This article is satirical in nature and does not represent the official developer diary allowed by the SSG… Sadly.
The facts about crafting are accurate.
Hello, everybody, I am UnfriendlyCat and I am the developer for the crafting in Mordor that is coming out with the update 21, our most recent expansion, and I would like to share with you a thing or two about it.
The new crafting tier in Mordor is Doomfold and it is new in the sense that „Everything old is new again“. You will have the classic drops from the resources. For example, an ore node has a chance of giving you ore, high quality ore, a black adamant and a black adamant shard. We are returning to a level of robustness we haven’t seen with the last two crafting tiers.
This crafting tier brings back a lot of items that were omitted from the previous two tiers. Players will be able to craft off-hands, weapons, armour, consumables, a bevy of class items (including Minstrel instruments). Very few recipes are auto-assigned, for many you will need to use The silver signet of Thandrim to barter for the recipes or items, these are the tokens you get from completing the quests. For instance, a single use recipe for an essence will cost you 15 of these signets. We are making a change to the crafting of the essences in a way that they do not require Universal solvents at this tier. Some craftable items will be best in slot for the expansion.
Crafting also introduces 2 daily recipes that you will be able to use. One is an Enchanted Gorgoroth adamant that you will be able to disenchant. The disenchantment ties into the new Ashes of Gorgoroth system. The recipe for the crafted item and the item which you will use to disenchant the crafted item (and the unwanted armour pieces you get) – Flame of Ancalmir – you will need to purchase from the High Enchanter – Elf Smith. We have provided an introduction quest for you in Udun, the starter area of Mordor. The crafted item will give you 10 Ash and the unwanted gear will give you 5/10/20 for green/purple/teal. This crafted item is on an 18 hour cooldown. Ash is used as a barter item for some of the armor and jewelry as you progress through the game.
The second piece of daily crafting we introduce with our new allegiance system. Here you will come across a recipe for a Guild-quality Gorgoroth metalworking components for a Metalsmith. No, you do not need to have highest guild level for this (Assuming, couldn’t test. Maybe this is the point where the dev diary should reveal that this is why it says that „There are no new guild levels, though it is still useful for players to be at the current capped guild tier: Westemnet. And not only because of the fact that there aren’t any crafted relics still.). This item you will be able to use to advance the allegiance to its higher tiers. This item also has an 18 hour cooldown timer.
We are also introducing two new ways of getting the resources. One is the Rare chest of Mordor in which you will be getting a crafting pack with random crafting resources inside and a random quality gear piece. The other alternative way of getting the crafting items are the two different chest Rusted chest and Coroded chest. These chests will only give you the crafting pack. These chests are larger in number, more common and they can be used more than once, as opposed to the rare chests which are similar to Treasure caches and can be used only once.
And for the end, we will also have crafting instances. Even here we are returning to the older versions of soloable crafting instances, as opposed to the recent fellowship versions in the Wastes. So these are going to be more similar to, say, Hytbold. Before you start doing these instances we suggest that you first complete the four introduction quests to the allegiances as these crafting instances will provide you also with a daily quest of collecting various items for turning into the chests at the respective halls for the allegiances. You will then receive an item that you will be able to use for any allegiance, no matter where you got the item from.
Thank you very much, see you in Mordor, this was your UnfriendlyCat.
For three weeks now I have been reporting on the news from Mordor Beta builds, mentioned some bugs and posted a few videos and screenshots. This fourth week I have started with an announcement of the pre-order and the possible (not likely) date that the expansion will be released – July 31st. And that article was very mild if you have followed any of my other ones. The reason for that? Shock, maybe. Hoplessness that this game will do anything right. I am in dire need of a real life +6 hope token.
So, several days ago this was announced and the forums lit up like a Christmas tree. And who could blame the people for reacting? SSG certainly can’t. What was the issue?
For some the issue was pricing. And yes, even in the first article, I wrote that the price of the various packages for the expansion was a little bit steep. Being very generous with the wording there. But when we look a little bit deeper, what can we read there? It is not that we were saying (yes, I was among those people on the forum) that we do not have the money to pay for this. Although, there were such comments also, I don’t feel like those were the majority. We mainly focused on several key things.
We did not see the value of those packages. What SSG fails to recognize is that the value is not the a la carte price of all the items put together, the value is determined by the players and if they consider something valuable or not.
The editions
The standard edition package is coming only with what the expansion will include – quests, deed, allegiance, group content – and a new item called Aria of the Valar that will bring one of your characters to level 105. Basically, since the instances are coming out much later, you are getting a glorified quest pack. The race of High Elf was announced quite some time ago and it was spoken about in the forums and Cordovans streams and it was always announced to come with Mordor. Now, we do not get this race with Mordor if we decide for the standard edition. Why? Well, that is because SSG thinks that High Elf is not a key part in experiencing Mordor. They may or may not be right, but when something was mentioned over and over again in the same sentence as Mordor then it would be only natural to have it in the standard edition. So, the issue doesn’t become if they are right or not, the issue is who in their right state of mind says for months that something is coming with Mordor and then changes their mind and unbundles this. No other MMO has ever done that. And I don’t know who wants to pay 40 USD more for a privilege of cosmetic changes to the elf.
So, if we are not getting the High Elf in the standard edition, why do we get the Aria of the Valar at all there? Well, that is so we do not need to level up and still are able to experience Mordor. Is it safer to assume that by now people are ready and waiting for Mordor or that there is some low-level who wants to go there immediately? I am not sure about everyone else, I understand that there are players with less play time on their hands or just aren’t as into it as others, but I have six characters on level 105 and ready for a t2c raid. I have one more who is level 41 and I do not intend to level him up, as it is a duplicate class, made for scouting servers on transfer and became my crafter. So, Aria of the Valar for me and people like me or just the people who like to level up while questing and experiencing the story has zero value.
Aria of the Valar, or any Valar package for that matter, has that much less value because it doesn’t really prepare you for anything. You gain levels, the trait points that go with those levels, usually 4 virtue levels, some gold, legendary items and some weak purple gear to get you by. If we were to compare this level-up service to other games you would have been much better prepared to go into the level cap content than you are in LOTRO. Valar packages do not give you trait points you usually get from certain quest lines that you are now way over the level for, it does not give you safe passage through Angmar if I recall correctly and it doesn’t even unlock the stables in Middle Earth for you. So, what other games seem to consider mandatory SSG considers priviledge.
I mentioned my six raiding characters. I’m not a real big fan of elves, but I do have an elf Rune-Keeper. I have a captain, also, so High-Elf doesn’t bring anything ground breaking for me that I would want to purchase it to level it up from the start. However, because of very bad racial traits of the “regular” elf, I would gladly pay for an “upgrade” to my “regular” elf, which, of course, isn’t offered and it is questionable if it will ever be. So, value of the High Elf to me and similar players – also 0.
The highest package that SSG is offering also has a one month VIP code included. And admittedly, players who have a life-time VIP are not in the majority, they do not have any need for a VIP code. So, this is another item with zero value to those players.
And I must admit I am surprised that after all the hype about Chance Thomas, the soundtrack is not included in any of the packages.
Interestingly, SSG thinks that the High Elf, which is planed to be priced 1000 LP at U22 launch (which is called U22 for now, may be a dot update), and several other things like cosmetic armor, cloak, kite, character slot, title and alliance mount are worth the jump from 40 to 80 USD. Well, first of all, who flies a kite in Mordor?! And second of all, this is probably the worst value for money you could decide on. This now begs the question is SSG really that divorced from reality and has no clue about business or PR or is this only a stunt to get people to buy a massively overpriced package and spend 130 USD. Sadly, I am convinced that SSG has allowed itself to ask for so much based partly because of what is in the package, but also based on the sentimental value of getting near the end of the story. We are not being sold a cheaper expansion because we are being sold our adventure, maybe our childhood, our dreams… Certainly not quests.
Not to speak of, and of course I will, that this is not a pre-purchase in any other way than that it is available before the launch of the game. But it will also stay available after the launch. So the people who are pre-purchasing aren’t actually getting anything from the packages as a reward or a perk for supporting the game, those are being sold and used to badly justify the price they are asking. Also, more on price… I would guess that SSG would like more real money from a pre-purchase than some real and some fake money from LOTRO points. So how come that you are punished for buying the expansion now? The expansion will be priced at 2495 LOTRO points and, as said before, the High Elf will be 1000 LP. That is much less than 40 USD. So, basically, people who are pre-purchasing and paying with money and supporting the game are punished and people waiting for the U22 are rewarded?
The business practice and the history of the game
And we do not have here only a case of overpricing the expansion packages, we also have a case of… Well, first of all no advertising, even if it has been told that there will be some. But also false advertising because players have been told for weeks that the price of the expansion would be similar to the older ones, but none of the old ones went above 100 USD, to my knowledge.
LOTRO has made much more money when it went F2P, so it didn’t need to learn on mistakes or successes anyone else did, they had their own. So, instead lowering the price and attracting more people to buy it, their excuse for the VIP in the package is that you can gift it away. Whatever money they make now I am positive that they would have made twice as much if we were able to make our own packages. I’d gladly raise the price with the mounts, I have gotten them with the other pre-purchases too, why not now, and with the XP item, etc. But what I do not want is to be cheated out of money with things that have 0 value for me.
All of this has only been made worse by the release date that SSG offered us. Some of us have been on all the iterations of Mordor Beta builds and we have seen the work that needs to be done. It would be generous to say that this release is rushed. We are falling through bridges, NPCs are in the ground not being able to finish quests, High Elf still needs work, avatar upgrades are not finished, skins of mobs are not all there, loot tables are not finished, various items are not showing their correct level, whole camps pulled by attacking one mob, etc. And we now need to work with another yet unfinished iteration of an update/expansion, allowing for possible exploiting or otherwise caused frustration by the rushing of the release date. I am not aware that LOTRO has any competition now.
Turbine or SSG, call them what you like, certainly has a history of not testing things through or just not caring about it. It has been said on various occasions that Bullroarer, which is considered a beta test server, is in fact alpha and SSG in its various forms has treated live servers like they were beta. Just flash back to when people could not raid because they were preparing for Mordor and buffed Throne of the Dread Terror raid.
To not go too far back, the update that brought us the Wastes comes to mind. As it came live we have experienced massive amounts of lag for days. Addressing the lag was actually addressing the motivation to players to cause lag by removing the reputation drop items with the excuse that they weren’t even supposed to drop, after the history of them dropping through the whole game. Nobody from SSG has given any official statements anywhere, apologized for the inconvenience or even tought that they could add a week at least on people’s VIP subscription. Maybe I am reaching here, but the lack of communication there, not the lag, is what made me drop my VIP subscription and buy the raid with the accumulated LP. Looking a little more back, we had the fiasco with the Bell-O-Dale flowers that some people farmed enough of sapphire extracts in a few hours and some were hurting for days.
Many people on the forum were talking about developers not being able to do something because of Warner Brothers or Turbine or whatever… But SSG is Turbine. We have the same developers in the same building and probably even offices, they are only a different entity now. Nothing will be better just because they are called SSG now because nothing and nobody has changed. Except for the name change. And if you want something to change, you must ask for it.
Why do we do this?
Now, Massively said this nicely and I agree… We are not hard on the studio or on the game because we have some kind of a grudge or a vendetta, but because we want this game to be great. It is because we love this game that we are writing what we feel needs to be addressed. I can understand that it is not a nice feeling to see the uproar of the people on the forums and come to work to a 20 page thread and several of those, full of angry people. But instead of letting this happen every time maybe SSG could stop one day and ask themselves “How can we deal with this?”.
But I can say that the fans of LOTRO paying just to support the game so it doesn’t shut down and paying no matter what are not really helpful here. I don’t want to offend the fans, I am one too, but it’s a very sad day when people who write passionately about this become the subject of hateful attacks and name calling when they wanted to point some things out and help build a great game. I would guess that this is also the reason we are loging in to Bullroarer and writing the bugs and in threads in the Bullroarer forum.
Somehow there is this train of tought that if you are a fan, then you will praise, defend and never criticize the game and the studio and will be OK spending money no matter what. But after some of the mistakes that have happened the feelings are a little dulled and now I think more like a consumer. What do I get for my money? And I can tell you one thing. A customer will spend more money on a product if he is satisfied with the customer service and the value a company places on a customer. I’m not overly impressed with SSG on this note.
What to do about it?
There is hardly any way out of this now. The packages have been bought, so there is no way SSG will want to lower the price and then play with refunds, there won’t be any more packages for the similar reason, so the only way to give more value is to add LOTRO points and maybe a few mithril to all packages – maybe 500, 1000 and 2000 LP and 25, 50, 100 mithril. No reason for SSG to be stingy with pixels. We could ask for the High Elf in the standard edition, but then anyone who did buy the collector edition may feel cheated out of 40 USD.
I am sad to say and come to terms with a discovery that this game has survived for this long only because of its name. Only because of LOTR and Tolkien do we tolerate the treatment we have been given for so long. Had this been Land of the Righteous nobody would be here anymore when we consider the lag, the support, filing a ticket and waiting for hours, then to log on a different character only to then receive the notice that it is closed because you were not online, all the bugs that go live and much more.
There is no curse in elvish, entish or the tongues of men for this treachery.
We didn’t expect to see this so soon. I guess we were expecting a little bit later release date of the expansion, so this news was a bit of a surprise to some of us at least. We have the usual three pre-purchase options: standard, as the lowest; collectors edition and an ultimate fan bundle. The date of the release of the expansion in July 31st, but in the event of a delay it will be released no later than August 31st. You can see the content on the image below.
I guess the price could be considered a little bit steep. Didn’t really expect it to be cheap, but a 40 USD jump per package is… an interesting decision. Especially considering that businesses do make more money offering products and services for cheaper and having more customers. LOTRO experienced it as well, making more money as it went F2P. It is expensive especially considering there are some items in the package that seem to be not that crucial for it. Aria of the Valar being the main one. What about those who have leveled almost every class to 105 and equipped it? Essence reclamation is fairly cheap in the game and can be purchased for a number of currencies too.
Personally I have been thinking of buying the top package before I’ve seen the price. I have bought two pre-purchases before this one, but can’t say I remember the price on those. Sadly, I may be buying only the basic package. I wish I could make my own package, the things I would be kicking out would change the prince significantly: Valar – no, High Elf – no, Character slot – no, Essence reclamation – no. Don’t know what’s this housing port, so that’s a maybe.
And title or not, I walked into Mordor and got a video to prove it. But with standard not offering much… Is there an incentive to buy? Maybe. Here is the link to the page.
I am never too happy when there is a server wipe and I have to do everything all over again, but I understand that it must be done when some changes need to get implemented and it’s always nice to see the game move forward and develop in front of your eyes. They did fix some things from beta 1, even though you still can fall through some of the rocks, but it seems that they didn’t get to beta 2 still.
I was very glad to read in the notes that SSG has reconsidered the difficulty level of the starter are in Mordor – Udun – and that they have lowered the rating drop on levels 106-110, but that it will become steeper 111-115. The rating drop decrease is not that significant in terms of numbers, it’s a 0.8-0.9% change, but it does feel easier to go through the landscape and I do commend SSG for this. I did get to 115 and I was actually very happy that there was enough quests to be able to do this and as confirmed by +Loft in /World in one of the videos below the next beta will not wipe the server, so we will be able to test more content at the cap.
I have forgotten to say that I was happy that some of the travel locations have gotten new icons and do not look like Minas Tirith anymore. I am uncertain how lore breaking it is to have the stable masters in Mordor, since we didn’t have them in Wastes, but I love this addition. It makes some of the quests much easier. Especially with the Black Book and Gandalf not moving anywhere when you need to turn in the quest. Another welcome change was the addition of the “bridges” over some of the “canyons” with lava underneath, the only issue is that some of them you can still fall through. I LOVED the part with finding the lore items through Mordor and the audio that comes with it, but this is when I revert to my complaining part… Lore quests are a level 115 quest you only get once you reach 110 or 111, not sure. I would have even missed Udun had I not died in an area that doesn’t send you to the nearest rez point, but only to the Wastes. This move is very unreasonable for me because Black Book and the “regular” quests will lead you through the area, some of the closed locations too, where you will need to revisit again only to get those quests done. So, I would say that the Lore quests need to be assigned as soon as you enter the region.
Speaking of those lore pages and the 115 quests… While looking for those I did notice that Udun yet doesn’t have the quest locations on the map. But Dor Amarth does. So, while looking for one of those pages at a camp I come across level 115 mobs in a lower level area. I die there fighting some ghosts. Then I go back to Udun and try to find some more rare chests so I could get better gear and I come across the same level 115 mobs, this time orcs. One orc camp was protecting 2 rare chests. I have gotten a few of these chests where they weren’t protected by things so overpowered for the region. I am hoping this is something that will get adjusted. I don’t mind the occasional 700k morale troll, but “regular” 115 orcs in a 107 area where the whole camp is linked together and they all attack you at once and you get 100 Shadow is an overkill for something that has nice rewards, but not THAT nice. Once you do finally finish a quest and I only managed to finish one out of three I picked up, you get a story and a book to throw on the floor.
While leveling it was easy enough to get to level 111 if you’re using the 200% experience from the store. And for the eleventy-first level you will also get a deed and the title ‘Well-preserved’. If you’re leveling by doing quests on landscape solo you may run through a lot of those. While I was leveling I had some set backs and AFK moments, so I can’t be too accurate, but I believe I went through 20 of those, which is almost 5000 LP. You will most likely go faster if you go through Mordor with a small fellowship group or you may just decide to power level first. But without the Black Book past chapter 2 and some quests still not working it was a bit unclear what area was next in line, so I may have made a wrong turn first and then went to Agarnaith, which I suppose is the correct order after Dor Amarth.
Another thing that is still lacking while leveling is the rewards. I truly hope that there will be enough of the rewards to equip a character to the level it is needed to be able to run alone through Mordor. Not saying it should be easy, but it shouldn’t be so because of lack of the gear, at least to help you get the LoE/Shadow neutral. At level 111 I had to visit the E&G tavern and upgrade everything apart from my earrings to the teal armour and jewelry and get the relics too. Only when I got those and when I was able to deconstruct some of the rewards I had I had enough Ash to barter for something else. But the thing that is missing here is that in order to get those items you need to be 115 and you will have issues getting there if you don’t have Light of Earendil items. It’s a vicious circle.
The drops, of course, still didn’t change. Still we get the Eorlingas recipes, green items without LoE stat, crafting materials for Anorien tier and third age legendary items. For ffffffPete sake, please remove these already.We are not getting the ‘Destroy all’ button, yet we still keep getting items we don’t even want to sell, let alone use for anything. Or even better, put a +1 LoE on the items, so we can deconstruct them since there isn’t enough of those in the rewards to get for the gear. With crafting we can’t get them either. I tested this also and on the sample of 540 ore I have 2 shards – 1 is from the rare chest I believe and 1 is from mining ore. Even if both were from ore, this is a too small number and needs to get buffed. If it is this rare the item should be giving 50-100 Ash and I’m pretty certain it doesn’t.
If you are a Warden, like I am, you will also be interested in gear that is used for tanking. Sadly, Wardens have been lacking stat bonuses on items before, so I hope this will not be the case again. What am I talking about? If you remember the Pelargir gold items the rings for a might class had a dps version and a tanking version. The rings for an agility class did not have any tanking version to it, only 2 dps versions. So I hope that the current stats on the defensive set are not final as most of those have Resistance on it. Instead of resistance I would much rather prefer BPE, mitigations or even finesse (but not that much).
For those of you wondering how do you deconstruct the items and which ones can be deconstructed… You basically get an item that is called Flame of Ancalamir, which I mentioned in the first article about the build. You will have to right-click it and sadly, there is still no animation to tell you that it is active or which items you can deconstruct. A good rule of thumb is that if the item has a Light of Earendil bonus on it, it can be deconstructed. In the build 3, we get 2 of the Flames for some reason, 1 we can buy and 1 we get after finishing the quest of deconstructing the dagger.
Speaking of LoE and Shadow… While adding this, something did not adjust properly, so right now the buffs you get from food and scrolls and debuffs can get in the way of the bar that shows the LoE/Shadow level and sometimes they even go a little bit more to the left on the portrait. I did not play with resizing or changing the portrait in any way, just noticed that and that the LoE bar now has a nice smoke-like animation when you go into an area with less shadow.
I spoke about a Barad Dur face-lift in this article and I do like it, but it seems that something here went wrong too. The map definitely isn’t finished and it looks like when they were moving some rooms around they didn’t move them on a map too. Barad Dur has a few areas where mobs will go into anti-exploit mode, one of those is shown in the video above. Barad Dur now also has a crafting instance at level 115, but it is more like the ones we are used to have, not the ones from the Wastes. I did forget to watch my morale at times and I died 3 times in this one, but I didn’t have to. But all in all, it was relatively easy to finish it in time. You can see it below, with time stamps in the description to what I found was wrong. One of the things being that you hear the doors open at the boss fight. I imagine that at that point the boss should be getting the reinforcements, but they do not exit the chambers.
I do like the smoke wall that acts as a barrier. It isn’t too different from the old crafting instances, if at all, but I would love if it would actually have something decent behind it, not just a node, especially when it is in a place that you don’t need to go through to get to the boss, like there is in the video above.
Next is the woodworking instance and in this one also you can only finish the main quest, not the 2 side quests too.
It seems that we will have 8 reputations in this expansion. Four reputatios will be landscape ones and four reputations from the allegiance. The Fushaum North and South reputations will be a little tricky as when you increase reputation with one faction, the other one decreases. So you may need to calculate those daily quests you’ll have there. In any case, it seems that you gain more reputation than you lose, so it should somehow even out.
And of course I can not finish the article without protesting the decision of putting a cap on the set bonuses while we do not have gear to replace it with on the level. I and many other would gladly rather use Throne armour for Oathie reset, but we don’t have that option and the Osgiliath instances are too old to grind for the scaled versions if they are any good at all. And for the captain they take away four armour pieces and essence slots with it.
If you are eating right now, I suggest you finish your meal first before continuing to the gallery.
So, as you can see we at LOTRO Players have been running the BR and testing the game to bring you what is new and SSG what is broken. So far, so good. We’re keeping up. Some of the bugs and kinks have been noted in the following video. For your convenience you can use the time links in the description.
Other than the ones in the video there are some other issues. Usually you’re not able to aggro two different kinds or species even if they are standing next to each other. So an animal kind should only aggro if you attack its kind. But Dire-Horn aggroed even though I attacked a man. Which in the new area can be an issue, since the mobs actually hit quite hard at times and maybe you don’t want to pull too many for various reasons, be it gear, not full health bar, etc. Some quests do not tell you if you got the item or not. I’ve been killing leaders for a while untill I found this out. And Mithrandir isn’t moving at all. So it was quite annoying to ride even from the second area of Mordor – Dor Amarth – back to the front of the gate just to continue the quest or turn it in. It would be nice to get ported to him once the quest is done, at least, because while doing this I spent quite a few Mithril Coins. Once the Black Book starts it is interesting. When I found myself in Annuminas I tought it was some kind of a bug. Which is what happens in the early stages of beta. Sometimes you do not know if something is a bug or just hasn’t been built in yet or something else is happening.
The trait points have also been changed. You will now get only 3 trait points, instead of 5 – 108, 111 and 114. The reputation goes to celebrated. At level 110 and having finished all the available quests in the 2 first regions, I have 210 Silver Signets of the Thandrim. You use this for non-slotted armour recipes and essence recipes, both single use. You also use them for your muster/return skills, cosmetic items and relics. So I wouldn’t mind getting a bit more of these while questing and there will probably be some repeatable quests to get more. You will die now if you try to swim through lava, but it also has a decent reach when you are standing close to it. Which means no lava fishing for fried fish, but it also sometimes makes it a bit difficult to collect quest items needed.
And given the description you can see when handing in the quest and on the item itself, I think this item should be a bit stronger and a bit less green.
High Elf
In this build we have also received the High Elf race and we were able to test some animations. The High Elf still isn’t done and they still look very similar to men, the race movie intro is the same as for regular elves. Personally, I wasn’t impressed when my High Elf captain started with a club with a few nails in it, while he was level 110. Running is still a bit awkward, it looks like tip-toeing and kicking back. It also has something of a balerina-like jump up, but when you are jumping from a higher position then he lands in some parkour style, which I do love. Bellow you can see the High Elf intro.
Some of the High Elf racial traits are decent, but I do think they need still some work. A wider dps buff, possibly a better out of combat rez – 30 minutes is far too long for a cooldown, unless it’s in combat. But so far I am not that impressed with the High Elf that I would invest money to buy the class and time to regrind all the virtues, trait points, etc. Race alone does not give game changing bonuses and I don’t see value in cosmetic changes like looks and animations other than for devoted role players. I have most of the classes, a captain too. So High Elf without some fancy class means nothing to me and to players who have most of these classes, some even all. But if there was an option to pay for an Elf to High Elf transformation, I would probably do it in a heart beat. 5% power bonus?! Whoopty-do. I’d take a High Elf racial bonus over the Elf one any time.
Barad Dur facelift
In Beta 1 you couldn’t continue the quests in Lughash. Once Beta 2 came out, that was the first thing to check out and it worked. One of those quests takes you to Barad Dur to free the king. Seems like dwarves still didn’t fix this bridge, hopefully they get to that. Even if they don’t, just hold to your mount a bit harder and it will be fine. But what surprised me the most, and in a good way, was what happened inside. Barad Dur has actually grown. It felt like I got into the TARDIS – It’s bigger on the inside.
You get a larger map, more quests, more enemies and different ones too. And just a note, once you pick up the quest from the dwarven king he will ask you to search for something in the relic chamber. That is the chamber with the two Cargul. You need to enter it and it will say that the item is not there. I missed it in the first run through. What I also love in Barad Dur is that once you free the prisoners they do not respawn a few seconds after, making it look like you did nothing. This seems to be permanent.
What I don’t like
The players have been asking for a while now that we get the Destroy all loot button, but we didn’t get it. And still we are getting the Eorlingas recipes, random purple LI drops, green items we don’t even want to vendor… I hope this gets fixed and we get rid of this junk loot. The best hope tokens are still made with the Westemnet recipes… So the players have been asking to even get the same token, but for new materials.
I also have some concearns about the gear and rating we are going to have. We have the best planed gear to test. But as per Vastin, this is not the gear that will be available in the U21 update, it will be a part of a dot update. Which one, we don’t know. And even with that best gear, which doesn’t even have a set bonus, which is another complaint, we do not cap many of our stats. Which I find is unacceptable because we can not re-introduce older ways of gearing and playing while the mechanics of the runs stay the same. Bosses get their morale buffed, damage buffed, avoidance buffed, they deal AoE/frontal/distributed damage and we now need to choose where we want to put our essences. If this happens I do not know how it will impact the raiding and PvMP community, but I don’t expect it to be nice.
The overall statting balance has been changed with the intent of making it quite difficult to cap everything you might want to cap – you’re going to have to make choices regarding what’s really important to your build – DPS vs. mitigations vs. vitality and so forth.
Pre-mordor it was very easy to cap your primary mitigations with most classes, and then you’d classically start stacking morale or DPS mods. In Mordor you can expect there to be more tension between these decisions as it will decidedly NOT be trivial to simply cap your mitigations – only main tanks would be expected to even really try for that.
Speaking of the best gear issue here… It would be nice to know if the gear stats are close to where they intend them to be and if they didn’t intend it to have bonuses. Then we have an issue here with putting a cap on the level you can use some lower sets on. No level 75 sets and no level 115 sets. I have seen some Dome of the Stars loot has scaled, but I still didn’t see a box drop and how the armour from it looks like. But even if it scaled properly… SSG makes old content sets unavailable, only to make us run old content to get the scaled sets. This content is at least two years old.
I usually don’t intend to make my articles a rant, but if having these rant-like elements does help a bit and pushes the readers and especially the developers to reconsider some things and possibly provoke a different approach, then I’m happy I made it.
