European Dev Chat

I only ran across this yesterday, right before the dev chat was to start. I don't attend dev chats so that wasn't a big deal, but I wish that I could have found out about it on the main US site rather than through a third party and by sheer luck.

There are few items of note I'd like to talk about that have come out of this dev chat. First is about raid content and the following comment from Jalessa:

"Our progress in our raid sets in the future is something that we are continually discuss[ing] and plan[ing] out. We will continue to use radiance as a requirement for future raids, as you have seen with our current Moria sets. We also plan to improve set bonuses and item bonus amounts."

I made a post a while back about gear checks, and why I like LOTRO because there's not really a gear check in the game. Sure better gear means you do things faster etc, but it wasn't required. Decent gear for level 50 meant you could viably complete the Rift or Helegrod. Requiring radiance gear for raids here on out is a gear check of the purest form. You will absolutely die without the radiance gear because the dread is too much. Yes, this is already in the game with The Vile Maw watcher fight. Raiding wasn't precisely casual before, but it's significantly less now. At the very least you have to complete six instances six times each. That's 36 instance runs, 36 times you have to find a fellowship, 36 times you have to commit. All for six pieces of gear.

Of course, one might argue that casual players don't need to experience this content. It's not casual content and there's plenty of casual content in the game already. That's absolutely true, but what made LOTRO different than, say WoW was it's embracing of all content for all players (within reason of course). Perhaps that was a pipe dream, impossible to achieve. I thought they managed fairly well with Shadows of Angmar content, notably raids. Add this to some of the other changes in Book 7 and I feel like LOTRO is going the route of WoW on a few things that might not be the best way of going about it. Just because WoW has 11 million players doesn't mean it does everything right.

I'm probably being unfair to say the devs are coping WoW consciously. They more than likely came up with the ideas on their own. But I'd like to see this game go a little bit of a different direction. Something a little bit unique. The casual friendliness, even in upper level content, was one of those somethings.

The second item is a comment about the XP curve change by Jalessa:

"The change was primarily focused towards our low-mid level players, in an effort to make our game more approachable to the casual user."

There's that word casual again. But that's not what I want to comment on this time - more the abstract level range mentioned here. I put up a post about the level 30 wall the other day (along with links to other blogs talking about the subject) and I think that the xp change could address this problem. Furthermore, it was mentioned Orion is looking over the mid-range content to see how to make it less linear. Honestly, I think the best solution is a new set of zones to duplicate the progression. I'm not sure how redesigning the content at the lower levels will make it any less linear. You still go from the same zone to the same zone.

Lastly is a lighter comment about festivals by Keth:

"In addition to another horse to try and win, there will be a hedge maze for you to try and find your way through. This hedge maze will be instanced, so you'll never see more than a handful of people in the maze at a time."

I love hedge mazes in real life. I'm probably overly excited about this feature of the festival. But I love that they're coming up with new "light" activities to do for these. It's a lot of fun and a good change of pace from the normal questing/deeds/instances. Oh, and yet another horse? We'll need our own stables at this rate. Give us a horse ring! Ya know, like our key ring. I suppose you could call it a stable. A horse rings sounds... odd.

Lothlorien Screenshots

The folks over at Massively have posted some screenshots of Lothlorien. This is one of the most iconic places in Middle-Earth so, in my opinion, it should be one of the most meticulously designed. Much like the Shire and Rivendell. Still images are a far cry from what the place actually feels like, but I think I like what I see so far. It's drastically different from the movies, so if you're coming to this game from only those, be in for a surprise.

The Level 30 Wall

This isn't the first time this has been talked about. And it certainly won't be the last. I thought I'd point to a couple of other discussions about the Level 30 Wall, as it's become to be know. First is LOTROCast. If you haven't checked out that podcast yet, I highly recommend it. Second is a post by VanHemlock. He's currently working in Evendim, a zone designed to deal with this wall. By all accounts, the wall still exists to some degree.

Now, I'm a ways away from the wall both in terms of my level 60 captain and my alts (which are at most level 12). It's been a while since I've dealt with the wall. I was reaching the wall when Evendim came out. And yet, between my eastern North Downs, Trollshaws, and Evendim questing, I did feel a bit burned out. When there's content that gets a bit repetative as well as a linear solo progression, you can feel burned. But I got through it. I slowed down, I didn't play as much, but the itch to play never really left. I just stratched it much less. I guess that's something unique to me. Not just me, but to my situation. Many players lose the itch completely. I'm not sure how to avoid that. I avoided it because I love the lore. I love the world. And, despite some holes, such as this wall, the game is overall very well designed and polished. That kept me going. And it's my first MMO. There's an intagible quality about one's first experience in anything that leads them to almost romanticize it. I trie and be objective about this game, but truely, I have a biased love for it, regardless of my critiques or concerns.

So, the best way to avoid the wall is to pace yourself. If you're feeling burned, take a break for a couple days. And when you come back, only do a handful of quests. 2, 3, 4, maybe five. That's it. Go to a different activity next. Like crafting. Or maybe there's a deed you want to finish. Work on that. But don't do any one activity for an extended period of time. This, in my opinion, is what leads to burn out and can lessen the impact of the wall. Basically, instead of speeding full force into it, just stroll on up and give it a tap. It's still there but it didn't hurt nearly as much.

For Turbine's part, I hope to see them give an alternate direction out of Bree. The city acts as a wonderful quest/player hub and I don't think it should lose that functionality. However, instead of the lone-lands/northdowns/evendim/trollshaws progression, let's go say... south. Lots of room down there on the map. Get a duplicate 18 to 48 progression to Eregion and the Mines.

What about Turbine's stated goal to include an epic book in each zone expansion, free or otherwise? Well, I don't think a lower level zone is mutual exclusive to the continuation of the story back in Eriador. There are a lot of creative people over at Turbine that should be able to come up with a legitimate reason to send the players back to the southern areas of Eriador. And that story can be at the level cap or close to it depending on where the epic story terminates when such additions are made. So, there's a little bit of high level content in an otherwise low level zone. There's ways to build the zone that shuts off this part of the content. You can instance it, you can put it in a remote valley/area. Heck, even seeing a couple level 60 (or higher) mobs patrolling an area is enough to deter a level 30 from sticking his nose in. Just make sure these mobs don't count towards deeds that would normally be completed at a lower level.

There are ways around the wall now. Or there are ways to make it hurt less. And in the future, I hope Turbine considers something like what I've said above. I hope they don't get too much tunnel vision to Mordor and forget that there are other parts of the game that can make as much impact to your players as moving east.

Pruning the Blog Roll

My blog-roll has gotten rather large. I have thought about how I might go about keeping it manageable. First I had to ask, is a large blog-roll a bad thing. Not really, but a large one might appear daunting to a reader. Furthermore, I want to keep it relevant. So, that left me with the thought of removing non-LOTRO blogs. This would eliminate a few, but in all honesty, not that many. Nearly every blog on their has LOTRO posts - just not every one of them. And the ones that don't, well, those are still interesting reads. And these are mostly the blogs that introduced me to reading blogs - they have a special place in my heart.

So I finally came to the conclusion. I want the content of The Middle-Earth Adventurer to be relevant and fresh. Therefore my blog-roll should point to blogs that do the same thing. I've as such decided that blogs that haven't been updated for over a month will no longer show up on the blog roll. This will not eliminate many of the blogs on the list either, but it doesn't compromise any of the other goals for the blog roll: relevancy, regularity, quality, etc.

This does not mean I have stopped following those blogs. As soon as they update, they'll be back on the roll. And you can still find them, if you've forgotten the address, via my profile and the list of blogs I follow. Let's call the blog roll a selected list and my profile the comprehensive list.

A Few Random Comments

This will probably be the last post talking directly about the Book 7 patch notes. I think I've pretty much covered the major issues/changes. I'm certainly not the only one talking about the Book 7 patch. You can find coverage at Under the Banner, MMeOw, LOTRO Chronicles, and LOTROCast. With that said, here are my final thoughts regarding the notes:

Captain's banners "have discovered unforeseen reservoirs of buoyancy and now float in water."

First off, I love the random humor that shows up in Turbine's patch notes. Secondly, this is awesome. Obviously not as life-changing as many of the Book 7 updates, but as a captain, I will tell you this is a very good thing. I noticed this most poignantly in the Waterworks where oftentimes I found myself fighting creatures in "deep" water, where my banner would fall all the way to the bottom. Most of the time, this wasn't far enough to remove me from it's AOE, but on occasion, the water was deep enough for the banner to despawn, leaving me with less morale and morale regen. A captain lives and dies by his buffs, so to have even a small problem like this fixed is a good thing for us.

Warg-Riders now count towards the Moria Warg-slayer deed.

This is another awesome. Those warg riders are a pain to kill as a melee class. Having them count both towards gobs and the warg deed makes it a little more tolerable. I've finished my gob deed, however, but I still have a little more incentive to take on this buggers after Book 7 launches.

Reduced cooldown on crafting-guild recipes.

This makes me happy. Very happy. As a cook, my crafting takes longer than most to give me significant income. Because it's so easy, relative to other vocations, cooking is often given to alts and many players use their own cooks for food - limiting the demand. Furthermore, profit margins are rather thin due to this low demand. Having the craft-guild recipes that would give me a full stack of the superior version of food greatly reduces the production cost, allowing me to sell for even more attractive pricing but also give me a greater profit. Reducing the cool-down on these recipes allows me to put the goods on the market faster.

Certainly this will probably reduce the viable selling price. More incentive for cooks to craft their superior stacks means more potential competition on the AH - and thus lower prices. Still, I don't think it will hurt that much. A good thing, in my book.

New cooking recipes - soups and stews!

These new recipes will give cooks the ability to craft soups and stews which boost resistances: fear, poison, disease, and wound. I'm excited about this, though I'll have to tick off another slot in my bags and hotbar for these. A necessary evil. I don't know how much of a resistance boost we'll see from these. Hopefully Turbine finds the right balance, though I'm sure they'll be lower than most people will hope for.

Minimum level for fish recipes.

Apparently these didn't have minimums, which is odd. Not a big deal. I don't craft fish recipes because the time-sink in order to get enough fish is prohibitive. Basically, it's not worth it.

Deconstructing a legendary item at max level will now return the relics to you.

This is big. At least for me, who lost 3 tier 6 relics by deconstructing my level 30 emblem. Good move here. Before, if you wanted to retain your relics after the last reforge, you couldn't slot them into your max level legendary. If that legendary was still worth using, this means you wouldn't get as much out of the item as you should. It didn't make sense. Glad to see this fix added. Still, I am bummed that I lost my 3 relics. Took me long enough to build up relic forging to get to that point. *sigh* Tier 8 is so far away.

Monsters that burrow will no longer do so when close to death, "because that's annoying."

Amen! Pain in the butt and annoying is right. I honestly thought this was an intended behavior. I suppose it could have been anyway. Glad that's changed. It actually makes a difference if you have more than one mob on you. As a captain, I need to have a mob die to activate my "on death" skills, one of which is a fairly significant heal. This might be the difference between life and death, and when I couldn't hit the mob and kill him, it was a problem. I'd usually switch targets (why waste that time trying to hit nothing) but that meant I had to switch back and then back again. This takes time, attention, and sometimes I click the wrong thing and I'm wasting more time - not to mention morale and power. Good change.

Warg-Riders will no longer use their Hamstring/Ride-by-Attack unless they are attacked.

That makes these buggers a little less obnoxious to fight. I would change up my skill progression by avoiding using an opening Battle Shout. This is a ranged skill but two melee skills are gated behind it. So, I would hit a Warg-Rider with a ranged skill but then have to run - very slowly because I'm hamstrung - to the warg to use the next skill in my progression. Pain in the butt, and if the Warg decided to run again, I'd lose the chance to use those skills. Both of these have the potential to give me very good supercrits. And there's yet another skill gated behind those - one that is my mob-buff cleansing skill. Basically, these guys are a pain. should be a little more manageble now.

That's it. You'll certainly notice I skipped a lot of notes. I clearly concentrated on the ones that affect my captain (who, if you hadn't guessed, is a cook). That's necessary. For one, I wouldn't know what I was talking about if I covered other classes, and two, it would take way too long to read and comment on every single note. And many of them aren't worth commenting on. I hope you enjoyed my patch note coverage. This won't be the last time I talk about Book 7 changes, however. Other bloggers might inspire me to a topic, and there's always upcoming dev diaries and forum posts.

Under the Banner Video Review

I ran across Under the Banner, another LOTRO blog a little while ago, but didn't mention it because the author had just come back to LOTRO and his blog from WoW. I wasn't sure if the blog would get back to regular updates or not. However, I'm greatly pleased to see the latest entry to the blog - a video review/preview of the new Quest tracker feature. The presentation is clean and professional. I highly recommend watching.

I hope UtB puts up more video previews. It is an excellent way to discuss the upcoming Book 7 content. And you will now see Under the Banner on the blog roll here at The Middle-Earth Adventurer.

LOTROCast Episode 3

Moormur over at LOTROCast has episode 3 up and running. This one features an interview with Rowen, the Turbine developer in charge of live content production. He talks a bit more in depth about his job position in the interview, amongst many different topics ranging from content additions at lower levels to mounts to crafting. LOTROCast, as I said in my introduction post, is an excellent new LOTRO podcast. I high recommend listening to this latest episode for information directly from "the horse's mouth."

Moria Instance Rewards

Looks like I bought my level 60 armor off the AH just in time. Turns out they were never supposed to be bind on equip, but rather bind on acquire. So, no more level 60 instance armor for the AH. This only leaves the level 58 crafted armor, which isn't all that great in comparison. So, the market has probably skyrocketed because soon these armor pieces will only be available if you complete the 6-man instances on normal mode (hard mode gives the token for the radiance armor set, which was already bind on acquire.)

Lothlorien Questing Developer Diary

It's been some time since we've seen a developer diary. Not since the release of Moria as far as I can tell or remember. As such, it's a nice surprise today to see that MadeOfLions has posted a developer diary about Lothlorien questing. I previously mentioned I liked the idea of gaining admittance based on the rep and should you try to enter Lothlorien without the proper rep, you will be killed. MoL talks about the different ways you can gain enough reputation to be able to enter Lothlorien proper. Caras Galadhon, the city of the elves of Lothlorien is the most secure and thus requires the most rep to enter.

There's also a uniquely interactive and repeatable Battle of Lorien. This is where the orcs, having been stirred up by the Balrog fight and the fellowship's passing, storm out of Moria and siege Lothlorien. The fellowship is busy resting and prepairing for the continued journey, so that leaves your band of adventurers to help the elves defend their borders. See the diary for more details. This seems like a wonderful six-man to play and play again.

Regarding Leveling Changes

I said yesterday that I had mixed feelings about the leveling curve change - that it shouldn't go too far. The following quote from MadeOfLions, a developer, gives me more hope that it's not simply trying to push players to the level cap, but improve the experience in the lower levels. That's the key - supporting the lower level content.

"I think I'd try and change the perception that many of these fixes contribute to a 'dumbing down' of the game as a whole. Most everyone who posts on the forums is an expert at LOTRO, battle-hardened and familiar. Tightening up the levelling process and quest flow at lower levels to make the experience more accessible for new players is not 'dumbing down' the content. It's taking nearly two years of feedback from you guys, the experts, and trying to welcome new players to the game by making use of those lessons.

There is and still will be very, very difficult content in LOTRO. I look forward to seeing how long it takes a Fellowship to complete the Legendary Sentinel's Challenge for 'The Battle of Lorien,' on its way in Book 7, for instance."

Hunter Nerfs

If I thought the captains were complaining about In Harms Way, then I hadn't seen the Hunter boards. Looks like they're getting a "nerf" worse than us. I won't alter my argument about the changes in Book 7: wait and see how it plays out in test and release. Turbine is not adverse to reversing changes. All the complaining now, in my mind, is a little premature. Discussion of how it might affect your class, sure. That's what I did with my In Harm's Way post. Test it, report, repeat.

If there's truly a problem, then I suppose you do have a right to complain. However, the more wisely spent energy would be to objectively and calmly point out the problems, and even suggest a fix. The developers find that type of feed back, with your testing numbers etc, much more valuable than a hot head blowing up the second he reads the patch notes.

I'm not calling the hunters hot-heads. That would be an unfair generalization. There are quite a few hunters in my kinship, all of whom, as far as I can tell, are wonderful people. But, there are those, in all classes, that, if they really want it changed, should focus their wrath into testing on Bullroarer. That's why the server exists and exactly what Turbine wants you to do.

New LOTRO Podcast

I ran across a podcast called LOTROCast via the MMeOw blog. After the first two episodes I'm very impressed with the quality of the content. I highly recommend listening if podcasting is your thing. If it's not, this podcast is an excellent way of getting into podcasting as a listener. Either way, it's an excellent podcast.

Followers Gadget

I've added a followers gadget to the blog to increase the visibility of those who have deemed my blog worthy of keeping track of. As of this posting I have but two. But that's okay. Two more than zero, which would be depressing. I guess.

Anyhow, I call this gadget "My Fellowship". That might seem a little... conceited, but I already have a fellow adventurers section in the form of a blog roll. The followers are closer to this blog than a simple blog roll and it keeps with the theme.

Please, if you have an account that is compatible with following on Blogspot, follow this blog.

February Marathon

Wow. I made 54 posts in February. That's nearly 2 per day, twice as much as my goal and well beyond what I thought I'd actually make. Granted, many of those posts were simply link posts to official articles or other news items with very little thoughts from me. Those are easy to post. But I counted 27 significant commentary posts, which means half of my posts took a bit of time and thought to produce. I'm amazed that I was able to keep that pace. I cannot realistically guarantee that pace to continue, either in sheer numbers or in the commentary department. Please do not expect such production from me in the future. I'll try though.

February was really an awesome month. New blogs have shown up on my radar. I've talked about a lot of issues. And I've held to my commitment to regularly updating this blog. May the future continue to produce such wonderful months.

Book 7 Initial Thoughts

It is the day to take the highlights of the Book 7 patch notes one by one and offer my thoughts. I've already made special mention of the change to In Harms Way, but that is of particular interest to me as a captain.

Lothlorien Revealed

A complete Lothlorien zone with the requisite quests, instances, and reputation faction. I don't know how much of Lothlorien was in the Mines of Moria release since I haven't gotten out there yet, but it seems to me by reading these notes that it wasn't much. There's not much here that's worthy of a lot of comment except for the use of the reputation grind. The elves of Lothlorien will literally shoot at you if you try and enter their realm before gaining their trust. Presumably you will die if you don't run. I think this is an excellent way of dealing with Lothlorien being a somewhat forbidden place to go for much of Middle-Earth. Even the Fellowship met a roadblock here. If it were to completely follow the lore, nearly every player would never be granted admittance. However, that's not practical for a game. Players will want to go to Lothlorien. It's an iconic place in Middle-Earth and to deprive them of that simply to follow the lore to the letter would be a gameplay mistake, if not potentially damaging to the financial numbers. This sort of system isn't new to MMOs (WoW does this) but it's a completely appropriate design decision for this area of the world.

New Player Experience

The quests have been cleaned up and many added to the new player experience in Ered Luin, Archet, and the Shire. Honestly, I think this is one of their stronger places in terms of content so it somwhat surprises me to see they work on polishing this section of the game versus, say 25 - 35 content window, which is weak in my opinion. Still, I'm not complaining. It does pose an interesting question to me. Jaxom, my captain, has attempted to do every quest in the game. I have some of the early crafting quests left and ignored, but otherwise the major content from every zone has been done. Seeing added quests in the lower zone gives me a hole in my quest content but because Jaxom is level 60, it would be extremely trivial. And I could be disrupting lower level players by my presence and ability to clear swaths of mobs rapidly. I still think I'll head there with Jaxom to experience the content and add to his completed quest log.

Quest Guide

Adding a quest to your tracker will now put the quest locations on your radar. I'm not sure how specific these will be - zone of interest or exact pinpointing of the goal. I have mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, I love the challenge of reading and interpreting the quest text to figure out where I need to go for the quest. This feature will be used to circumvent the quest text even more than already done, diminishing the excellent writing done for this part of the content. Sure, we can still choose to read the text (which I do) but there's less incentive. And in all honesty, I feel like the quest text adds gameplay value in the form of story, which is a strong point of this game and one of the major draws. Well, for those that like story.

On the other hand I'm happy that this feature is in. There has been a few quests that I have been unable to figure out and had to ask my kinmates for assistance. On even fewer occasions I have actually looked up where I was supposed to go. When I did that, I felt bad that I had just cheated myself out of the challenge - and yet that challenge was becoming less fun and more annoying. And an annoying game is one that has failed. So, good feature in the end.

Twelve-Man Raid

Considering I haven't raided, I have very little to say here. Except any additional content is a good thing (pending it is executed with quality).

Crafting Instances

Okay, this is cool. I love the idea. I enjoy the solo item xp instances and adding this type of gameplay to the crafting system is a wonderful idea. This has the potential of making crafting mats more readily available, which in-turn will lower the price of said mats on the AH. As a buyer, that's good. As a seller, that's not so good. Will it lower the prices beyond selling viability? Not sure. Doubtful, but if it does the market will be in flux for a while as the supply and demand fluctuates. Add in that these instances will also give you Moria rep and item xp and you have a recipe for good content.

XP Curve Change

Basically, it'll be faster to level from 1-60 than it was before Book 7. Nearly everybody has praised this change. As a player who has already reached level 60 and rarely if ever plays an alt, it doesn't affect me that much. Still, I have a concern. I don't want to see this happen too often. Nor should the reduction factor be too large. If that happens, lower level content is more trivialized. And despite there being a big focus on end-game content, getting to level cap is as large and as important a part of the game as the level 60 content. WoW has gone down the road of blatently admitting and confirming through their patches that the content of most value is after you reach the level cap. I disagree with this completely. All content is valuable. Every level is valuable. And for the human psyche, the leveling up-game, particularly the first or second (maybe even third) time is a big part of the fun. I hope LOTRO does not take this too far and that the developers value the level cap content more than what has come before, especially as the level cap (presumably) increases with future expansions. Sure, it's important that players aren't daunted by the massive level climb that will eventually come, but it's a balancing act.

DPS and Mob Difficulty Rebalance

I'm not sure what I think about this. As a level 60 player who primarily plays solo, I haven't found too much trouble in combat. Still, I'm fairly careful about my play and could easily get overwhelmed if I wasn't aware of my surroundings or planning my progress forward. I cannot speak to the DPS issue either as I don't have a particularly high dps weapon at the moment. If I had a level 60 second age item, I supose my DPS would be pretty high. I have to defer to the dev's judgement here (actually, we all always have to do this - we play because we trust them). Like the In Harms Way change, we'll have to see how it works in testing and after release.

Self-Revive

Okay, there's a lot of fuss about this on the forums. The way it works, there's very few situations that it will be useful. You only get 20% of your morale and power and you have the same death penalties as a retreat. Dread and itemwear. If you self-revive right after death than you're sure to die in short order again as the mobs reaggro. You retreat to recover from your death penalty. Rezzing right in the thick of things with the same penalty seems to me to be asking for an encore. I highly doubt all be using this feature very often. And like all features, we'll have to wait for testing and live to see how it truely affects the game.

Induction Time Reduced

Okay. Cool. I don't have very many skills requiring an induction timer (perhaps only my rez skill). It'll help me only in rare circumstances. For those that play hunters, loremasters, etc, even better. Not much to say here except... okay. Cool.

Stay tuned for more Book 7 thoughts as I tackle select items in the full notes.

White Dye

Cool. Most items don't look good in white, in my opinion. Oh well.