Mounts 2.0 Dev Diary

It's the little quality of life improvements that make me the happiest in LOTRO. And seeing the new changes to the mount system gets me almost as excited as trying out the skirmishes. I doubt any dev would call what they did for mounts in SoM a "little" update, but it is a refinement of content.

And that's the best way to describe it. We can talk to NPCs on our mounts, go through doors or "portals" on our mounts, emote on our mounts, use certain skills on our mounts. It makes mounts less of a simple point-A-to-point-B device and more a part of our character. And as a skill, mounts no longer take up space, so that means we can collect as many as we like without having bags or bank space devoted to our stable. I know this will give me a new money sink on Jaxom. A horse of every color and variety for me please!

One last thing: the dev diary has a little blurb at the end pretty much trying to say that this mount system change was not designed to take on mounted combat. However, despite this, they do say the system was designed for expandability and flexibility. I think mounted combat does fit into that design feature.

And lastly, at this point in LOTRO's life, it's a little known fact that mounts weren't going to be in release until quite late in the development process - the dev diary alludes to that as well. I for one am supremely happy they did make it in, even limited as they were. It would suck to run all the time and could have been a serious stumbling block to player retention.

Siege of Mirkwood Release Date

Hayo! We got a launch date for the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion. And it is *drum roll* December 1st. This is actually a bit later than I predicted. I would have figured on a pre-Thanksgiving release. However, in hindsight the Thanksgiving shopping rush isn't as important to a digital only product as it would be to something in retail outlets. Black Friday is very much a traditional shopping event and digital distribution tends to even the field when it comes to when something is purchased. Indeed, if Christmas were earlier in the year, Turbine might have even passed up that holiday - gifts residing solely in a computer is hard to put under the tree. Really, the supreme guiding force for this was to stay in Fall (Winter beginning Dec 21st) and in 2009. December 1st is a perfect fit.

Now, here's where things get a little chaotic. If you check out Turbine's official press release, you'll find a host of pre-order options. Yay for pre-orders! But what the heck is an Adventure Pack and how is it different from the Siege of Mirkwood expansion? Seriously, could they have made this any more complicated? Don't even bother trying to figure it out from Turbine's release. Check out A Casual Stroll to Mordor's overview of the whole thing; they do an excellent job of cutting through the marketing BS.

And that's what it is. They're selling the Adventure Pack, which is basically the bonus goodies normally included with a pre-order and offering SoM for "Free"... if you buy the AP under certain conditions. Now, the AP is 19.99, the price-point previously stated for SoM. And that little similarity can lead to the question: is the AP the same thing as the expansion? Nope. It's not. And what if you don't want to pre-order (in other words, by the AP) but want to buy the Siege of Mirkwood when it releases? Well, apparently they'll now throw in the AP (minus one of the bonus perks) but tack on another 20 bucks.

So really, the Siege of Mirkwood expansion is 39.99, not 19.99. What this should have looked like is this: Pre-order the Siege of Mirkwood now for a 20 dollar discount and a bonus item. Regular price is 39.99. The whole reason this Adventure Pack thing exists is so they can use the word "Free" in their advertising. We all like free. We jump at free.

Seriously? Selling us the bonus stuff? And "lying" about the price? Cut the crap, Turbine marketing.

And just because I hate ending good news on a bad note, I've got to say "Yay! We have a release date! And pre-order goodies!"

Falling Behind

I've not been able to make the last few Massive Hobbits events due to other things being scheduled during the play times. This Saturday again finds me busy. And I'm starting to fall behind - especially since the group is moving to Book 3.4+ and I haven't even started Book 2 yet. Not that I think they wouldn't mind catching me up, but I just feel less motivated to play when I know I'm behind. And that's sort of where I've found myself with Jaxom on Elendilmir.

Perhaps I'm suddenly moving away from being hardcore casual to just casual. With a new job, my time is even more limited now. I have a host of activities I used to fill up my excessive free time and now I need to make the choice of which ones are most important. It would seem from the outside that LOTRO would be high on the list but even high on the list doesn't change the amount of time in the day. I also want to get into the habit of regularly writing fiction, which I've dabbled with on and off for years now to no finished projects. Indeed if I could discipline myself enough to push a piece or pieces off for potential publishing, that would be fantastic. That means a lot more time spent writing rather than playing.

There's some other life choices I need to make soon, which I won't get into here because it's not important for the gaming side of this. Regardless, I'll be blogging less, and playing LOTRO less. the idea of having two kinships (three with the blogger kinship The LOTRO Reporter has been discussing.) is out of the question. I'll have to stick with my first. I just cannot devote the time and effort (I'm a big believer in helping the kin as much as possible). I'm already torn about missing so many Massive Hobbits events.

A Job

Just to let everybody know I finally have a job. It's not what I'd like to be doing, or in my field, but it's what I need to be doing because I need to get some money into the bank and to fill the gap in my resume. Not sure yet on my long term goals, but for the short term, this means I'll be pretty busy during the day and as such blogging less - not that my rate has been high lately anyway.

Siege of Mirkwood Summary

Alas, I never got around to summarizing all the news and information about the Siege of Mirkwood expansion. Instead, I'll point you to LOTROLife for that. They've got a nice run-down of all the features revealed so far in SoM.

Docholiday's LOTRO Blog

Found a new LOTRO blog for you all. Seriously, my blog roll and reader are fast filling up with LOTRO related content. But that's not a bad thing! Docholiday plans on focusing most on end-game content and classes he plays, specifically the Warden. Do check out the blog as it looks like he has some great ideas for future content.

MMORPG.com SoM Preview

There's nothing really new in this preview. Not even new screenshots. So, it wouldn't even rate mentioning except for a line right near the beginning that's a bit ambiguous:

"This expansion ends the epic story of Moria and the land mass that players will be able to explore is Southern Mirkwood. Dol Guldor, Elves and Olog Hai, oh my! What about Northern? Well yes, if there's Southern Mirkwood, Northern will follow. Soon. Okay, it's not Rohan, but we'll get there eventually."

The question is, does this comment reflect something said to the interviewer or did MMORPG.com just assume that Northern Mirkwood would be soon because Southern Mirkwood is coming soon? I'm inclined to go with the latter myself, because I'm hard pressed to see Turbine deviate so far from the Fellowship's journey. Then again, if we're a year out from the Rohan Expansion (i.e. next fall) then there should be one or two landscape additions from free Book updates between now and then. Where would these landscape additions go? They could be south along the Anduin to prepare for Rohan. Or they could be north farther into Mirkwood, exploring more of the evil there. Or maybe into the fields of Gladden.

It's an interesting question, at any rate, and based off of the MMORPG.com quote, there's very little to point us in the right direction. It actually just confuses the matter even more.

A Blogger Kinship

The LOTRO Reporter has come up with the idea of forming a LOTRO blogger and readers of LOTRO blogs kinship. They have a poll up on their site for which server people would be interested in. Go ahead on over there and vote if you're interested in such a kinship. I know I'm a fan of the idea. Not sure how much I'll be participating since I really want to get back to Jaxom on Elendilmir (poll is leaning towards Brandywine or Landroval at the moment), but it's a cool idea, similar to Massive Hobbits except there's no choose my adventure part of it.

Massive Hobbits Take Weathertop

Alas due to those client crashes I was unable to attend the Weathertop night. However, there's an excellent write-up, probably the best yet, over on Massively.com. Do check it out for some screens of the event. It's an interesting read not having participated in it. Seems more adventurous reading the narrative without having gone through the gameplay motions of the event. If I were reading this as someone who hasn't played LOTRO, I'd be completely sucked in and very tempted to subscribe. Kudos to Gibbi/Shawn for the superb presentation.

And due to a crammed schedule this week, I wasn't able to attend Wednesday's, last night's, and this Saturday's event. Which kinda sucks, but ya know, that's the sacrifice we make when trying to catch up with some friends I haven't seen in a while. Real Life (TM) has to be the priority.

Theme Park vs World

I haven't touched on the topic of the world in LOTRO for quite a while, which is surprising considering that's one of my favorite topics. In any case, I'm mentioning it today because I'm starting to see a pattern I'm not 100% pleased about.

Today while out gathering journeyman tier ore (silver for my tinker) I traveled from Bree across the Brandy Hills, through the woods, and down to the banks of the Brandywine. If I was so inclined, I could have made a boundless journey from Weathertop in the Lone Lands to Needlehole in the Shire with my only moment on a road being the crossing of the Greenway in Breeland. In other words, that journey would feel like I was in a world, rather than a collection of zones in an MMO - a theme park if you will.

What I mean by theme park is a series of zones where the travel to and from is fairly strictly channeled and the experience highly organized and planned. We're seeing much more of this in LOTRO lately. From the Trollshaws into the Misty Mountains or into Eregion to Moria to Lothlorien to eventually Mirkwood, the process becomes an exercise in changing themes, rather than actually moving about a landscape. Oh sure, these zones are very good sized, and within them the world is very well crafted. Yet I can't escape the feeling that I'm on the greatest hits tour of Middle-Earth rather than a summer long backpacking trip through the countryside.

The fact that a seamless connection between zones (Shire, Breeland, Lonelands, Northdowns, Evendim) exists only heightens the sense of what's missing in later developments. Forochel itself is wide open, but the connection between it and Evendim is like two triangles precariously balancing on their points together - it's tenuous and contrived, not altogether stable. Or the trip east after the Trollshaws.

Middle-Earth has so much potential to be more than just a series of zones following the Fellowship. There's the key, though. Following the Fellowship. That's the main idea of the development pattern. And it's one that makes sense. It's the most famous set of places in Middle-Earth. It's where the peak of the story takes place. It's where we can really connect with the core journey and struggle.

I do hope we will go back and visit the rest of the landscape at some point. It'd be a shame not to. An awful waste of space. Middle-Earth hovers on the edge of theme park territory. Perhaps when the game expands into Rohan we'll see a more broad and seamless set of zones. This adventurer can only hope. For him, Middle-Earth is a world, not just set of zones.

The Other Bounty Quests

We've had a discussion about bounty quests before, but did you know that in addition to the IXP bounty quests in Esteldin, there's crafting related bounty quests in Breeland (and perhaps other places)? While adventuring with Massive Hobbits in the Barrow downs I ran across three repeatable bounty quests that reward single-use recipes to whichever type of crafter you are. One of them even rewards the particular shard (in this case sapphire) that you need to complete these recipes. Of course, that means you'll have to find two other shards for the other two recipes you get, but that's not unreasonable. Indeed, these quests are an excellent way to get some good recipes for some nice jewelry early in your tier when you couldn't otherwise make a crit item with good stats. I do hope to see more of these for the later tiers.

Just An FYI

If any of you follow me on Twitter you'll know that my LOTRO client has been crashing. So, this is just an FYI to the rest of my readers that I haven't been able to log into LOTRO for the past week or so beyond a few minutes (the time it takes for the client to crash). I'm in contact with Turbine Customer Support but this can be a lengthy process and right now they're studying my problem. Hopefully I'll be back up and running soon. I unfortunately missed the Massive Hobbits storming of Weathertop. Oh well.

EDIT: I needn't have bothered with this post since I think I found the root cause of the crashing tonight. With excellent help from the Turbine Customer Support team I managed to track the problem back to the anti-aliasing setting. The in-game AA setting interferes with the Catalyst Control Center adaptive anti-aliasing setting for my graphics cards. Or rather visa-versa. So, I just disable the AAA card setting and bam, no more crashing.

Why did I suddenly get this problem after the windows reinstall and not before? Well, I thought I those settings had been activated before, when they really weren't. At least all is now well in LOTRO land for this adventurer.

Psychochild's Legendary Evaluation

Psychochild, a game developer named Brian Green, has put up a blog post evaluating the Legendary item system in LOTRO and what could change to make it better. I thought I'd point it out and respond.

He points out two problems with the system. First, its randomness, and second its negative affect on crafting. I whole heartedly agree with his assessment visa-vie crafting. Lucky for us, Siege of Mirkwood will expand the current craftability of legendary items. Depending on what is implemented, this could be a moot point. On the whole, I feel the randomness is generally well balanced, especially with the most recent changes to allow the choice of legacies (out of two) to add or upgrade. In essence, legendary items as a system actually aren't that bad right now. But I do think I would have preferred a different approach, one that would have required implementation of legendary items from launch. Such wishful thinking, however, is futile since the past cannot be changed now.

Despite the system being "not that bad", could Psychochild's suggested improvements help? First he advises to make legacies slottable instead of inherent to the weapon. Like the relics. This immediately eliminates any difference between relics and legacies and therefore should become one and the same - slottable stats. I like the idea but there needs to be a way to keep the current level of randomness present. If we can choose our legacies out of a pool like the relics, then we have too much freedom to create "uber" weapons. Now, of course legendary weapons should be some of the best weapons in the game, but not to the point where freedom to customize will lead to them being overpowered. Psychochild doesn't have any ideas on keeping the randomness, but that's because he thinks there's too much randomness at present. I would suggest that once you slot your legacy, it cannot be removed - only leveled, like present. There is mention of removing the legacy, but I think that keeps the pool of legacies too powerful and perfect. Perhaps removal is permanent - you lose the legacy. This is really only delays the inevitable super collection of legacies. Players will eventually quest enough to get any legacy the want. And since it's not random on the weapon, they will gain the "perfect" weapon relatively quickly.

Honestly, I don't think changing the legendary item system in this manner will bring about any improvement from a game mechanic perspective. From the player's point of view, they'll certainly like it better because they can now really get the weapon or item they've always wanted. But because the grind is virtually eliminated (aside from collecting legacies/relics and leveling) it has less utility for keeping players engaged.

This of course begs the question - is a grind with this system the best way of engaging the players? I would argue no, there's got to be a better, more fun, way. And I think that way can be in part linked to the crafting. Incorporating more playstyles into the legendary system will help it, regardless of the grind. If we can get crafted legendaries to speed up the grind a little, we'll see a little bit more fun.

The root problem, I think, is the dichotomy between randomness and an actual legendary weapon you would keep with you, like Sting or Glamdring or Anduril. With as much randomization as we have, it necessitates burning through legendaries we don't want to find the one that will suffice. Retaining a weapon for a long period of time, as a truly legendary weapon would, requires it be less randomized to ensure desirability on first acquisition. The latter isn't good, as I said above, for retaining interest in the mechanics of the system beyond leveling.

I think the ideas would be good to put on hold till we see how exactly the legendary system improves (or doesn't as the case may be) with SoM. Still worth thinking about though.

Combat Analysis by 2 High Road

2 High Road is starting an interesting experiment using a third party program to parse the combat data in LOTRO. There's a preliminary post up now outlining what exactly this program does, and some of the limitations. If you're at all interested in min/maxing your characters, do check out this post and the follow up ones as he continues to look at damage output, etc. I know that one lacking area in the LOTRO Blogosphere is "hardcore" analysis and theorycrafting.

I Need to Cool It

I went a little nuts with yesterday's rant about TenTonHammer. Looks like the video is back up and is only 22 minutes long. All hints indicate it was merely a problem with how the video was posted to their site. I don't know for sure, but despite my tirade, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. It's the least I can do. Still, being wrong about this case doesn't invalidate my logic - I just hope nobody will be shortsighted in the manner I wrongfully accused TenTonHammer of being.

TenTonHammer Vid Blocked

So there is a Siege of Mirkwood preview video over on TenTonHammer. Or there was. Now it's gated behind "Premium Content". Stroll to Mordor commented that this might be simply a way to fix the fact that the vid stopped at the 10.30 mark (out of a 40 min runtime). I'm not so certain that this is the case. A better way would to simply take down the page until it's fixed, or even just leave it be until it's fixed. So I honestly do think they intended to make the video preview premium content and just screwed up in the original posting.

Please forgive the use of profanity, but there's no better way to say this: I think premium content of this nature is bullshit. Why? Because the whole point of a developer talking about new content is to disseminate it to the players, fans, and interested consumers. It's a marketing tool and the best marketing is the marketing that sees as many eyes as possible. Making it premium doesn't do that.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not against places like TenTonHammer making money, but they've got to do it in a way that doesn't negate the time effort of someone like Jeffery Steefle taking to show off his game. Look at IGN. Their premium content is comprised of better quality video and unique content produced by them and them alone. I don't personally see a value in that type of content, but many do, and IGN isn't destroying a good marketing tool in the process. More power to them. Just don't ever hinder another company's efforts to make money and spread the word about their product by your own desire for a bit of cash.

I also need to say I'm not arguing that marketing should be free for the company desiring exposure. Rarely is marketing free, but the company pays for advertising in venues that reach a wide audience. It's worth the money because the money doesn't interfere with the goal of the ads. In this venue, where a majority of the information is disseminated in free-to-view forums, gating material only lessens the number of people able to see it, and thus the effect.

I'm not going to out and call TenTonHammer greedy. It's their right to do whatever they want with their content pending it doesn't violate agreed upon terms. But I don't think it's in the best interest of the company providing the material or the potential consumers of that material. And by extension, despite a monetary gain through membership, not in the best interest of TenTonHammer.

EDIT: YouTube for the win. Someone uploaded the TenTonHammer vid in its entirety.

Blind Adoration

There's some question if 20 bucks is an appropriate price for what might be argued is a glorified book update. Before I even knew the price (though 20 was my guess) I knew I would pay it. I'd probably grumble if it cost 30 or 40, but I'd still have paid it. Why? Because I love this game. I love playing this game. But is that enjoyment translating into blind adoration? Is my willingness to shell out cash without question a sign I'm just a rabid fanboi? Indeed, I do not see 20 bucks as too steep; although I really don't want to spend money right now, I will, for this. I'd even pay five bucks for the book updates if Turbine charged for them.

Perhaps my loose pocket book for LOTRO has to do with my lifetime subscription purchase at launch. I've gotten my money's worth and more out of this game so far. Indeed, it paid off after the first year going by $10/month (the lesser known lifetime sub option). Maybe it's a case where I feel I've gotten a lot out of Turbine with this game and I'm perfectly willing to give back a little when I know my money goes directly into the product/service I'm consuming. I don't think a willingness to pay for well crafted content makes me or anybody else blind to where their money is going - we're just quick to decide it's worth the cost.

And for the record, nobody has called me a rabid fanboi, or said I'm blinded by love for LOTRO. This is a purely hypothetical post based off of comments seen on the forums in various places and a thought on Stroll to Mordor (see above link). I'm essentially ruminating on how I didn't even flinch at spending 19.99 on this new expansion.

PAX Siege of Mirkwood Preview

The folks over at ignvault were lucky enough to snag a preview of some of the Siege of Mirkwood content, specifically more info on the skirmishes. I'm absolutely thrilled by what I read. I think this could be an excellent activity for those at the cap who aren't big instance runners and raiders (such as me and some of my kinship). We as yet don't know what the rewards will be for gathering skirmish points, but I'd imagine they'd be inline with the barter items from loth rep quests or something similar.

And, as I've said before, scalable content is the wave of the future. Seriously, having content that caters to the group size rather than being forced to either 1) find more or choose between your friends who gets to go or 2) ignore some of the content because it doesn't fit your group size is an better direction. We're always looking for a more living breathing world in MMOs. Usually this means wanting more of the fluff that fills out a world, but I think it can also mean content that caters to you, rather than you to it. We're removing a barrier to entry, a wall that breaks the player from the world and puts him into the game-side of things, and a stumbling block to fun. We need to see more of this - and again, I'd love to see this implemented for all instances/raids.

Pricing and Other SoM Clarifications

Marketroid has a forum post clarifying some points about SoM, including the price-point: $19.99 US. And Volume III will start with the regular Book updates next year.

No Rohan?

I wanted to handle this as a separate post because it brings up larger questions. First, though, why didn't we see Rohan? I think we need to look at the development pattern we saw post Moria. Book 7 released the whole of Lothlorien which was supposed to be included with the Moria expansion itself. Book 8 included quite a lot of work in fixes for Moria content. Neither were devoid of Moria slippage content, but it did indeed affect the release schedule. We've had two Book updates from November to (guessing SoM release) November whereas we saw three in the previous year.

Like I said with the announcement post, this is Turbine keeping their promise for one expansion per year. Will this be something we'll see more often in the future? I don't know. I think it's a tool in their box they can pull out when needed. Perhaps we'll see a retail expansion every 1.5 to 2 years with one of these "digital expansions" in the middle. Honestly, that seems a more reasonable schedule than producing one large expansion on the scale of Moria per year. And even with the year and a half from release to Moria, there was some content that didn't make it to MoM.

The content needed for Rohan also made seeing Rohan only a year after Moria unfeasible. First, there's a lot of landscape needed. Two major centers are critical to Rohan - Edoras and Helm's Deep. These locations are on separate sides of Rohan, which is the size of two to three Eriador type zones. Then there's the landscape needed for the lead up to Rohan: down the Anduin and into Fangorn. We also need to look at the idea of mounted combat. Rohan is the perfect, quintessential place to launch such a combat system - and it would require a lot of work: getting the tech built, reconciling the current skills onto a horse, then adding the animations. None of this even touches on the huge amounts of quests, the at-least six books of new epic story. All the instances and raid(s). It's a huge undertaking when the development team has been working overtime on finishing up the Moria content.

I hope that makes sense, and of course it's just my guesses. A dev would be better able to tell us why. Next dev chat or a blog post?

A Little Misinformed

Remember that post I made about LOTRO podcasts not having co-hosts? I was definitely shortsighted and misinformed. Indeed, the majority of LOTRO podcasts have co-hosts or a significant part of the run time has a conversation/interview. So, apologies to all you LOTRO podcasters for ranking on you when there was no need. You're all awesome!

And, just for clarity sake, here's all the LOTRO Podcasts I'm aware of

A Casual Stroll to Mordor
LOTRO Report
LOTRO Reporter
LOTROCast by Moormur
LOTROCast by Sparthir
The One True Cast
RingCast
That LOTRO Show

Did I miss anybody?

Siege of Mirkwood

The word expansion doesn't always mean paid retail box expansion. As is the case with the "digital expansion" Siege of Mirkwood coming to LOTRO. You can check out the nice flash animated page for the expansion as well. One last thought before I get to the feature break-down commentary: This is clearly smaller than a retail expansion, but bigger than the free book updates (glorified patches). So, Turbine can keep their quota of one "expansion" per year but stay within a more realized work load. I wonder what the price-point will be on this. Now, onto the features!

Conclusion to Volume II Mines of Moria

Really? The conclusion? This is interesting because it begs a question. It is unlikely that we'll see a retail expansion (Volume III) inside six months after this digital expansion release. And that period is long enough to see one or two Book updates, so what volume will those belong to if they're holding an epic story continuation? 3? Interesting thought, beginning volume three with free patches. Or I could be wrong about seeing a retail expansion not so close to Siege of Mirkwood (hereafter called SoM).

Level cap increase to 65

Sounds good. To be expected. Only five levels for a "smaller" expansion. Really, I'm using the word "smaller" pretty loosely here because I'm only guessing at the scope based on hints in this release. And I don't think any of the devs would appreciate their work diminished to "small".

Answer the Call of War - Skirmishes

Very intriguing concept. There's a lot here too. First, the idea of randomized instances. This has historically been a hard concept to implement because it is hard to replicate hand-crafted quality with randomly generated assets. And LOTRO shines brightly with the quality of it's world and art direction. Will be interesting to see how much a part that will play. Second, we're creating "customizable soldiers". How does that work, exactly? Could be like henchmen/pets (they better have fixed the pathing!). Could be more like a squad you give orders to and level up in games such as Mass Effect. There's so many different possibilities here. I'm excited about this concept for sure.

New instances and raids

A given, just like the level cap. 3-mans, 6-mans, and a 12-man raid. Something for everybody. Now, let's get these spaces debilitating-bug free with launch. We don't need another Moria and Book 8 fiasco. I don't mean to be mean here so I need to say I really am rooting for Turbine in getting this type of content nailed down. They've had a lot of experience correcting mistakes so far.

Other gameplay enhancements

Looks mainly like the Legendary weapon system is getting a bit of an overhaul. New legacies, new runic slot (nice!) The bit about players crafting their own legendary items is a bit ambiguous. Don't we already have that? And do they mean each player can craft his or her own weapon or only weapon smiths? And then there's combat tweaks that will "improve responsiveness". I don't know exactly what that means but I imagine it's responding to some critiques out there about combat feeling a bit clunky compared to some other MMOs. *shrug* I've not had a problem with it, but then, I play a halberd wielding captain so my combat is pretty slow anyway.

Now, onto what other people are saying...

• Lots of forum threads. Lots!
• The LOTRO Reporter (not to be confused with the LOTRO Report) offers some commentary.
• Thallian offers his thoughts, ending a bit wistfully. I hear ya. I get caught up in possibilities too!
• Stroll to Mordor forwards the announcement. Hope to hear them chat about it with their new podcast! So does Darren from Common Sense Gamer. Like StM, I hope it's a discussion topic on Shut Up We're Talking. Nerf the Cat laments that she's only cut and pasted the announcement (hehe!)
  
• MMeOw.net is looking forward to hearing thoughts from the community (got you covered here!) And now they have their own thoughts up and a run down of some dev responses on the forums.
  
• Yeebo Fernbottom's MMO Love-In (what a name huh?) offers some thoughts.
• LOTROVault at IGN has a PAX preview!
• Unwize offers a bit of commentary.
  

So, bloggers, players, let's get chatting. Will this be a paid expansion or free? Is it just a glorified Book patch? What do you think about the features? Are you disappointed there's no Rohan yet? Comment, make your own posts, or join a thread on the forums.

EDIT: Added a couple more round-up links and also want to ask what you all think about the price-point since we now know it'll cost us $19.99 US.

GB Run Finally Up

Took me ages. Between beating my head against a wall trying to get some titles attached the first part to the time it took to compress and upload the videos to annotating them (not done with that yet) these have been a long time coming. Still, I hope the wait was worth it, for I give you Massive Hobbits storm the Great Barrow and defeat Sambrog!

And you can find the additional 4 parts in the related videos/more by the user, or by clicking the links below.

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Enjoy and happy adventuring!