Developer Q&A Part 2

Not sure if I linked to the first part of the Q&A, but you can find that link here. This post will pretty much be a run down of the questions I personally find interesting and my thoughts. To simplify, I'll just quote the answers. So, here goes...

AMD’s recent announcement of their first DirectX 11 video cards included a mention that LOTRO was adding DX11 support. You will not see it with Siege of Mirkwood, but you should expect it to arrive sometime next year.

I'm really stoked that the dev team is putting effort into adding support for the next gen technology in an previously existing game. There's no doubt LOTRO has some amazing graphics. Anything to further enhance that is good, so long as it doesn't seriously hamper performance. The great thing about the DX10 support is it is activated via check boxes in the graphics options. There's no forcing players to use DX10 cards. I hope their comitment to their graphics engine continues as the game does - perhaps a ways down the road we can see a graphics overhaul similarly experienced in Eve and Ultima Online. This kind of work can certainly prepare them for such an endeavor.

Mirkwood is roughly 75-80% of the size of the Northdowns.

A little disappointed in the size, but oh well. I guess I'm just partial to a grand experience in size and scope of Middle-Earth.

Not for Siege of Mirkwood, though we’d love to revisit [housing and guilds] at some point in time.

Vague enough that I'm pretty positive they do not have any plans in the works yet. I too would love to see this "at some point in time" but previous posts from the dev team have pretty much said housing isn't a priority because it would require enough resources to cut significant work in other areas of the game. Still, at some point in time that priority has to change.

Many of the questions are very specific and reminiscent of dev chat type responses, rather than a press release. That's a good thing. I hope to see more of these types of articles in the future. Perhaps a better method then a dev chat? Maybe that's where they're going. I haven't seen a dev chat in quite a while, now that I think about it.

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.

Full Circle

As I was listening to a gaming related podcast (Shut Up We're Talking, in case you're interested, I highly recommend it) I realized I have come full circle from three years ago when I got sucked into LOTRO. The thought actually came out of a comment about the Saga of Ryzom, which simply served as a memory spark. After my too-brief one week Alpha 3 experience in the LOTRO beta, I scoured the Internet for every single MMO type game out there. Why? I couldn't get enough of what I just experienced. It wasn't just the IP that I loved, but experiencing a new world and a new story. I needed more of that, for lack of a better word, high. Ultimately, I didn't end up playing anything during the interim between beta phases, but I came very close to downloading the Saga of Ryzom because it was free to play. (I know nothing about that game except that it's nothing like LOTRO).

What I mean by coming full circle is that I'm currently on a LOTRO playing hiatus. Actually, this extends to all of my gaming, as I haven't clicked on any of my game icons in weeks. I've gone from an insatiable hunger for anything MMO to a complete lack of interest in any game. And I, being both an introspective person and a blogger, have to ask myself why.

Now, I could post perfectly legitimate excuses like "I'm max level", "I've done all the content", "I'm burned out on LOTRO" etc, etc. Like I said, legitimate. But also not the real reason - mainly because I'm not playing anything right now. So what's the deal? Well, I think I'm in a dearth of new experiences. And that's my queue to cut to a bit of a personal aside.

See, I don't play games to game. It's not the game or game-i-ness of games that drives me to play. Certainly I'm a completionist which comes from some sort of achiever mentality, but the root reason for me stepping into games is to step into experiences. I don't care about if the fighting mechanic isn't as good as such and such a game or if the next game has more content. I desire to experience something. This often manifests itself as story, for story is the driving force behind compelling experiences - or ones that aren't superficial. But ultimately a game runs out of experience. One might call this simply burning out, and that's a way to put it, but what am I burning out on? Experience.

Alright, enough throwing around that word. It's already getting old. Next question: what do I do about it? Simple answer - nothing. I can't. A game is what it is and by it's nature isn't just an experience forever delivering to me what I want. Ultimately it becomes simply a game, even the ones that deliver additional content that often feeds experience. Okay, so I didn't stop with that word. I can't, just like I can't fix my problem. It's who I am as a gamer, as a consumer of entertainment. I love movies, TV shows, games, books - they all give me experiences.

There's something unique about games though. I haven't yet pinpointed what that might be, but I can make a guess towards the interactivity and unique ability to engage the consumer on a deeper level than all the other, what I'll term, passive entertainment. I play Railroad Tycoon because I love trains and want to experience trains. I play Roller Coaster Tycoon because I love roller coasters. I play Galactic Civilizations because I love space (that's an over simplification for brevity's sake). I play LOTRO because I love Middle-Earth and I wanted to experience it. It wasn't because it was a good game, though that helped greatly. It was because LOTRO being a game uniquely enabled me to enter into an experience more fulfilling than other media could provide.

The long answer to what I can do about my problem? Ignore it. Learn to live with it. Get over it. However you want to call moving beyond my futile endeavor to have a "perfect experience" and just enjoy LOTRO, and other games, for what they are. The idealist and dreamer in me makes that hard though. I see potential in games for so much more than they're able to provide now. As a storyteller I see opportunity for intense, moving, and impactful delivery of narrative and story. I see beyond the game.

LOTRO will always be with me and always hold a special place in my heart. I'm too loyal to forever abandon my first love. And too monogamous to cheat (or is it too cheap?). I have a lifetime subscription to this game and for me, that means exactly that. I will be a player, a Middle-Earth adventurer for the lifetime of this game.

Yesterday's WarCry Dev Chat Commentary

Okay, this adventurer finally has a moment to sit down and check out the dev chat from yesterday. I'm usually always a day late with these things because I find it easier to just read the transcripts, which usually come out the next day. I'll not be addressing every question in the chat, but the ones I felt were answered well or presented new information. I'll be truncating a lot of the answers to dig to the meat so do check out the link for the full transcript.

"Completely redesigning [the legendary item system], no... [I]n that regard, we're going to be making some solid changes. [O]ur main goal is to make it feel less grindy, to better maintain the feeling of advancement and progression. Will we be able to address all of your complaints? Nope."

I'm glad to hear they see the current legendary system as too grindy. I've been putting grind on one side of a line and epic on the other, where the two are mutually exclusive. If there is less grind in the future, I think we'll be getting a more epic feeling system, as promoted pre-Mines of Moria. And of course there's the requisite disclaimer that not every complaint will be addressed. Not every complaint is... doable. For example, let us pick our legendaries. That errs too far on the side of overpowering the weapons/players and diminishing the uniqueness garnered by a randomized system.

"One of the cool features we are working on for "the Future" is the ability to exchange legacies on Legendary Items."

Hmmm... this will be a toughy. One one hand, you don't want the player to have complete freedom to change his or her legacies to exactly what they want. As before, that results in a loss of uniqueness and too much power. Then again, the current system is very much like a casino... people win on occasion, the vast majority lose, and if you play long enough, everyone, even the winners, will lose.

"There will be a method to reset the legacy points on a maxed out Legendary Item very soon."

Nice. They already fixed the relics not being refunded, now to be able to redo legendary points will be another good thing. Perhaps you have a situation that calls for a different build and your legendary weapon is statted for something else. If you have the right legendaries, it would be great to reset the points for the new build. Couple this with however they manage to trade in legacies, and you have a nice customizable system like the traits. That would feel more legendary to me. Perhaps this can work after all...

"We definitely want to bring crafters into the LI system more than we have."

That's good to hear. I know many of us have commented on how crafting seems so pointless now with LIs and radiance gear. I did have a kinmate make me a Peerless Thain's Halberd which has 6 more DPS than my LI, but there's so many other bonuses on my LI that the crafted halberd would only be useful in situations that need something other than common damage.

As to crafting radiance gear, the devs did not comment on that portion of the question. Something tells me radiance is reserved for the raiding circuit, which has stepped outside of the realm of crafting. I don't see it coming, but keep on harassing them. I want crafting to be more meaningful too. Funny I say that though, as I don't craft all that much, except for food, which doesn't have any of those issues. It's always relevant as a consumable.

"We are working hard on Mirkwood at the moment... We plan on going to new areas after that, but that is a bit too far in advance to fill you in..."

As I've said before, I'd love to see an alternative advancement to the North Downs and the Lone Lands, perhaps by opening up another path south of the Shire, Breeland, and Lone Lands. Or even the Gray Havens? Not sure how that would fit in the current story, however. If it were anywhere, it would be either in conjunction with Rivendell (we saw that wasn't the case) or Lothlorien (we still have time here) because the elves are going west. There was a briefest glimpse in one of the elven starter area quest lines, but that's it. This comment only solidifies the expected pattern: Follow the Fellowship.

"As many know Book 8 continues our re-vamp plans and furthers them into Breeland. Breeland will now cover levels 14-22 and be the current, don't read into that too much, single track for getting to 14-22. The next stage is to get two tracks from 22-32, three from 32-42 and four from 42-52. More on all this as we move forward with these changes. But the long and short is that the Lone-lands and North Downs will bother service 22-32. Complete with more quests and a stronger version of the second Book of the Epic story."

Hmmm, so just a reworking of the levels of quests within the current zones it sounds like. Glad to hear they're working on cleaning up the progression. More polish, more polish. SoA was considered a very polished experience when it released. We'll be positively gleaming after all this, but still, I'd love to see new zones as progress options.

More quests... that's a good thing. Can't have enough quests, as long as they're well written. If the Ered Luin revamp is any indication, they will be. But that means me, as a completionist, will have to revisit these areas and do the new quests, just because. GAH! Hey, at least I'll have some more content to consume, despite it being vastly outleveled.

"When we get to Helm's Deep there will be some truly significant changes to the game. We cannot comment on what the players' role will be in the battle because we are not there yet, but be assured, we have done all we can to make the tale of your journey through the early parts of the War of the Ring very important and I think that we will continue to do this in all of our future content."

I like the sound of "truly significant". Rohan is a perfect place for mounted combat. Helm's Deep is a perfect place for implementing siege mechanics and epic army-sized warfare. It'll be hard to wrap the story of our own adventures into something so confined and explicit as the Helm's Deep sequence, but perhaps there will be a way around that. Turbine has bent the rules before (Rune-Keeper).

"I am a big fan of the general environment and the little surprises you come upon while questing. That being said, would there be any chance of having a type of treasure hunting quests, i.e. while fishing you "catch" a map and then have to go and find the location it leads you to claim your reward?"

This isn't a dev response, but rather the question. The dev who answered, Orion, took it as a desire to see more riddle type quests. I like those quests as well, but what I think this question is asking is more comprehensive: A Middle-Earth-wide scavenger hunt. Only problem is that it needs to grow as the game grows, so how do you make it expandable? Perhaps just make it an ongoing deed, with various parts as the game grows. The idea is awesome though and I'd love to see something that highlights certain places in the world.

"...[R]adiance certainly has a mixed reaction from the game populace. Many dislike this as it is a stiff gating requirement and certainly draws hard lines between the casual and hard core players... [W]e are making certain that we are cautious about the way that it is used in the future. For the Book 8 release I can confirm that the smaller instances will not require radiance and that diligent players can utilize a smaller set of radiance gear to enter the new raid. We still want to give the system some more time to shake out before we make any major changes to it..."

The gear check and radiance raid requirement has been a huge topic of discussion in the blogosphere as well as on the forums. I do not see in this statement that Turbine is going to go back to a more "casual raiding" seen in the Rift, for example. Never say never, however. Turbine has shown malleability in the past.

Why is radiance currently in the game? First off, it expands the hope/dread system to be more versatile for conveying the Middle-Earth concept of good and evil. It also, more mechanically, allows higher dread encounters with appropriate mitigation. The use of gear to mitigate the dread does play into the concept of epic encounters with amazing armor (mithril was a concept in the IP was it not?) but it turned into too much of a grind, like the legendary system, and erased the epic feel when it came down to actually getting the gear.

"We are very happy with the way the Warden has turned out. I think the Warden is very close to where we wanted it to be as far as class roles. The Runekeeper seems to be doing pretty good as well but has needed a few more tweeks to get it to the right place."

Good to hear that they're fairly satisfied with the two new classes. At least on the surface. "A few more tweaks" constitutes a DPS reduction. Not sure if that's "pretty good" but oh well.

"Are there plans in the works for a new PvMP zone?"
"I am going to be coy: Not in the immediate future, but there is something that is in the works that could lead to some very interesting PvMP moments in the mid to distant future."

This was something we expected, as the level cap was raised, so were the PvMP zones expanded. Perhaps giving some variety like WoW's battlegrounds. Seeing how much effort has gone into the current zone to balance it, creating a new one would be a major undertaking. And for myself, I don't feel that PvMP is the primary focus of the game. A fun diversion to those who enjoy that type of play. There's a lot of more pressing things to deal with, IMO.

"The Amarthiel events were a huge success and we had a lot of fun with them. It's certainly something we want to do more of but there are not immediate plans to do so. But I'd keep an eye peeled."

I'd love to see more Amartheil like events as well. That really helped contribute to the epic feeling of what was going on in Middle-Earth. It was an event, it happened, then passed. It gave the world a sense of history beyond the inherent design. The world feels lived in, but having immediate events that can be talked about from different perspectives (i.e. different players) is really great. Quests are the same for everyone. Live events are different for everyone.

"We would love to do more hobbies, and we're always bouncing ideas around about different things. Unfortunately, hobbies aren't the highest priority."

Oh, that reminds me. I've not yet finished leveling my fishing... guess that's why it's not so high a priority, if some of your players completely forget it exists. Still got the hobby skill on one of my hotbars though.

"Game stability and server performance is our number one priority at the moment. We've made some great strides in that direction and I'll think you'll see more of that when Book 8 is released."

Interesting that it's not expanding the content. Then again, what good is content that can't be experienced smoothly? Glad to hear they're really focusing on getting the servers to a more reliable state. I'd love to see a continued boost in graphical tweaks as well as the server side fixes. But I love me some eye candy.

"End game and the journey there, the journey around the journey there and the time that you spend with friends and the family that you make inside the world are all equally important. Playstyles vary from person to person and we must, as designers, do what we can to try to appease all different playstyles. Thankfully, we have time to try to get to as much as we possibly can to attempt to make everyone a little happy along their own journey."

I have to commend them for trying to make sure each part of the game is approached equally, journey and destination. However, I think the IP really points to the journey as the important part. It's what changed the characters, made them stronger, showed them their true hearts. The destination was just one place on that journey. A matter of perspective, I know, but too many MMOs neglect the journey (leveling) once so many of the players are at the destination (end game). There is evidence of journey love in Orion's revamping process, and I very much look forward to all that.

I hope my commentary was worth reading. The dev chat certainly was. One of the stronger ones to date. Do check it out and leave comments here or on the forums or both and let us all know what you think. Happy adventuring!

Imagine the Future

Imagine a future of MMO gaming where we can take technology like the XBox's Natal and the type of application developed by Peter Molyneux and create a world to be intimately experienced and interacted with. Characters that feel as alive and immediate as a friend standing beside you. This isn't exactly a LOTRO post, but the IP of LOTRO is based on one of the greatest stories told. I think the supreme application for something like Natal is what Molyneux did: character and ultimately story. What would be more awesome than an interaction with Aragorn or Gandalf along the lines of Milo in that video? Nerdgasm.

Why I'm Not Applying To Isengard

I genuinely thought about it. Really hard. I had a blast beta testing LOTRO before release. I met awesome friends, I got sucked into an awesome game. For the first time ever I spent 200 dollars on a video game (total now is a little over 300 counting my lifetime sub and the two boxes). LOTRO for me has been an event of a lifetime. That sounds melodramatic, and maybe a bit nerdy when referring to a video game, but it's true. My gaming habits changed, I started this blog, I met a bunch of people I'd still talk to (try to anyway) even if I weren't playing.

There's a difference between now and then. Recapturing a romanticized nostalgia is futile. I already have those friends and they're not testing (not that I'm aware of), and I'd feel compelled, obligated, responsible to and for beta testing on Isengard. As it stands, I don't log in on a regular basis anyway. Adding a testing regimen would probably be a bad idea in the middle of mild burnout.

Then there's the fact that I couldn't talk about any of that here on this blog. While I highly doubt I'd break the NDA because of the temptation this blog offers, the Adventurer exists to chronicle my LOTRO journey and thoughts. Having a hole in that journey because of an NDA wouldn't feel right.

However, I'm greatly excited about the prospect of this testing and wish all the testers the best of luck on Isengard. I hope Turbine can get the data they need from this and build that much better a game.

Potential Delays and New Frontiers

I'm talking about two issues in this topic, simply because I want to conserve space and both of them won't produce a lot of commentary. First up is the idea of potential delays to an expansion and level cap raise this year, presumably in November.

Pearls of Unwisdom has an excellent post about this and makes a very good case for why we shouldn't be surprised if we do see a delay in the expansion. I think too much is read into the Steefel comment quoted but other than that, the post is right on. Seeing the recent slippage in the planned release of some content, I do worry about a big slippage of the next expansion into early 2010. It's a possibility but not one I'm willing to bet on yet. Turbine has done an excellent job so far, barring the recent problems. Like I said in a previous post, I think we're in the tumultuous teens part of LOTRO right now. It'll smooth over.

The second topic is the recent screenshots of a survey that asked about a LOTRO on the XBox360. I ignored this for the most part because I have participated in similar surveys in the past where game concepts were given to me that ultimately led to similar, but not exact fruition. LOTRO is used as a placeholder name for those surveys. It presents the idea of a Turbine MMO on the consoles. Because of the IP associated with LOTRO, it's not the best analog, but it works well enough. My opinion of the matter has not changed.

Dynamic Vs Static

I think that LOTRO would do well to pursue the dynamic instancing mentioned with skirmishes to its fullest extent. I think the future of MMO design implements more and more dynamic content, using AI of sorts to automatically adjust play to suit the players. This gives the same content more variety and enables replayability. It infuses fresh blood into a static system that is beginning to... well, stagnate. We see the same types of quests, the same NPCs, the same levels, the same grinds. Not just in LOTRO, but in many MMOs.

One idea in the past has been to have procedural content - that is content that is automatically produced. Unfortunately the automation doesn't produce enough variety and quality that hand-crafted content can. But now that we're seeing the limits of hand-crafted variety, perhaps we should look again at procedural content. This time, though, let's make it a hybrid. Create the content the same, but instead have the content scaled in size, scope, difficulty, etc to the players. Therefore there is in every encounter the option to solo, small group, large group, and in select cases, raid. Rewards should be tailored to the group size to some extent - incentivizing a larger group over a solo - since soloing would by nature be easier.

LOTROs prospects of the dynamic instancing is the first step towards this road. I don't think LOTRO will ever see the full vision of dynamic content - that is scalable content everywhere. The game would require total overhaul and essentially become a new game. But the instancing content could certainly be redesigned with this type of technology without greatly upsetting the world so far built.

In the future (a LOTRO 2?) I'd love to see dynamic content be the driving force behind a new game. Companies are experimenting with more casual and more hardcore games, different settings, different leveling systems. What made MMOs attractive in the first place? The people playing together - ultimately anything that eases togetherness in an MMO is something that will further the genre. Dynamic content could be just the thing.

Post inspired by a post at Kill Ten Rats.

User Interfaces

UI is one of the most important elements in a game. It is the point of contact between the player and the created world. If for whatever reason that contact is hindered in any way, the game will suffer regardless of any other considerations. It's no surprise then, that once a suitable UI schema was found, virtually every MMO since has used this model. I don't know enough about MMO history to correctly pinpoint when the modern UI first showed up, but that's not important.

What I want to talk about is the malleability of the UI in LOTRO. It cannot be denied that WoW probably has the best malleability of any UI system out there with the plethora of community-created addons assisting with any conceivable function or goal from the auction house to raid healing. LOTRO's UI as far as I know does not support add-ons. For me, that hasn't been a problem and all the content in LOTRO has sucessfully been completed without the need of add-ons - not to say that an addon to help with healing, for example, wouldn't help. It's just that such a lack does not make content impossible. A weakness of WoW might be that their addons have become a double-edged sword in this respect. So many players use a particular add-on that content is designed with that add-on in mind. If you don't have it, the content is next-to impossible. We can't blame Blizzard for this either - they don't want their content trivialized so they have to react to the add-on, or ban the add-on. This latter approach is a slippery slope after the precedent of allowing add-ons for so long. I don't see them going this route.

LOTRO, on the other hand, has no add-ons, like I said. They don't have to deal with this particular problem, but it still holds true that a UI with any problem what-so-ever will affect the perception of the game. The UI is like the window through which we view and interact with the world. A dirty, scratched, or even broken window will cause problems in that regard. LOTRO thus offers some malleability to their UI in the form of scaling and moving the elements around. In some cases, certain elements can be turned on or off.

Myself, I stick with a fairly basic UI set up - not different from the default. Where I do change quite a bit of the UI is the hotbars, and I think that holds true for a lot of people. We grow used to a certain pattern of movement when it comes to our hotbars therefore there's probably quite a few different set-ups out there. I have used a few different ones myself before finally setting on the one I currently use.

Because your hotbar layout is so personal both to you and and your class, getting into a discussion about why I put them where I do wouldn't benefit many people except to say that my goal was to minimize mouse movement as much as possible while retaining logical groupings of skills on those bars. So, all my bars are located in one spot and the placement of skills and items I put on those bars is well thought out.

Would a more customizable UI be better for LOTRO? I've already mentioned that there is no content in the game that cannot be experienced successfully with the current UI, but is there still a trouble-spot that hinders gameplay? Some argue the scaleability of the UI is one such place. As you scale your UI up or down, the art assets are squeezed to fit the new "contours" so to speak. As this art wasn't designed for anything but the default UI size, illegibility goes up as the UI is scaled. As such I keep my UI scaled to default. Honestly, I don't need things any smaller because my screen resolution gives me nice large spaces to work with. Others might not be so fortuante and a smaller UI would help with that. To remedy this situations, all the art would have to be recreated in such a fashion as to work with scalability more closely, which would be a big project. Some argue it would be worth it, and my earlier statement about the supreme importance of the UI would suggest so as well, but considering the number of people function well in the game with the default scale, resources devoted to such a probject might indeed not be worth it. Only those with the data can know for sure, and those are the developers. We haven't seen a focus on this issue so I imagine we won't in the near future.

Generally, I think the UI is satisfactory. It's not perfect, but it's close. No human creation is, but that's a philosophical discussion that doesn't belong here. We're looking at a simple UI that has been duplicated over many different games for a very good reason - it's a good UI. It wouldn't be used if it weren't. LOTRO offers some customizability but not so much as to become overwhelming or problematic in other areas (like I mentioned with WoW). The UI "window" is mostly clear, unscratched, and unbroken.

Dynamic Tool-Tips

The community, particularly around the LOTRO Blogosphere, has wanted to see mouse-over tooltips for some time that we could incorporate into our blogs. At last we have that. MMeOw and Under the Banner offer some nice thoughts and overviews of this feature so I won't duplicate that here.

However, I do want to mention that while I'm fairly computer savvy, the one area that I have no familiarity with or even the slightist hint how to accomplish is the coding involved in this. Now, it seems that Turbine is making it pretty easy, but pretty easy is still confusing to me at times. Give me code and my eyes glaze over. I think that might be a hold-over emotional response to being disenchanted with programming when I took some classes in high school. Oh well, it is what it is.

The last time I tried to change up the layout in Blogger by inserting new html code, I totally screwed things up. I still can't get the by-line for this blog to show up under the title even though I have one set in the settings. I don't even want to touch the html code again, in all honesty, so if that is required for this tool-tip thing, then unless I have very specific, fool-proof instructions, I'll still resort to simple hyperlinks.

The other item I wanted to bring up is something UtB mentioned in their post about this tool-tip - and that's the lorebook data is out of date/incorrect. The problem being that the tool tips use the lorebook for their source. There has to be a way of automatically keeping this data updated when a change is made to the live game. I would guess that something would be accessing the database and using that to change the database the lorebook calls on. But of course, as I've said above, don't ask me to program that. I don't have a clue what would be involved. I'm just an ideas guy.

A New Community Tool

Hey, listen up developers/coders and fans of LOTRO, there's a new tool for you guys. Turbine has developed an API for accessing XML database information. Now, if you remember some of the conversation around the LOTRO blogosphere about the need for better tools for creating communty/fan sites, this is an answer to that. Well, not directly to us because of our discussion, but this is what we were looking for.

Now, I'm not a programmer or coder. I took a couple programming classes in high school and the best I can rember is some basic logic - not even the actual coding language (think it might have been C++). So, this isn't for me, but because you creative types will probably create some pretty cool widgets and the like, I'm all for this kind of thing. Props to Turbine for spending some resources on this.

Video Update

I have good news and bad. The good news is that I've created a video called Road to Rivendell, which follows Frodo's journey from Bag End to the Last Homely House. Unfortunately, the filing system with windows limits video capture to 4 gigs. 3.9 gigs to be specific. That means it doesn't matter which program I use, the videos will always be split up into multiple files. Now, I have a compression program that works great for reducing the video size to something more manageable. 150 gigs worth of video is crazy. The sizes after compression are still relatively large, but they're at 1680 x 1050 and really good quality. That was my goal, however, so I'll accept relatively large video size for the quality I'm getting. One of the goals for Road to Rivendell is to showcase LOTRO's beautiful landscape. The higher quality video the more able I am to carry out that goal.

Now here's the bad news. I cannot find a free/relatively cheap program to combine the videos. I've tried Corel VisualStudio 12, Windows Movie Maker, and VirtualDub. VisualStudio will combine the uncompressed raw capture but my compression program crashes with the larger files this produces (read about 25 gigs). If I compress the files before combining them, VisualStudio crashes when I try and import them. I'm at an impasse here. Movie Maker cannot create the videos at the quality I want. VirtualDub, even getting past the fact that it's not user friendly, is also bad on the quality side. The sound is also screwed up because apparently (according to the FAQ) my processor isn't fast enough to encode the audio properly. I highly doubt that with a Quad Core 9550.

So, here I am sitting with 40 seperate video files for Road to Rivendell. I didn't really want to upload a 40 part video with each part between 1.5 and 2 minutes long, but at the moment, that's the only thing I can do. So, I'll be linking to the YouTube videos as soon as they're uploaded (will take a couple of days at 40 total to uplaod). If anybody has additional ideas, that'll be great. Oh, and I'm not spending 700 bucks on Adobe Premiere Pro. That's way overpriced for amature/hobbiest video editing.

Quite the Drama

Wow, while I was busy with some IRL activities yesterday evening, the world exploded. Or that's what it might seem like from the alleged reaction on the forums. But that's typical. Honestly, this issue seems like something beyond Turbine's control. They were moving to a new data center and one thing going wrong or unnoticed could totally screw things up. It also seems the forums were brought down (after they were available once again) to curtail a flood of "What the heck is up Turbine!?!" posts. Currently the message reads:

April 2, 2009 12:20PM EST (-4 GMT)
Nimrodel and Gladden will be brought down at 1:00PM EST for a restart to correct performance issues. We expect to have them back online by 2:00PM EST!

April 2, 2009 12:15PM EST (-4 GMT)
We have temporarily disabled the LOTRO forums while we investigate an issue with logins. We'll update this message with more information. Thanks for your patience!

Some people get way too bent out of shape over this kind of thing. It's a game, people, not life. Heck, there are many people who overreact to things in life as well. I wonder if they're the same people that caused a fuss on the forums? So yeah, just cool it. I'm 100% sure everybody they can have is working non-stop trying to fix the problem.

Number Project Canceled

Looks like this project is not going to go forward as planned. Turns out those numbers are a cumulative count since the last server restart rather than the number of people currently logged in. I'm somewhat disappointed. I'm not sure what I can do with this type of data. It doesn't tell me when people are on the most, it doesn't tell me how many people are on in average. It doesn't tell me a relative health of the game. Frankly, they're rather useless. Project canceled.

However, if we're able to tap into this, why can't we see what I did want to see?

Number Crunching Delayed

Because there was downtime today that threw off normal server numbers and tomorrow is a patch that will do the same, but remove the daily server downtime by fixing the issue, I'm going to wait until next week to start the crunching. And I woke up later than I wanted to today to record the numbers. I live on the west coast of the US so even early morning for me is late morning for most the rest of the US. And I'm not going to get up at 6 AM just to record server numbers. So, it's 8 AM for me, 9 for mountain, 10 for central, and 11 for east coast.

I plan on recording the numbers 3 times per day: 8 AM, 1 PM, and 6 PM. Basically I want a morning, afternoon, and a primetime read. All times in Pacific of course. I'll record every day for one week (7 days) to see if there are discernible patterns. I might even make this a month long project. I do have a job prospect on the horizon that might take me out of the all-day free time "bliss" I've been in recently, but hopefully I can manage to record at work should I get the job.

Oh, and when I checked the numbers at 10 AM this morning, there were 380,332 people logged in total. Honestly, that's a lot more than I thought were subscribers, let alone players. I'm sure these count free trials that are logged in, but how many of those are there? One conclusion I know I'll find is that LOTRO is healthy.

Server Population Compilation

Tony gave me a great link for a widget of sorts that says how many people are logged into each US server. At the moment, I don't know what it links to to get that information nor how often it's updated. Presumably multiple times per day. As of this writing, I'm planning on doing a week of compilation of the numbers, ultimately producing a spreadsheet and graphs of the data. Should be an interesting project and I'm curious to see what patterns emerge. Of course, we're not looking at total subscribers, but those numbers aren't nearly as useful, at least to those of us playing, than the number of active players.

Most Populous Servers?

Oh that never-ending-won't-go-away topic. Why do I even bring it up? Well, those of you who play LOTRO will know that three servers are being put on daily maintenance schedules due to a "memory issue". Don't know what kind of issue, but it's because they're the most populous servers. the three are... drum roll... Brandywine, Landroval, and Elendilmir! Congratulations, you're too fat and now you've broken something! Er...

I think we all knew Brandywine was the most populous. Landroval surprises me, actually, but then again, with this IP, its certainly possible we have a large RP community (don't do it myself so I don't know) that infuses the unofficial RP server with life. And then there's my home, Elendilmir. Being most populous means very little, except in this case where it's a bit of a nuisance. So, in a completely illogical way, I'm proud. Then again, maybe not so much. If we're having growing pains (could be what these issues are, or something just broke - computer things do that from time to time) then that's a good thing in my eyes. More people means more money. More money means more resources. More resources means more game. Yay!

Sounds like they have a fix in the works, so that's good to hear. Minor annoyance for knowing that LOTRO is doing well.

Early Patching for Book 7

If there's one thing that can drive players nuts its having to wait through the patching process after the servers go live. Instead, why not patch now and be ready the moment Book 7 hits live. You can check out the forum post by Sapience for a direct download or torrent of the patch. Note, this is for North American, Australian and New Zealand players only. The EU players will have to wait. I don't know if they'll get a pre-patch or not.

Bullroarer and Book 7 Patch Notes

A new public test server has been announced, Bullroarer. The greatest part of this news is that Book 7 is available on this server. And anybody can join so long as they have an active LOTRO subscription. The test server takes one of the live servers and copies it over. Incidentally, this time is Elendilmir, which means Jaxom is now copied on Bullroarer and theoretcially I could test Book 7. I'm debating if I want to do that at the moment. On one hand, it would be a great opportunity for this blog. On the other, one of the things I learned in the beta of LOTRO as a whole was that after experiencing the same content over and over again, particularly at the lower levels, I was somewhat burned on it come release. Now, the testing cycle for Book 7 will presumably be much shorter than the LOTR beta but there's still a little bit of that burning potential.

In the meantime, this is a busy day. The preliminary Book 7 patch notes have been released. They are extensive and it will take me some time to sift through them all. Furthermore, they're subject to change based on the experiences on Bullroarer. I'll have a series of posts over the next couple of days giving my take on the patch based on the notes. Any differences I'll compare in-game when I choose to experience Book 7, either on Bullroarer or live. Still they are worth a reaction from what I've read over at MMEOW.

Kinship Cloaks

I like the idea of having kinship cloaks available to equip. Unfortunately, implementing such a system seems much more complicated that is immediately apparent, particularly to me as a layman and non-programmer/designer. There's a lengthy discussion/debate on the forms about kinship cloaks with the developer known as "floon". He makes great pains to explain why the current technology in LOTRO prohibits a kinship cloak system as envisioned by the OP without serious performance trade-offs. Some appreciated and accepted the insight, some didn't understand. That's normal. In any case, it's an interesting debate worth skimming through. I recommend using the Dev Tracker feature of the forums to find floon's statements in this thread.

Honestly, I can accept what floon has said. Because I realize I know less than he does - considerably less - in how such a system might work. Certainly I can conceptualize with the best of them. I'd like to think I have a robust imagination. There is mention, however, of a system that could work without straining the game's resources too much. Anything is better than nothing so long as it's well designed. It would be more limited, but I could go with that.

Then, of course, is the question of would I actually wear a kinship cloak and furthermore, would my kinship even bother? Well, if my kinship really wanted to have their own kinship cloak, I'd wear mine because I appreciate and support my kinship. But, in all honesty, I love the fact that I can customize and color coordinate my character. A kinship cloak might clash - and while I'm a guy that doesn't care too much about clashing, I do have at least a small semblance of visual design sensabilities. I suppose I would probably just recolor the rest of me to fit my kinship colors. No biggie.