation.

Sadly, the hopes of the players and the reality don’t always get along.  Depending on the players and the type of content they are enjoying, you could get different opinions on the state of the game and around everything else too. My opinion on some of those things is sadly almost famous, but like some of the other players, it has never been my goal to talk down on the game or the people working on it, but there has been some disappointment how some things were dealt with because I was amazed by some of the bad business decisions. So much so that I have actually bookmarked the first words of apology in years I have seen on the forum. 🙂

Cordovan

Scourges of Gorgoroth will now appear in different locations every day. Their previous behavior of being in one location was a bug, and was fixed last week when we updated our events schedule. There was a miscommunication that led us to not properly notify you after the change was made, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Personally, I would forgive a lot if only I had more communication during the Wastes in U20, which was repeated during the announcement of Mordor expansion release date and price. Cordovan is likely doing the best CM job so far, but the company not addressing some important issues even to say something like the quoted text above was just too much for me. I am grouping this under the business model. Communication, marketing, customer support and value etc. Speaking of which, Mordor didn’t really get enough Marketing before the release and when finally the trailer was released players actually asked for it to be removed from YouTube.

The visuals of the game have gotten much better and there have been some screenshots of the same place with 10 years difference and the improvement is really great. If you can afford to play on ultra high graphics, you will certainly enjoy the view. This is also the year when a 64-bit client was announced, so it is to be hoped that the lag and other issues will be alleviated soon and we will have fewer complaints in that area. The world building is great. Apart from some falling through the actual world, it will always be great to personally revisit some places from the books and movies and be a part of the world developers created for us using and interpreting Tolkien’s words.

There have been some plans for the future of LOTRO past 2017 and Severlin mentions them in the producer’s letter.

Well, the worlds are now open and I’m off to test the drop rate if possible.

Executive Producer’s Letter for November 2017

 

Executive Producer Severlin posted the latest producer’s letter looking forward to what’s ahead for next year. The full text of the letter is at the LOTRO forums.

Much of the letter discusses what is coming in Update 22:

  1. The continuation of the Black Book of Mordor.
  2. Lands featured in The Hobbit: Northern Mirkwood, Laketown, Dale, and Erebor.
  3. A new musical instrument: the fiddle.

Why are legions of refugees fleeing from Rhûn, with tales of death and horror on their lips? And why are spiders missing from the forest, and where have they gone? We’ll answer these questions and more.

As for later in 2018, we have this little teaser for Update 23:

Looking beyond Update 22, we know you have been asking to see even more classic moments from the trilogy. We have a way to go before we see Aragorn and Arwen’s wedding, but we intend to bring you other well-known parts of the book. In Update 23, we intend to visit Minas Morgul, and say a fearful hello to Shelob herself.

Sans, it’s for you.

Pineleaf Needles

Mordor 21.2.1.b?

 

It has been a busy few days in SSG and here on our website. The instance update has taken care of this. First, we reacted to Cordovans first announcement to the mistake that has happened. Then, with a great community effort, we announced the different solution that SSG has come up with. And ultimately, we announced the update they released today.

Sadly, this update comes with a different set of kinks in the build. The one that was quickly noticed is that the instance and loot box armour (but not the jewellery) has also been reduced in stats, not only the Ash barter armour we had traded for.

Cordovan

Today’s hotfix incorrectly reduced the power of Level 330 Incomparable items acquired through the new Instances and Gorgoroth Steel-bound Lootboxes. We are working on a fast correction to this issue, and expect to release a hotfix this weekend. Players with incorrectly-reduced items will see those items automatically returned to their proper power level after the hotfix.

But another one has also happened. As I feared, given the experience with down and upscaling in LOTRO, the downscaling didn’t really go well. It has been actually great news to see that we didn’t lose too much light, but it wasn’t that great to see that now level 330 armour is lower in stats than our lower level items.

 

 

Bad news for players who bartered for new gold rings is that there has been some change there too. The rings with the barter price of 3300 are now also available through an upgrade of the old gold rings for 800 Ash of Gorgoroth. The upgrade is only available for the 326 gold rings, not the rings from the loot boxes, which may have been of a higher level.

Now, all of this keeps me wondering what kind of Inception-like story is behind this. A hotfix in a hotfix in a hotfix. What do you call a hotfix in a hotfix? Does it get hotter or colder? A lukewarm fix? I really have no clue. And while I do support SSG when it comes to people actually figuring out the mechanics of the game, I am not sure if they really did adjust the damage dealt by bosses properly. As per other player’s testimony, the Dungeons of Naerband last boss hits too hard. I won’t speak more to this since I didn’t yet have the time or a chance to test it. I did test Court of Seregost t2c and the last fight there reset on our group several times. Not a failed instance because of too many bats got away or something, just a random reset. If someone has a clue why this is happening, please let us know.

In any case, the solution they did come up with the gear was a good middle ground, I’d say, but another bug and inadequate scaling aren’t doing SSG any favours.

I hope you’re not all fed up with this topic, but I feel now that we have started covering it, we also need to follow and cover it until resolved.

A different day, a different solution

 

To remind you, if a reminder is even needed, I have had an article about how SSG wanted to address the issue they have created by not putting the correct Ash value on the elf-enchanter. Some people were happy to see the discounted gear, thinking it’s the correct price because there were so many ways to get more pieces of gear. The teal barter items had a +14 Light of Earendil stat, while the crafted purple items had a +16 and it was only natural to think that is the reason it was cheaper and because of the eventual gear from the instances.

The first idea was to strip the people from their newly received gear and have them left without any gear, which cause a massive uproar on the forums. I have been following the community for a while and it has been a long time since I have seen the people there so in sync with who has made a mistake and what needed to be done. I haven’t seen a greater display of a community effort that great and I applaud them for that. As much as some people do not like the tone of some of my articles, I’d like to think that it played at least one small part of it.

The current solution that SSG has come to is that they would offer two solutions. Either turn in the gear and receive the ash that you spent and shadowed essences, the number to be determined by the number of slots of the armour piece you turn in. Or keep the gear, but it will be downscaled to the old level 330. I hope this means that the stats stay the same, but we lose the extra +4 LoE. This would be tolerable and what I would prefer because I’d hate to see SSG try to downscale or upscale anything since it doesn’t really work that good in LOTRO. Downscaled BB’s and upscaled PvMP is a proof of that.

Cordovan

When Update 21 Patch 2 was released to the live worlds on October 10th, the cost for Incomparable items from the High-Enchanter Barter Vendor was incorrectly set when compared to the rest of the gear on offer. Once we recognized the issue, we temporarily disabled the vendor. We are working on a hotfix to correct this issue.

 

For players who already purchased Item Level 330 Incomparable gear, we have several options available. When the hotfix is released, already-purchased level 330 Incomparable items will be able to be disenchanted with the Flame of Ancalamir to return the full Ash of Gorgoroth cost, plus a number of Shadowed Essence Boxes equal to the number of Essence Slots on the gear. Already-purchased Item Level 330 Incomparable Gear will also have its stats adjusted to be approximately equivalent to the level 330 rare gear available through the High-Enchanter, and the Essence Slots will remain. This allows players to utilize the gear if they choose. Following the hotfix, Incomparable gear will have its correct vendor cost.

 

Cordovan

The essences will be retained in the gear, unless you disenchant it, in which case you’ll want to use an Essence Reclamation Scroll prior to disenchanting it.

Since they want to downscale the gear, but keep the essences in it, I hope this works. Because we couldn’t slot the new essences in old gear and this might create some issues if another oversight would happen.

Another issue this creates is that people have paid Ash for an upgrade and now are getting downgraded. In a sense. If done correctly we may actually end up with higher level gear and more stats than we had, since some gear we had before was lower than 330, but higher than 326, but we would get less light too. And to get the Ash back one would need to turn in the item. Would this warrant for players to ask for a certain amount of Ash now too? I’m not sure. What do you think?

Of course, this being the mistake of SSG many think that they are not supposed to be downgraded and still expect to keep the gear as it is now. This is what I would prefer too, because it makes no sense to me to have the instances roll out and now go and do Ash farms. Drops aren’t good enough to spend too much time in t1 instances preparing for t2c, hoping for crafted items that may or may not crit. I guess what could be considered positive from all of this is that we may get the Ash of Gorgoroth to be account bound. Eventually.

Cordovan

Additionally, we are looking into making the Ash of Gorgoroth account-bound, although that’s not specifically a part of this announcement (but is pretty big news).

Once again, I can’t praise the community enough for what they have achieved. With the community being against this solution it was a smart move of SSG to not push the first solution they offered and now we can only wait and see how they implement their new plan and when. Hopefully soon, since with the ash vendor being blocked people can’t get the Flame of Ancalmir and follow the quest chain if they are only now entering Mordor.