A few days ago Lord of the Rings Online launched its second expansion: Siege of Mirkwood. I have played LOTRO since launch, but always very casually. My Lifetime subscription is probably the cause of this: because I am not paying per month, I do not feel that I have to get each month’s worth out of it. A monthly subscription would have been too expensive for the entertainment I have gotten out of it so far, but the lifetime has payed for itself by now. I was expecting to get a similar return with Champions, but the jury is still out on if that was a good decision. I do not regret it so far.

The lack of pressure in LOTRO has resulted in a lack of pressure to really level and see everything. I have not even reached level 35 on a single character yet (level 65 is the current level cap). However, my characters have many deeds completed as well as serious crafting experience. Playing at my leisure has changed my entire approach to the game. In WoW I have always felt the need to accomplish things either raiding or PvPing, so while I did spent time on alting, I always had one character at the level cap and working on endgame.

My alting in LOTRO has gone in waves. A certain ability or play style would get my interest and I would focus on that. My first decision to focus just on my Guardian was quickly gone after level 20. Burglar, Loremaster and later Champion all quickly went up to 20. Other classes got at least a try. Even with the new Skirmish system I decided to give the Runekeeper a serious test drive.

Joining yet another empty BASH has not been good for my mood, I have to admit

I had fully expected to play Champions in a similar way, but I found my drive to alt really low. The open choice for powers made it possible to create the best play style for me. While I made alt as concepts of other heroes and to check out certain play styles, the enjoyment in my main style made me focus on a single character. I flew to 40 enjoying myself more thoroughly than in a long time with an MMO. Even when I ran out of interesting PvE content, PvP kept me playing. As the PvP community started shrinking at first, I decided to play more, hoping others might do so as well to keep things going. However, the lack of power balancing (e.g. Shallowtail Cut remains overpowered) as well as the stellar Dragon Age: Origins have reduced my interest in the game.

So I am wondering now if CO is going to become a few months per year game for me like LOTRO or will there come a turnaround and is it going to suck me in like it did at first? Will I regret buying the lifetime subscription? It’s up to the devs now.

Skirmish Marks come in many different varieties:

• Skirmish Marks
• Campaign Marks (Eruilan, Adlan, Naillan, Cannuilan)
• First, Second, Third and Fourth Marks (and their Veteran versions)
• Rank Marks (Guardsman, Footman, Esquire and their Veteran versions)

Skirmish Marks

• Skirmish Marks are the major form of currency in the Skirmish system. You get them for killing Lieutenants, Bosses, as well as for completing encounters and the skirmish.

Campaign Marks

These marks are mostly used for cosmetic item purchases.  They drop randomly from Lieutenants and Bosses, and there is an increase chance of them dropping from encounters, so if you’re looking for these, make sure to complete the encounters. Confirmation here.

• Campaing Marks are divided into four categories, and there is a chance of some dropping in specific skirmishes, depending on the marks.
• Eruilan Campaign Marks have a chance of dropping in Trouble at Tuckborough, Stand at Amon Sul, and Siege at Gondamon.
• Adlan Campaign Marks have a chance of dropping in Thievery and Mishchief, Defense of the Prancing Pony, and Barrow-Downs: Survival.
• Naillan Campaign Marks have a chance of dropping in Ford of Bruinen, Strike Against Dannenglor, and Protectors of Thangulhad.
• Cannuilan Campaign Marks have a chance of dropping in Necromancer’s Gate, Assault on the Ringwraith’s Lair, and Battle in the Tower.

First, Second Third and Fourth Marks

These marks are used, in addition to Skirmish Marks, to purchase better versions of the weapons available in that tier.

For example:

• For 154 Skirmish Marks, I can purchase a 30.1 DPS + stats sword.
• For 308 Skirmish Marks and 2 First Marks, I can purchase a veteran version of same sword that still does 30.1 DPS, but the stats are much improved. Basically, an upgraded version.

• The First Marks drop from level 30-44 solo or small fellowship skirmishes.
• The Veteran First Marks drop from level 30-44 full fellowship or raid skirmishes.
• The Second Marks drop from level 45-59 solo or small fellowship skirmishes.
• The Veteran Second Marks drop from level 45-59 full fellowship or raid skirmishes.
• The Third Marks drop from level 60-70 solo or small fellowship skirmishes.
• The Veteran Third Marks drop from level 60-70 full fellowship or raid skirmishes.
• The Fourth Marks drop from level 60-70 skirmishes solo or small fellowship skimirshes on higher difficulty levels.
• The Veteran Fourth Marks drop from level 60-70 full fellowship or raid skirmishes on higher difficulty levels.

Rank Marks

• Rank Marks, which go by the name of Guardsman’s Mark, Footman’s Mark, etc, and their veteran version are to trade for Skirmish Marks. I have not found any other use for these yet. Please correct me in the comments if I’ve missed something.

You may also find that you get some “Bounty” items in your inventory. These are to be sold to the vendor, as another way for you to make money from skirmishes.

If you have anything to add, please feel free to comment below.

See you in game!

Here are the Patch Notes for the Hotfix applied to Lord of the Rings Online (Siege of Mirkwood) today, December 4 2009:

• Shared Storage
• Fixed an issue that would sometimes cause item loss when placing items into shared storage from the vault.
• Class: Guardian
• Due to an issue with the skill we have changed how the "Overpower" stance interacts with shields. You will no longer be able to activate "Overpower" with a shield equipped. If you equip a shield while using "Overpower" the stance will be deactivated.

Source: Lorebook – Volume 2 Release Notes Official

As you can see the list isn’t very extensive, but I am sure they are working on the problems in the Known Issues and some new bugs that seem to have appeared since the update. Servers are up and running, I will try to keep y’all informed of future updates/changes/downtimes as I can.

~Branadoc

The final list of the year is out on MMORPG.com, and Lord of the Rings Online is safely at #1 in user ratings! No surprise to me (or other fans), but so much for people always crying doom!

Source: MMORPG.com

~Branadoc

With the Siege of Mirkwood, Turbine introduced a category of Legendary Item (LI) relics that are crafted and fit into a 4th slot on your LI. Here’s a quick guide I drew up for my kin this morning (with help from Feor!):

For each craft there are three types of relics you can craft:

Purple

(1 day cooldown)*

+10 to a stat/+power or morale (can be traded, pre-deconstruction)

Teal

Requires 61+ LI

(3 day cooldown)*

+20 to a stat/+power or morale

Gold

Bind on Acquire,  Requires 65 LI

(1 week cooldown)*

Choice of:

• Symbol of Battle – +390 Melee Crit Rating, +390 Melee Offence Rating
• Symbol of Accuracy – +390 Ranged Crit Rating, +390 Ranged Offence Rating
• Symbol of Tactics – +390 Tactical Crit Rating, +390 Tactical Offence Rating
• Symbol of Vigour – +390 Outgoing Healing rating, +390 Tactical Crit Rating

*cooldowns are on crafting the barter items needed to make each relic

Craft specifics

Each craft has a specific stat they can raise on the Purple and Teal relics, both of which can be traded. The Gold relics are Bind on Acquire!

• Tailoring – +Fate
• Weaponcrafting – +Vitality
• Metalsmith – +Might
• Cook – +Morale
• Jeweller – +Will
• Woodworker – +Agility
• Scholar – +Power

Each guild craft trainer has three reputation-style recipes you can make and then trade in for one of the relics. For example, for Tailors, there are three types of tapestry, and I bought them from the Tailor’s Guild Legendary Recipes trader in the Tailoring Guild house at Esteldin.

Each recipe requires slightly different leathers and ingredients. The one with the least ingredients and no special requirements is the +10 relic. Then the +20 relic requires a Compendium of Middle Earth I, and the gold relic needs a Compendium of Middle Earth II – as well as other normal ingredients.  Once the barter item is made, you trade it in at the Guild Leader.

Compendiums of Middle Earth I & II

New special ingredients, brought in with the expansion. But do not fear, there are at least two ways of getting them. First, daily quests:

• Myndil (Relic-Master of Flaming Deeps) wants you to kill orcs and worms for ingots (15) and worm scales (10). Can choose Compendium of Middle Earth I, a selection of relics or a Moria iXP (item experience) rune as quest rewards.
• Legindir (Relic-Master of Ost Galadh in Mirkwood) wants 25 pieces of pristine webbing from the Scuttledells (level 65 quest). Can choose Compendium of Middle Earth II, better relics or a Mirkwood iXP rune as rewards.

Alternatively, you can trade for them at Curiosities vendors at Skirmish camps. The costs are:

• Compendium of Middle Earth I: 301 Skirmish Marks, 1 Third Mark
• Compendium of Middle Earth II: 603 Skirmish Marks, 1 Third Mark

I’ll be upgrading the RSS feed to run through a different provider. Part of this will be that I have to post each episode as a post on the blog, so you may see a little blog spam tonight. I’m trying to do this in the middle of the night so that it doesn’t clog up twitter too much as well.

Wish me luck!

Look, it Harry Truman!

Harry Truman once said that, given the choice between a Republican and a Democrat pretending to be a Republican, people will always vote for the real Republican. Saying that, we can translate the phrase to our own MMO world with World of Warcraft, where when given the option of World of Warcraft and WoW clones, the majority will always stick with World of Warcraft.

Blizzard has caught in on this, with producer Shane Dabiri saying;

“I know that World of Warcraft is very successful, and so people think if they were to make another game just like it they could somehow capture that audience. However, I don’t think that’s what players are looking for.

“Players that have invested time in WOW don’t just want to do the same thing in other game – they want to try something completely new and different,”

Absolutely true. Let’s look at World of Warcraft’s biggest competition, shall we?

1. Eve Online reports over three hundred thousand subscribers, a number that continues to rise. What differentiates Eve is that you’re not at a disadvantage because someone else has been playing longer than yourself. All ships have their weak spots, and knowing those weak points can help you turn a fight to your advantage. The free expansions are a nice addition.
2. Lord of the Rings Online may be low on player vs player, but the game’s long arching storyline and plentiful free updates is where the draw comes in.
3. Runescape, with over a million paying subscribers, thrives on the stat system, and weekly updates. Unlike many other MMOs, quests move above the boundary of kill, fetch, and kill/fetch, to create a world with a rich history.

It’s very late at night, and I should be in bed. The problem, you see, is that Siege of Mirkwood launched last night, and I’ve had the fortune of playing skirmishes all night. Well, most of the night. I did get a chance to create a couple of alts. Suprise! I bet you didn’t think that was going to happen.

Back to the topic of the Siege of Mirkwood launch. I think that Turbine did a fantastic job of launching the expansion. Although there where some issues on Brandywine and Landroval, I didn’t here of anything on any other servers.

As far as skirmishes go, I have to say that they are a blast! We ran through several of them this evening with a smaller group, just three of us, and we enjoyed it tremendously. Although we had a little difficulty in getting everything sorted out as far as Soldier traits go, and Bill kept on having issues with his soldier’s health bar disappearing, we still enjoyed ourselves.

A couple of tips:

1) Realize that there is a quest that you need to do before you have a chance to get into skirmishes. After you finish that quest (which is a pain in the but!), you complete 2 tutorial skirmishes, and then you’re free to create/join any skirmishes available to characters of your level. The quest that you have to finish involves collecting 10 “War Orders” and 1 “Target List” from mobs (Goblins, Orc, Trolls, Warg-Riders, etc)  that are approximately your level. These do not drop on every kill. Kind of a pain to have to do this before you enter the skirmishes. Skirmish Tutorials = Good, Quest = Boring and Frustrating.

2) I would set the difficulty level for your first few skirmishes to the lowest level in the group. For example, if you have 2 level 60s, and 1 level 58, set it to level 58. If you find it too easy, you can always ratchet it up later, but it gives you an opportunity to figure out skirmishes first.

3) Use your skirmish points on your soldier at first! Although it’s tempting to get a new piece of gear, or to buy some provisions, by leveling up your soldier first, you make skirmishes easier on yourself, and you open up the possibility of doing the skirmishes on a higher difficulty level.

Overall, just have fun. The skirmish system, in my opinion, is a great addition to the game. I can’t wait for the opportunity to try out all of the different parts of the expansion!

See you in game!

Today is yet another milestone.

Today we say farewell to two Splash screens, those of EVE Online Apocrypha and Lord of the Rings Online – Mines of Moria

Apocrypha

The Mines of Moria

The downtime of change is upon us and soon, if all goes well, two new expansions will be launched.

Soon we will see EVE Online Dominion and Lord of the Rings Online Siege of Mirkwood.

Here is hoping for success to both, may they both further enrich these games and may their splash screens be easy on the eyes, as we’ll be staring at them for a while to come!

With the Siege of Mirkwood due to launch today, I was planning on posting the entire patch note list for my readers… I did not expect how large that list would be though! Instead I will just provide a link for you all and some commentary. First, though, the Known Issues (linked – list is too long to just outright quote) with Mirkwood are already available:

As with any update to a game like Lord of the Rings Online, there are a number of bugs that make it through to publishing due to time constraints (Many players say they would rather the release be delayed for more polish… but not only would some of them be first in line with torches if this happened, but you cannot be 100% sure that QA will catch everything or that new code won’t introduce new issues) – Add to this some game play changes that players will see as ‘issues’ but are working as intended and you get the Known Issues posts.

Admittedly, the Known Issues list for Siege of Mirkwood is pretty large – but many of the items on the list are pretty minor (in my eyes). Turbine has been very good about providing detailed lists, and they even provide a mini-disclaimer that people will ignore:

This list covers a range of issues that may impact player experience and expectation. Not all known issues are “bugs.” Some known issues may be working as intended by the development team, but may not function as expected by players.
Known issues may also include minor cosmetic or graphical issues which do not impact gameplay but may create confusion for the player.
This list is not all inclusive. Those issues considered trivial or unlikely to impact player experience are not included. We also do not include known exploits.

Here is the link to the Known Issues for the Siege of Mirkwood expansion/update.

Looking through these issues I see many things that players will consider problems, but are actual design changes that will improve things in the long run. That isn’t to say that there aren’t some real issues that will be in need of fix though – the instances of certain quests/instances not being completable due to problems are pretty serious. I am sure that the Turbine team has some fixes in the works already though, they just need to get them past QA and will likely be included in the first post-SoM patch/update.

The Patch Notes for Mirkwood are amazingly extensive, tons of stuff has been updated/changed (see my previous posts on the updates, and the Developer Diaries on the main LotRO site for more info).

Here is the link to the Patch Notes for Siege of Mirkwood.

All in all I am looking forward to this update, I just hope I can get some in game time – lately I just haven’t had motivation to do much of anything. Goes hand in hand with the season and lack of work for me I guess.

Keep your eyes on your launcher folks, later today we will be able to enjoy the great new expansion to Lord of the Rings Online!

~Branadoc

Highlights

The Skirmish System has Arrived!

The Skirmish System has arrived! Brian “Zombie Columbus” has put together a seven part series of Developer Diaries that explain every possible aspect of this massive new system. Be sure to read the entire collection!

• Part 1: Overview
• Part 2: Story Instances
• Part 3: Randomization and Scaling
• Part 4: Skirmish Soldiers
• Part 5: Rewards
• Part 6: Accessibility
• Part 7: The End

Combat System Revamp

The Lord of the Rings Online™: Siege of Mirkwood™ expansion introduces exciting changes for the player combat system! The pacing of combat has been dramatically improved. All player classes, including monster play classes, have been affected by these changes. We strongly encourage all players to read the Combat Changes and Character Panel & Stats Developer Diaries to better understand what these changes mean for you.

Mounts 2.0

Welcome to Mounts 2.0! If you haven’t already read the Mounts 2.0 Dev Diary and would like to you can get to it by clicking here. Please take some time to read about the changes to the system and how it will impact you! The new mount system was built with flexibility in mind and as such you now have a lot more freedom while mounted. Here are some of the highlights:

• Some items can now be used while mounted, such as food and potions, but not limited to them.
• Doors can be opened and used while mounted. If you are entering an area that allows mounts you will remain mounted.
• Portals leading to other areas can be passed through without dismounting. You will arrive at the destination still mounted.
• NPCs can be used while mounted. You can sell & buy from vendors, receive quests, complete quests, all while on your mount. The Bard will automatically dismount you when you adjust your traits.
• Most other objects in the world can be used while mounted if it makes sense to do so. For example, mailboxes can be used but chests and crafting nodes cannot.
• A few skills can now be used while mounted.
• A new Mount Vital UI has been added for when you are riding.
• Mounts have health similar to the old system. There may not be an exact 1-to-1 mapping from the old to new system, but it generally works the same. Critical hits and roots will still knock you off your mount.
• Mount health regenerates over time.

Mount Tokens Converted to Skills: Your mount tokens no longer summon your mount;they now grant you the applicable mount skill and then delete themselves from your pack. Small races will get the pony variant and tall races will get the horse. Once converted the token will be removed from your pack and the mount skill will be added in the character journal in the new Mount tab within the skills panel. Any quickslots for mounts will be preserved when converted to skills. There will be no need to re-slot at this time. Mount Delivery Quests: These quests have been converted to use the new system and generally work the same. Quest: Proving Your Quality This is the final quest in obtaining your Riding trait and being able to ride mounts. The quest now has a global timer and the race has to be completed before the timer expires. Discount on Mounts: Once you purchase a common mount and convert it into a skill you will be granted a permanent discount on all common mounts made available by Eogar, son of Hadorgar. The mount discount trait will appear in your character journal under Passive Traits. If you currently own a mount sold by Eogar you will gain this trait once it’s converted to a skill. The trait will also be granted if you own a mount that requires reputation. Horse Bartering Updated, Horse Swapping Quests Gone: You can no longer exchange one mount for another so the quests that allowed you to do so have been removed. If you want another mount you can purchase one from the vendor and add it to your collection of available mounts. The receipts used to barter for some of the special mounts have also been removed. To obtain your special mount, most notably the reputation horses/ponies, you can buy directly from the reputation vendor within that region:

• Mount: Ashen Horse/Pony
  • Place: Angmar/Gath Forthnir
  • Vendor Name: Hafgrim
• Mount: Dark Chestnut Horse/Pony
  • Place: Evendim /Tinnudir
  • Vendor Name: Celegdes
• Mount: Mahogany Bay Horse/Pony
  • Place: Bree-land Reputation Lodge
  • Vendor Name: Tully Hopwood
• Mount: Tundra Horse/Pony
  • Place: Forochel Reputation Lodge
  • Vendor Name: Rusu
• Mount: Mahogany Bay Horse/Pony
  • Place: Ettenmoors/Good Base
  • Vendor Name: Coldfells Quartermaster

Epic Book 9: Fortress of the Nazgûl

The preparations are finally complete, and as the Golden Host begins to make its foray beneath the perilous eaves of Mirkwood, a second, secret company assembles: the Hidden Guard, tasked with executing a dangerous mission that will bring them to the very gates of the Necromancer’s Keep… and beyond. The story of Volume II: The Mines of Moria reaches its epic conclusion at Dol Guldur, the Fortress of the Nazgûl!

New Main Menu & Interface Customization

A new menu is now available to access various game features. It can be opened by clicking on the up arrow on the left side of the toolbar. The menu will adjust depending on the actions available to the user. The old “Main Menu” has been renamed “System Menu.” Buttons on the toolbar to the left and right of the main quickslot bar are now customizable. To customize the buttons, click on the little down arrow on the left side of the auto-attack button or open the Options Panel to the UI Settings tab. Read the Developer Diary to learn more about the new Main Menu.

Of Special Note

Dread/Gloom Changes

Dread/Gloom penalties have been adjusted as follows:

• A difference of eight (8) levels of Dread is now the point at which players will begin cowering periodically.
• By the time players reach a difference of 11 levels of Dread they will consistently cower every 10 seconds.
• All other penalties to morale, miss chance, skill level, etc. remain unchanged.

With this change players should expect to see more tiering up of Dread effects throughout a given raid space and within individual encounters.

Reputation Changes

Along with the new Eglain faction added to the Lone-lands we have made some minor improvements to the Reputation system in this area. As we move forward with our New Player Experience efforts these changes will find their way into each reputation group.

• At Acquaintance level, players will earn a title and complete a deed with the faction. This will open up purchase of level-relevant wares.
• At Friend level, players will earn a title and a discount on stable-masters linked to that faction – this affects the stable-master at Ost Guruth. They may continue purchasing level relevant wares.
• At Ally level, players will earn a title and complete a deed with the faction. This will also grant them a discount at all vendors related to the faction – all vendors within or part of the Ost Guruth vendors.
• At Kindred level, players will earn a title and complete a deed with the faction. This will also grant them a skill allowing them to return to the faction home location at the cost of Travel Rations. This has a one-hour cooldown, which is shared along all other travel skills.

As we continue working on the reputation system more and more options will open up.

Skill Panel update

You can now activate skills directly from the Active Tab of the Skills panel in the Character Journal by double-clicking or right-clicking the skill entry. Skill icons will also indicate when skills are queued, toggled on, or unavailable.

Legendary Item System Changes

In The Lord of the Rings Online™: Siege of Mirkwood™, we’re updating the Legendary Item system that was introduced in Mines of Moria™. This revision of the Legendary Item system incorporates most of the feedback we have received about Legendary Items since they were introduced. We encourage all players to read the Legendary Item System Update Developer Diary as well as the Legacy Pool Distribution Dev Diary.

Lone-lands Revamp

Allan “Orion” Maki has revamped the entire Lone-lands to make adventuring much more enjoyable for new and old players alike. Click here for the full breakdown!

Class Books and Pages

• The Legendary Books are now available from your class trainers at level 39. These books bestow the deeds that allow you to begin working toward your first set of Legendary Traits.
• All pages that drop for the level 39 class accomplishments are now quest items! The areas in which they can be picked up have also been expanded. The first four can be found in Angmar and Eregion, and the last four can be found in the Misty Mountains and Forochel. The old pages are no longer used for the third legendary class deed. This will not affect deeds that are currently underway.
• The old pages are no longer used for the third legendary class deed. This will not affect deeds that are currently underway.

Preparing for War

The races of Middle-earth have been preparing for war, improving their offensive and defensive capabilities.

• Hobbits have been taking extra practice at throwing stones. Their improved aim means they now have a chance to daze their targets with a well-placed rock.
• Humans have been training to improve their hand-to-hand skills. As a result they have become somewhat adept at dazing opponents with well-placed uppercuts.
• Dwarves have been sparring in taverns throughout their lands to measure their worth. As a result they have become skilled at landing a headbutt that is well-placed and hard enough to potentially daze their opponent.
• The Elves have been improving their defensive skills. As a result they have become more adept at deflecting some incoming damage when inspired by Eldar’s Grace.

It’s the little things that count

Horse Design Contest Winners

Players were recently given the opportunity to design a horse for inclusion into the game. These horses have been added to the game data with Siege of Mirkwood!

• The winning EU entry is available as a reputation mount in Siege of Mirkwood!
• The winning US entry will be made available in an upcoming (not Yule 2009) festival!

Festivals

• No more coal and taters in gift boxes!
• There is a new horse for the Yule Festival to collect along with the old — a real beauty.
• We have new horse races, and they’re quite different from the old! These Festival Run quests are for players level 35 and up, as the rewards are for experienced players who are ready to own a mount.
• Summer Festival barter reward vendors have been adjusted for consistency.
• The Summer Festival fishing quest “Stocking the Pond” has been versioned.

Full Release Notes

General Gameplay

• As the power of Sauron increases, the most evil creatures throughout Middle-earth grow in might. Care should be taken when fighting powerful creatures; they are now much more dangerous than you may remember.
• Some Boss monsters will now display more attack animations rather than always reacting to being hit.
• All rare monsters now have new vital visual effects to distinguish them from other monsters.
• When you use your hotkey to target yourself or your fellows (defaulted to F1-F6), you can now cycle through targeting yourself/your fellow, companion, and skirmish soldier.
• Killing blows dealt by pets should now properly be attributed to their masters.
• Forochel cold buff no longer persists after death.
• The movement speed decreasing effects of falling damage will suppress the sprint/charge skills of Champions, Reavers and Wargs.
• All Incoming Healing bonuses from items have been converted into a ratings system. Incoming Healing bonuses and penalties from skills and traits have been left as percentages.
• When Drakes use their “Fire Breath” or “Wing Buffet” skills, they will now lock their facing so you have a chance to dodge out of the way.

Skills/Classes

General

• New or upgraded skills are available for all classes. Click here for full details.
• Guardians, Wardens and Captains may purchase a passive characteristic at level 20 that reduces their chance to suffer critical hits. Champions in Glory or Ardour stance gain a similar bonus.
• The skill duration delay after executing a Fellowship Maneuver has been reduced. Players can start using other skills faster after a Fellowship Maneuver.

Champion

• Clobber and Stamp have had their damage adjusted downward to compensate for their immediate nature. Clobber has had its cooldown changed to 5 seconds.
• Clarified the tooltip for Champion’s Fight On skill.
• The second attack in the dual wield version of Champion’s Relentless Strike will now gain the benefits from the various Strikes Class traits.
• The tooltip on the effect icon for Fervour now includes the -30% incoming healing information.
• Ardour will now stack normally with Sudden Defence instead of being suppressed.
• Controlled Burn will now transform the Flurry skill to Ardent Flurry and the Exchange of Blows skill to Glorious Exchange, in addition to applying these buffs when initially activated.
• Cleaned up the tooltips for all versions of the Exchange of Blows skill.
• Bracing Attack will heal for full while Fervour and Sudden Defense are in effect.
• Champion Martial Trait Set – 4 trait bonus has been changed. It no longer increases the fervour pip generation rate of Glory. Instead it significantly increases the Champion’s Max Morale while in Glory stance.
• Champion Trait Mighty Blast has an expanded description to list all of its effects.
• Champions gain +5% damage to Area damage skills with the 3 trait bonus in the Deadly Storm trait line.
• Deathstorm now resets the cool down of Horn of Gondor.
• The tooltip for the Champion’s Skill “Hamstring” will now always display the correct value.

Guardian

• Guardians may no longer retain the benefits/bonuses of shields while in Overpower stance. When Overpower is activated, your shield is automatically disarmed until Overpower is deactivated.
• With the change to Overpower to disallow the use of shields, existing Legendary weapons with Overpower-dependent legacies have become less useful. Guardian trainers throughout Middle-earth have acquired powerful scrolls that will allow Guardians to replace these Overpower dependent legacies with new legacies.
  • Overpower Cost => Vexing Blow Damage
  • Overpower Evade Chance => Bash Damage
  • Stagger Attack Duration => Vitality
  • Stagger Movement Speed Debuff => Might
• The Guardian legacy that extends the range of Engage is no longer functional. No ranks can be purchased in this legacy. Engage range is now extended by the Targeted Melee skills range legacy. Guardian trainers have a legacy replacement scroll for this defunct legacy that replaces the Engage range legacy with Overwhelm Critical chance legacy.
• The critical defense bonuses from Guardian’s Fighter of Shadow trait set have been converted to use the new Critical Defence ratings.
• Shield Wall will now overwrite and toggle off Protection if applied to the same Fellowship member.
• Guardian’s Blocking Force trait will now reduce the cooldown of Force Opening as well as giving a Block event on a critical hit.
• Overpower: It’s now possible to use 1-handed swords with Overpower, but your shield will automatically be disarmed.
• Guardian’s power costs have been reduced by 10% and their Overpower penalty has been increased by 10%.
• The debuffs from the Guardian’s Stagger skill have been split into 2 effects. There is no change to the way the run speed debuff is applied. The attack speed debuff will now be applied 10% of the time regardless of position or critical hit status.
• Fixed a bug that was allowing the Corruption removal effect on the Guardian’s “Improved Sting” skill to continuously overwrite itself on subsequent attacks and preventing it from actually removing a corruption after 10 seconds. Now you will be prevented from applying a new corruption removal effect until the previous one has expired.
• Guardians will be able to purchase an improved version of Charge, called Brutal Charge, from the Guardian trainer at level 62.
• The Guardian trait Litany Master will now trigger the threat-over-time effect on critical hits from the 2nd attacks of Shield Swipe and Sweeping Cut.

Hunter

• Hunter’s Barbed Arrow has been buffed and will now be influenced by the bow’s DPS.
• The animation timing for Improved Swift has been adjusted. The animation timing is now the same whether the player has a bow or crossbow equipped.
• Hunter skill Burn Hot will no longer break the Hunter out of stealth.
• The tooltip for the Hunter’s Skills “Quick Shot,” “Low Cut,” and “Barbed Arrow” will now display the target movement speed debuff much more cleanly: “-X% Target Run Speed.”

Minstrel

• The Max Chord of Salvation Legacy has been reduced to an 11 second cap.
• Minstrels will be able to purchase an improved version of Song of Restoration, called Chorus of Restoration, from the Minstrel trainer at level 62.
• Minstrel healing timing has been adjusted. This should eliminate the two second “root” effect players experience after using healing skills.
• The healing penalty from Minstrel’s War-speech will now continue for 10 seconds after War-speech is toggled off.

Captain

• Many of the Captain’s melee attacks have had their power costs reduced.
• Captains now have a 2% bonus to Halberd damage at level 30.
• Description for the Captain’s trait “Composure” has been re-worded to reflect the way it currently functions, as only the cooldowns on your on-defeat Cries are reset.
• The Captain’s Improved Kick Skill has been corrected. It should now reflect the correct 10% activation chance.
• Captain banners dropped during spars will appropriately affect the summoner.
• Corrected Captain Hands of Healing Legendary trait tooltip to correctly identify Valiant Strike as the skill with the reduced cooldown.
• Captain skills Last Stand and Threatening Shout now have upgraded visual effects.
• Corrected morale cost display of Captain Herald’s skill Lend Will.

Burglar

• Tooltips on Gambler trait set were not displaying correct Gamble information. Text only change.
• Aim now works on Uppercut and Stoop for a Stone.
• The Burglar’s Track Treasure skill will now toggle off other tracking skills, such as those used to track crafting resource nodes.
• Dagger Training has been changed to be more like the Racial Weapon Bonuses. This enables it to integrate more smoothly with the Weapon Speed Modifier changes.
• Hobbit Burglars will now apply damage from Flashing Blades and Exposed Throat at the appropriate time rather than at the end of the attack animation.

Lore-master

• The Lore-master’s “Sticky Tar” will now properly debuff the fire defense of boss monsters that are immune to slows.
• The Lore-master trait “The Wild and Ward” now allows Lore-masters to place both “Sign of the Wild: Protection” and “Sign of the Wild: Rage” on their companions at the same time. Trait and Skill descriptions have been updated.
• The Lore-master Deed “Improved Sign of Wizardry” will now properly increment when you use the skill “Sign of Battle: Wizardry.” Previously, it would only increment when using “Sign of Battle: Wizard’s Fire.”
• The Lore-master Trait “The Secret of Tar” now displays by how much it reduces the Induction Time of the skill “Sticky Gourd”.
• Lore-masters will be able to purchase an improved version of Leechcraft, called Ancient Knowledge of Cures, from the Lore-master trainer at level 62.
• The bonuses provided by the Lore-master Traits “Master of Beasts” and “The Wild and Ward” will now stack properly with one another.

]Rune-keeper

• Fiery Ridicule will now do appropriate Damage over Time when the Conflagration of Runes trait is slotted.
• Damage while Our Fates Entwined is active will no longer interrupt Rousing Words.
• The tooltip for the traited version of Epic Conclusion was erroneously claiming its damage was increased by 75% by Harsh Debate and/or Thunderous Words. The tooltip now properly says damage is increased by 50%.
• Rune-keepers will be able to purchase an improved version of Do Not Fall This Day, called Shall Not Fall This Day, from the Rune-keeper trainer at level 62.
• Chisels have now been changed to be Tactical Offense Points. Their value has been adjusted across various level bands instead of the previous static 5%. The resistance penetration (since they were already points) will remain the same. This change is in accordance to the bonus Rune-keepers now get from Willpower to Tactical Offense.
• Corrected issue causing Rune-keeper Rune-stone Tier 5 Legacies to disappear when upgraded.

]Warden

• The deed “Sharp Blade, Sharp Wit” has been renamed along with its associated trait to “A Keen Response.”
• Boot has been adjusted to a lower tier of DPS to match its skill cooldown.
• Male Hobbit Wardens now execute Warden’s Taunt at the same speed as other races.
• Corrected a typo in the Warden’s Reversal Gambit description.
• Gambit Icon builder skills are now a little faster to execute.
• Removed delays after executing some Gambits before a new Gambit could be started.
• The Warden Gambit Conviction will no longer break fellowship members out of stealth.
• The Warden’s preferred weapon trait damage bonus has been reduced to +2% for spears, swords and clubs. The bonuses inherent to each weapon are unchanged.
• Wardens will no longer get Guardian Block and Parry events while using Shield Spikes.
• Warden Gambits will no longer interrupt the animations of the last icon building skill. All Warden Gambits are no longer immediate.
• The Warden Legacy that affects induction times for Ambush and Careful Step will now properly reduce induction times at high ranks.
• Ambush will now animate correctly when executed immediately after Careful Step.
• The damage bonus from Grand Master Weapons training has been extended to a general melee damage bonus, no longer tied to weapon type. The bonuses inherent to each weapon are unchanged.

Monster Play

General Monster Play

All crowd control effects (fears, roots, stuns, and dazes) are now on the same application counter. This means that for purposes of diminishing returns in PvMP (and in PvMP ONLY), each application of any crowd control effect is counted against the duration of the type of crowd control. For reference, the duration tables of each crowd control effect vs. application counter are below:

• Roots/Dazes
  • First Application = 50% of the root/daze duration
  • Second Application = 25% of the root/daze duration
  • Third – Ninth Application = 5% of the root/daze duration
  • After the Tenth Application, the root/daze will no longer affect the target
• Stuns
  • First Application = 100% of the stun’s duration
  • Second Application = 50% of the stun’s duration
  • Third Application = 25% of the stun’s duration
  • Fourth – Ninth Application = 1 second stun duration
  • After the Tenth Application, the stun will no longer affect the target.
• Fears (please note that this applies only to crowd control fears – this does not apply to debuffs with resistance type: fear)
  • First Application = 100% of the fear’s duration
  • Second Application = 50% of the fear’s duration
  • Third Application = 25% of the fear’s duration
  • Fourth – Ninth Application = 1 second fear duration
  • After the Tenth Application, the fear will no longer affect the target.

Example: You are hit with a daze effect in PvMP. It is counted as the first application of a CC effect, and the daze effect duration is 50%. After it wears off, you are then hit with a stun. It is counted as the second application of a CC effect, and the stun effect duration is 50%. After it wears off, you are hit with a root. It is counted as the third application of a CC effect, and the root effect duration is 5%. After it wears off, you are hit with a fear. It is counted as the fourth application of a CC effect, and the fear effect duration is 1 second. Please note that the diminishing returns application counter is not permanent – if you are not hit with any crowd control effects for 45 seconds, the application counter will reset.

• Old Goldhead – When the Tirith Rhaw Keep changed hands, Old Goldhead would sometimes be available when he should not be, this change will make it so that it will only appear when they are in the correct state. Additionally, Old Goldhead will despawn and not attack a keep that is in control of the Free People.
• Coldfells – Krajarn Tyrant now resets at the stairs in the Coldfells Outpost. He can no longer be kited down the stairs.
• Flag Capture – Players and Monster – Players and Monster Players will now receive a buff while inside Tol Ascarnen for successfully capturing the flag.
• Increased the amount of in-combat power regen and in-combat health regen given by each rank of the Power Regen and Health Regen passive traits.
• Delving spirit stones, Tyrant’s Crests, and Chieftain’s Brooches will now stack to 100.
• Quest collectibles found in the Ettenmoors (such as Hobbit Legs, Barrels of Oil, Slabs of Troll Stone) will now stack to 100.
• Monster Player health and power potions will now stack to 50.
• Monster Player food items will now stack to 50.
• Seeking charms and tracking talismans will now stack to 20.
• Cure fear potions (barter) will now stack to 20.
• Items with root duration reduction will once again affect root skills from Monster Player characters.
• Resilience (Reaver) and Snap Out of It! (Warleader) will cure root crowd control effects.
• Monster players will no longer get chat spew mentioning Fellowships when leaving a group or changing group leaders.
• Rend Flesh and Rabid Bite’s target icons will no longer be reversed.
• When a fellowship/warband maneuver stun lands on the target, the target will now display a brief effect graphic over his head, to help distinguish fellowship/warband maneuver stuns from regular stuns.
• Free Players entering into PvMP play (Delving of Fror or the Ettenmoors) will receive an additional bonus on the “Monster Play” effect. This bonus will extend the duration of the maneuver chain immunity (the “Temporary Fellowship Skill Immunity” effect received after you are hit with a warband maneuver). The duration on this immunity will be boosted to 60 seconds. Please note that this change is only valid in PvMP areas.
• Monster Players will now have a new passive, called Advanced Fellowship Maneuver Chain Protection, that is automatically granted at Rank 0. This passive will extend the duration of the maneuver chain immunity (the “Temporary Fellowship Skill Immunity” effect received after you are hit with a fellowship maneuver). The duration on this immunity will be boosted to 60 seconds.
• Resilience can now be triggered when the Reaver is rooted. The tooltip has also been fully updated to indicate that the skill will also cure Root effects.
• The “Strength of Many” damage buff and the strength damage perks that can be purchased from Tol Ascarnan will now affect damage over time and heal/morale over time skills correctly.
• Orcs, Wargs, and Weavers will now have animations and sound for the /charge emote.
• The Chest of Glan Vraig, Chest of the Second Marshall, and Chest of the First Marshall have had their loot tables updated.
• Treasure in the Delving of Fror has been updated.
• There are new level 65 PvMP rewards (jewelry and armor sets) for Free Players.
• The “Monster Play” effect granted to Free Players while inside the Ettenmoors and Delving of Fror will now also remove the penalty for item wear on death.
• The Coldfells Provisioner has been updated to provide items for level 65 play.
• Fresh Blood of the Little Folk will no longer overwrite evade buffs granted by Moving Target and Frenzy.
• Tracking talismans will no longer trigger the cooldown for Phial of Mazauk’s Resolve.
• The Salt of Hartshorn, Solvent of Release, Odorous Salts, and Solvent of Painful Freedom will now remove a constant amount of health (-250) from the player or Monster Player when used.
• The damage over time effect from Scathing Mockery (Rune-keeperer skill) can now be cured using a tactical cure potion (Bottled Warg Breath).
• The amount of infamy/renown received while in raids has been slightly increased.
• Base values for in-combat power regen, in-combat health regen, out-of-combat power regen, and out-of-combat health regen for Monster Players have been increased.
• Warden and Rune-keeper trainers in the Ettenmoors now are wearing the right clothes
• Reduced the amount of kills required by the following deeds to match the number of kills required of the Free Player deeds of the same type.
  • “Slay Enemies of Angmar — Tier 4″
  • “Slay Enemies of Angmar — Tier 5″
  • “Slay Enemies of Angmar — Tier 6″
  • “Slay Enemies of Angmar — Tier 7″

Creeps

Orc Reaver

• Dying Rage will now correctly grant immunity to fear.
• The Reaver’s effect icon for Time-out will now correctly match its skill icon.
• The Reaver’s Wrath skill will now correctly drain 50% morale and convert 75% of the drained morale into power.
• Reaver’s Charge now does not block conjunctions.

Spider Weaver

• Weaver hatchlings can now be renamed.
• Latent Poison will no longer toggle auto-attack on or off.

Uruk Blackarrow

• The Blackarrow’s Tangleshot skill will now correctly do extra damage when the Blackarrow’s target is slowed by the Stalker’s Savage Fangs skill.

Warg Stalker

• The Warg’s conjunction stun granted through using Pounce while Crippling Bite is in effect will now pass through Sign of Power: Righteousness correctly.

Uruk Warleader

• Warleader Banners can now be renamed.
• Aura of Command will now correctly grant its 25% damage increase to the Warleader’s melee skills.

Defiler

• Defilers can now rename the fly swarm from Plague of Flies.

Auctions

• “Orb” listing under the Weapons category has been updated to “Rune-stone”
• Doing a generic search on Class Items will show all posted class items. Burglar Tools sub-category has been renamed to Burglar Tools & Devices, since it now includes Caltrops and Stun Dust.
• A new Class Quest Trophies sub-category has been added to Class Items in the Auction House. Here new listings of items associated with the class quests can be found, such as Corrosive Droplets and Runes of Winged Dominance.
• Newly posted Fishing Poles to the auction house will appear under the main category heading of “Hobbies”
• Crafting trophies now show up in the auction house if you search on the generic “Crafting” category.
• When bidding on an item that you cannot afford, the “please wait” dialog won’t get stuck over the item

User Interface

• When training skills, all active quickslots are displayed, by default, this is bar 1, 2 and 3, but not 4 and 5. If any quickslots are open when you train a skill, that skill will automatically be placed in the first available quickslot and will have a visual indicator to draw your attention to it.
• There is a new instance deeds tab for all instance deeds
  • Shadows of Angmar,
  • Mines of Moria
  • Scourge of Khazad-dum
  • Dol Guldur.
• Pinned tooltips can now be used to select targets.
• Turning off the UI option for floating damage no longers disables damage from showing up in the chat window.
• Corrected grammatical issues with the messages displayed to fellowships when a member of the fellowship opens a scroll case or gift box.
• The Quest Starter Item alert now displays even when the quest starter item is acquired via a Loot All action.
• Fixed Kinship UI status sort ordering so that guild members who logged off most recently are listed after Online members.
• Tooltips for skills that deliver damage based on the equipped weapon now display the value of the weapon damage instead of the name of weapon slot. If there is a multiplier, it is applied to the value shown instead of displayed separately. If no weapon is equipped, then the name of the weapon slot is displayed (as before).
• You no longer need to enter text to enable the auction UI search button when you auto drag an item to the auction UI.
• Skills that have morale restrictions (such as Champions’ Fight On and Wardens’ The Dark Before Dawn) now consistently show as available in the Skills panel in the Character Journal.
• Quest billboard text is now echo’ed to your chat window using the “Quest” text type.
• When you level, if there are new skirmishes avaialble, then you will get an alert telling you so. Clicking on the alert will open skirmish join and dismiss the alert.
• You can now activate skills directly from the Active Tab of the Skills panel in the Character Journal by double-clicking or right-clicking the sklil entry. Skill icons will also indicate when skills are queued, toggled on, or unavailable.
• The “Active” tab on the Skills panel is no longer automatically selected whenever the skills tab is shown in the Character Journal.
• The Lorebook and Bug Entry forms no longer have the “always on top” behavior.
• Opening the vault will now bring it to the front of other windows.
• Show Vitals of my selection’s target and the Raid Assist window no longer show targets which don’t have any vitals.
• Select Legendary Item UI will no longer appear behind other windows when Heritage Runes are used.
• Vendor messages have been corrected to take plurals into account when selling and buying back stacks of items.
• Vendors now show filter dropdowns wide enough to accommodate longer item group names.
• Lore-Master: Knowledge of the Lore-master skill now displays Lightning Damage Mitigation and Root Immunity.
• Right-click/inspect Panel now comes up in front of other open windows.
• Mounts 2.0 – There’s a new Keyboard Shortcut called Dismount/Remount. This shortcut will dismount any mount you might be riding. It also remembers the last mount that you successfully used and will remount it if used when not already mounted.
• Dropdown menus will no longer be partially cut off when their parent window is too close to the edge of the screen.
• Instance Quests should now show correct Fellow Status icon in the Quest Log.
• Fixed a client crash that occurs when dragging a separated chat tab into the text entry box on the main chat window.
• Fixed an issue where the housing maintenance UI seemed to not be updating properly.
• When effects are about to expire and are “pulsing,” they will now fade much less than they used to.
• The stats display of the character sheet is now divided into three sub-tabs: one for defensive stats, one for general combat effectiveness, and one for Melee, Ranged, and Tactical point values.
• You will no longer queue up multiple confirmation dialog boxes by clicking the “Cancel” button in the quest journal multiple times.
• More UIs can be skinned, several fixes have been made.

You can now save even more of your options to disk! Using the same commands “/ui layout save” and “/ui layout load”, more of your options are saved to disk. The “/ui” command remains the same, we’re just giving you more, More, MORE!

• New UI settings saved and loaded from disk:
  • your list of aliases that have been set
  • UI, combat, social, chat, and quickslot settings (including UI scales!)
  • chat fonts, colors, and sizes
  • layout size and locations are still saved in the file
  • The format of the XML file has also changed. Everything is broken up into labeled sections.
• There are some Known Issues:
  • Outfit visibility slots are not saved to disk.
• Spam limiting is in effect! You can only upload options once every ten seconds.
• Aliases
  • You have a maximum of 50 aliases. If you try to import more than 50, you will be limited to the first 50 aliases encountered in the file. If you currently have more than 50 aliases, we will not delete any. You can replace any alias you currently have. You will not be able to add new aliases without removing or clearing existing aliases.
• Layouts
  • The “Height”, “Width”, “X”, and “Y” values are all specified by float number between 0.0 and 1.0. If your numbers are outside the range, we will normalize them to the size of the screen or the min/max size of the window.
  • If you try to change or specify a “LayoutID” or “ID” that we don’t know about, we ignore it!
• Options
  • If you try to add a new option “Name” that we don’t understand, we ignore it!
  • If you try to specify a “Value” for an “Option” and it doesn’t match what we expect, we ignore it! E.g if you set “AlwaysLootAll” to “purple” instead of “True” or “False” we leave the value at its current setting.
  • If you specify a “Value” for an option that exists in a listbox, and it is not a valid option, we will reset the selection to the first item in the list. E.g. if you set “ShowClassIconsOnRaidPanel” to “N0ne” (instead of “None”) then the option will be reset to “Background”.
• ChatColors
  • “ChatFont” entry “Color” values are written out as “Red Green Blue Alpha”. Each value is represented by a float number between 0.0 and 1.0. If your numbers are outside the range, we will normalize them. I.e. the color you get won’t be what you expect if we have to normalize it.
  • You can change the “Alpha” portion of the “ChatFont” all you want – we ignore it when we scan it back in! I.e. the “Alpha” value will always be 1.0 even if you change it.
  • If your “ChatFont” entry fails to parse, the associated text color will be “White” I.e. Red = Green = Blue = 1.0, and Size = “Medium”
  • If you try to use “TextType”s in your “ChatFont” entries that we don’t understand, we ignore them!
  • Valid values for the “Size” portion of the “ChatFont” are: Small, Medium, Large, XLarge, XXLarge, and XXXLarge.

Quest Guide

• Quest Guide will now properly direct you to your first quest objective if you skip the new user tutorial.
• Quest Guide will now display correctly for all quests that require you to carry an object to a defined location.
• Certain Quest Guide markers on the map that were positioned slightly off of the actual objective locations will now display in the correct locations.
• The quest tracker will now work with the quest “Forest Spiders” out of Buckland heading into the Old Forest.
• The quest “A Ring Wandered Away” will now display proper billboards and objectives in the quest tracker.
• The quest “Supplies and Demands” now shows the correct image on the game map when using quest guide.

Chat/Social/Kinship

• Added an option (under “Chat”) callled “Stop repeated keys in chat” – this is off by default. If turned on, then if a player has thier chat bar open and holds down any character key (like w) – then after about 20 repeats of this key in under a second (implying that you really wanted to be running or something) the chat window will delete the repeated keys from your chat box and close the chat box.
• Kinship charters will now correctly indicate that at least 8 members must be registered, or the kinship will be disbanded in 24 hours.
• Updated combat logging to include specific skill names for auto-attacks so they can be distinguished from other types of damage and healing, e.g. wounds that do damage over time. You will now see auto-attack damage reported as “Default Melee Attack”, “Default Ranged Attack” and/or “Unarmed Attack” in your Combat log.
• Entries in combat logs that mentioned “Unspecified” damage should now just call it damage.
• Combat Log messages of the form “…wounds you for X points of ‘Damage type’” now say “X points of ‘Damage type’ damage” to be consistent with other messages.

Hobbies

Fishing

• The cooldown on the fishing skill has been reduced slightly.
• You can no longer get so drunk that you hallucinate catching fish.

Raids and Instances

General

New Medallion Barter System for Instances

• The barter for all the instances has been changed. Raid gear still drops as it did before. This is only for non-raid barter items.
• Each instance cluster has a Medallion associated with it
  • Medallion of Moria
  • Medallion of Lothlorien
  • Medallion of Dol Guldur
• Every boss will drop at least one Medallion, Challenge chests will have additional Medallions and the daily Challenge quests that are bestowed when you enter the instances will grant you additional Medallions upon completion.
• The number of medallions you get from an instance will generally reflect the difficulty of the instance (with room for tweaks in the future)
• At each major quest hub, players can see their class trainers to turn in these Medallions
  • The 21st Hall
  • Caras Galadhon
  • Emyn Lum
• Players will also have the ability to trade Medallions for Legendary Item enhancements as well. This differs at each quest hub
• Finally, players will have the ability to trade in their old barter items for Medallions with the new Barter Exchange Vendors in The 21st Hall, Caras Galadhon and Emyn Lum.

Barad Gularan

• The Boss monsters “Forvengwath” and “Castellan Wisdn” are now immune to basic crowd control effects.

The Great Delving

• The Spider-nest – Dwarves can now escape after being freed from the web.

Forgotten Treasury

• The two troll bosses now come from behind you as you try to escape. This is to avoid reset issues and confusing reset mechanics. Hope it helps!

Zelem-melek

• Flame and Shadow – Instance quest is now labeled as a group quest.

Carn Dum

• The Ornate Gate Key, and Iron Gate Key can now be picked up by every member of a fellowship.

Crafting

General Crafting

• Added new barter NPCs to all crafting guild-halls. These new Trader NPCs will accept some quantity of small guild reputation items in exchange for a medium reputation item of the same tier. They will also accept some quantity of medium guild reputation items in exchange for a large reputation item of the same tier.
• Fixed the titles of many crafting guild NPCs.
• Added new legendary guild recipe vendors to all crafting guild-halls. These NPCs sell all of the guild’s Legendary Item recipes.
• Removed Apprentice-level optional ingredients from levels 1-7 treasure profiles.
• Increased the drop rate of optional ingredients in sentient creature treasure.
• Many crafted critical armour pieces had slightly higher armor values than they were intended to have. All crafted critical armor pieces should now have correct armor values.
• New legendary weapon / class item recipes are available for the following guilds: Jeweller’s Guild, Metalsmith’s Guild, Scholar’s Guild, Tailor’s Guild, Weaponsmith’s Guild, and Woodworker’s Guild. These recipes allow crafters to produce 2nd Age weapons and class items.
• New guild recipe scroll cases are available from the Maenasdir, the Lothlórien Crafting Guild Emissary, for the following guilds: Jeweller’s Guild, Metalsmith’s Guild, and Tailor’s Guild.
• New recipes have been added to the Lothlórien barter vendors for the following professions: Jeweller, Metalsmith, and Tailor.
• Updated the required ingredients for many of the Lothlórien level 60 recipes. In general, level 60 recipes that produce armour, shields, and weapons now require slightly more ingredients.
• Increased the maximum stack size to 50 for the following crafted items items: Shield-spike kits, Burglar tricks, Hunter traps, and Lore-master pet food.
• Craft guild barter NPCs now require the player to have at least neutral reputation with their respective craft guild to barter with them.
• Trophy barter items (old optional ingredients) no longer have coin values.
• The trophy item Flawed Ear no longer states in its description, “This item may be used in crafting.”
• Improved organization for all legendary weapon and class item recipes in the crafting panel UI.
• Increased the chances to find optional ingredients in all Forester wood, Prospecting metal, Scholar artifact, and Farming field resource nodes.
• Trophy barter items (old optional ingredients) now state in their descriptions, “Crafting trophy brokers located in Michel Delving and Esteldin will accept this item in exchange for a new optional crafting ingredient.”

Scholar

• Battle lore and warding lore recipes are now available for all tiers! Journeyman Scholar battle & warding lore recipes are auto-granted to the crafter and do not need to be purchased. Artisan and Supreme Scholar battle & warding lore recipes can be purchased from Expert Scholar vendors.
• Reduced the melee, ranged, and tactical offence rating bonuses found on all Battle Lore scrolls.
• All Scholar’s guild recipes that previously created a stack of 15 critical potions now create a stack of 25 critical potions. The required ingredients for these recipes have also been increased (in-line with the output adjustments).
• A Supreme Scholar recipe for producing Pure Light-oil can be found on both Hunter and Expert Scholar vendors.
• Slightly increased the quantity of scholar components found in artifact resource nodes.

Prospecting

• The Tin Ingot recipe was incorrectly producing three Bronze Ingots on a critical success. This has been fixed, and the Tin Ingot recipe now produces three Tin Ingots on a critical success.
• All normal, non-rich ore nodes now have a higher chance to produce a gem. Additionally, all precious metal ore nodes (rich and non-rich) now have the ability to create any of the gems within a specific tier.

Cooking

• The Apprentice and Journeyman Cooking recipes Lute Strings of Minor Subtlety, Lute Strings of Subtlety, and Lute Strings of Greater Subtlety no longer require Crushed Intestine, Torn Intestine, or Small Intestine trophy items as ingredients. These recipes now require Gut Strings, which can be purchased from any Supplier, Nocie Cook, or Expert Cook NPC.
• Soup recipes can now be purchased from Novice and Expert Cook vendors and will no longer be found in treasure.
• Minstrel lute string recipes can now be purchased from Novice Cooks as well as Minstrel trainers, and will no longer be found in treasure.
• Lore-master pet food recipes can now be purchased from Novice & Expert Cook vendors as well as Lore-master trainers, and will no longer be found in treasure.
• Slightly reduced the required ingredients for the following recipes: Lamb and Mushroom Soup, Lamb and Onion Soup, Lamb and Carrot Soup, and Lamb and Barley Soup.
• All Cook’s guild recipes that previously created a stack of 15 critical foods now create a stack of 25 critical foods. The required ingredients for these recipes have also been increased (in-line with the output adjustments).

Weaponsmith

• Rebalanced the required ingredients and craft experience awarded for many Weaponsmith recipes.
• Recipes to create both second and third age Warden’s axes can now be purchased from the Weaponsmith’s Guild Legendary Recipes vendor.
• Updated all one-shot journeyman, expert, artisan, and master Jeweller recipes (i.e., recipe scrolls with marked as “(Old)”) to use Sapphire, Ruby, Adamant, and Beryl Shards in place of unique creature trophies. The unique creature trophies are no longer marked as crafting ingredients and no longer have any use in crafting.

Jeweller

• Rebalanced the required ingredients and craft experience awarded for many Jeweller recipes. Additionally, some Jeweller recipes and crafted items have been renamed for consistency.
• Updated all one-shot journeyman, expert, artisan, and master Jeweller recipes (i.e., recipe scrolls with marked as “(Old)”) to use Sapphire, Ruby, Adamant, and Beryl Shards in place of unique creature trophies. The unique creature trophies are no longer marked as crafting ingredients and no longer have any use in crafting.

Tailoring

• Rebalanced the required ingredients and craft experience values for many Tailor recipes.
• Corrected the name of the Superb Leather Shoes Recipe.
• Updated all one-shot journeyman, expert, artisan, and master Tailor recipes (i.e., recipe scrolls with marked as “(Old)”) to use Sapphire, Ruby, Adamant, and Beryl Shards in place of unique creature trophies. The unique creature trophies are no longer marked as crafting ingredients and no longer have any use in crafting.

Metalsmith

• Rebalanced the required ingredients and craft experience awarded for many Metalsmith recipes.
• The Supreme Metalsmith crafted shield, “Superb Lothlrien Heavy Shield” now has Tough durability.
• Updated all one-shot journeyman, expert, artisan, and master Jeweller recipes (i.e., recipe scrolls with marked as “(Old)”) to use Sapphire, Ruby, Adamant, and Beryl Shards in place of unique creature trophies. The unique creature trophies are no longer marked as crafting ingredients and no longer have any use in crafting.

Woodworking

• Rebalanced the required ingredients and craft experience awarded for many Woodworker recipes.
• Adding the missing Woodworker’s Guild recipe for “Crafted Hunter’s Hammer of the Third Age.” This recipe can be pruchased from Tawarbes in the Woodworker’s Guild Hall.
• The ‘claw’ trophy items (i.e., Elegant Claw) that were previously used as ingredients in some Champion horn recipes are no longer required by these recipes. The claw trophy items are simply creature trophies that can be sold for coin to a vendor.
• The Twistwood Staff quest recipe now correctly requires 5 Treated Ash instead of 5 Treated Yew.
• Updated all one-shot journeyman, expert, artisan, and master Jeweller recipes (i.e., recipe scrolls with marked as “(Old)”) to use Sapphire, Ruby, Adamant, and Beryl Shards in place of unique creature trophies. The unique creature trophies are no longer marked as crafting ingredients and no longer have any use in crafting.

Emotes

• You may now perform a number of emotes while mounted!

Items

• All Battle Lore scrolls will now increase Offensive Ratings instead of granting percentage increases. The ratings increase is equivalent to +5% damage at the level of the scroll for all levels of Battle Lore scrolls.
• Crafted Second and Third Age Rune-keeperer Satchels will now be visible when equipped.
• Maces will no longer stun monsters on random attacks. Instead they will apply a short duration slow effect.
• The Harbinger’s Cloak can now be reclaimed using /reclaim.
• Corrected issues with the descriptions found on all fire-oils and light-oils.
• The rare trophy “Speckled Shell Fragment” now uses the correct crafting ingredient background and states that it can be used by Supreme Jewellers in the item’s description.
• Hope Tokens, now give back Hope instead of Radiance.
• Temper Armour effects on weapons should no longer display the percentage chance to apply the effect twice.
• Chests of Chance will no longer create any of the old creature trophies used as optional crafting ingredients. They now have a chance to create any of the Supreme crafting tier optional ingredients.
• The stats on the Rhymer’ Robe were slightly more powerful than intended. Reduced the maximum Power bonus on the Rhymer’s Robe to bring this armour piece in line with others in the set.
• The stats on the Robe of the Stone-reader’s Apprentice were slightly more powerful than intended. Reduced the maximum Power bonus on the Robe of the Stone-reader’s Apprentice to bring this armour piece in line with others in the set.
• We have adjusted the costing models for many of the point-based ratings (Block, Parry, Evade, Melee Critical, Ranged Critical, Tactical Critical, Disease Resist, Poison Resist, Fear Resist, and Wounds Resist) found on items in the levels 1-50 range. These ratings should now more progressively mesh with level 51+ items that utilize the same point-based ratings.
• Fixed an issue with the display names of “Root” trophy items changing to “Root Fragments” when stacked.
• Reduced the cool-down timer for using food items to 30 seconds (was previously 1 minute).
• Sturgeon Group Trophy is now set to Bind on Acquire.
• (Housing) The Lórien Weapon Rack and The Ornate Lórien Table will now have their correct appearances when placed inside a house.
• All Hunter Bow Chants can now be stacked to a maximum of 50.
• The fur linings used for the Forochel reputation armour pieces will now have unique craft icons.
• The Black Pearl and Mikel-Baug now have more appropriate icons.
• Several quests in the Grand Stairs area have had Legendary Item XP runes added as rewards.
• The salmon house decorations had their size adjusted to more closely match their ‘weight’. The 30 pound salmon now looks smaller when compared to the 40 pound version.
• Fixed a typo in the description of a Golden Locket that drops in Haudh Iarchith.
• Edhelharn Tokens have an On Use description now.
• Taxidermy barter items can now be stacked to 100.
• Fixed description for Bright Emblem of Nimrodel barter token.
• “Warg-rider’s Bane” now does extra damage to Orc-kind instead of insects.
• “Turtle-shelled Bracelet Recipe” renamed to “Turtle-shell Bracelet Recipe” to match the output item. Also, the required items to produce this recipe’s output can be located in the Turtle Raid loot container.
• “Cuguru” now has a 5-minute equip cooldown time before the item’s skill can be triggered.
• Effect name on the Peerless Turtle-Shell Bracelet has been changed from “Great Strike” to “Intermittent Strength” which is consistent with the effect it applies to you 5% of the time during combat.
• Leggings of Harmony has a new apperance as it was using an appearance reserved for Leggings of the Seven Stars.
• A number of high level rare cloaks (and two uncommon clocks) have had their appearances changed as they were using appearances reserved for PvP ranked cloaks.
• Quest reward “Ring of the Grove” (from the Giant Footprints quest) has been renamed to “Ring of the Green Knoll”.
• “Cloak from the Men of Bree” will no longer accept dyes.
• More barter tokens now stack to 100, including those used for festivals.
• Harbinger’s Cloak has been updated to somewhat match other pre-order cloaks: increased armor and non-Combat Morale Regen added. The run speed buff on the item now has a 45-minute cooldown (down from 8-hours). The Harbinger’s Cloak is also now dyable. Fixed the description for its run speed buff, as it didn’t mention it was an out of combat run speed increase only.
• The following taxidermy trophies will now bind when you pick them up:
  • Small Turtle Shell
  • Nornuan’s Head
  • Ergoth’s Wings
  • Caerlug’s Arm
  • Thaguzg’s Armor
  • Zholuga’s Head
  • Istm’s Head
  • Flagit’s Head
  • The Blind One’s Skull

Legendary Items

• Each class, upon the launch of Siege of Mirkwood™, will have its legacies divided into two Pools. Pool A contains the all-purpose, greatly desired legacies. These appear upon the initial Legendary Item identification and have a small chance to appear during reforges at level 10, 20 and 30. Pool B legacies are more situational and appear only during reforges at levels 10, 20 and 30. (Click Here) for a full listing of what legacies appear in which pools.
• The nine different Legendary Item Instances now provide Fused Relics as an additional selectable reward. This was done in order to provide an option for those players who already have the Legendary Item Titles they want.
• There is a new Tier 9 set of Relics that can only be slotted in Legendary Items with required levels of 61 or greater.
• Sealed relics now display the minimum item level required for slotting the relic.
• When a relic is unslotted from a reforge or when deconstructing an item at max level we now show you the relics that were unslotted in the chat window.
• When reforging a Legendary Item, if you are supposed to upgrade a legacy but there are no legacies that can be upgraded, you will no longer get an additional legacy added to your Legendary Item.
• New Legendary Item heritage runes have been created for level 61+ Legendary Items. Heritage runes that were introduced with Mines of Moria will now have a maximum item level requirement of level 60.
• Legendary items that fit the following requirements will produce both a Moria heritage rune and a Mirkwood heritage rune upon deconstruction:
  • The Legendary Item must be at experience level 60 (or 61-70 if a level unlock scroll was used on the item).
  • The Legendary Item must be either a first age or second age item.
  • The Legendary Item is stat level 60 or below.

This change will allow players to produce a Mirkwood heritage rune from deconstructing their maxxed out first age or second age Legendary Item from Moria for use with their new Mirkwood Legendary Item. Please note that the Mirkwood heritage rune received from these deconstructions will be a rune of lesser experience value than the Moria heritage rune received.

• The Legendary Point costs of some legacies do not decrease when upgraded to Tier 6 due to round off errors. Instead these legacies will gain one step of bonus magnitude when upgraded to Tier 6.
• Smoothed out the costs for several legacies that increase the maximum range of skills.

Loot

• Fixed a bug which prevented a lack of some loot dropping from monsters in the Man & Elf tutorials.
• Removed a lot of the vendor trash from General Tallug, the last boss in Fil Gashan.
• Angmarim in Forochel may now drop Lossoth Spear Heads.
• Fixed a bug that resulted in no 2nd Age Item Advancement items from appearing in some containers in the *Urugarth boss Legmas now drops a Vile Silver Coin

Deeds/Traits/Reputation

• Skrimish Deeds cannot be completed at trivial player levels. The monster must con a color other than gray to get credit for the deed kill.
• Reputation items for the lower levels (Rivendell, Ered Luin, Mathom Society, Esteldn, Evendim, Lossoth, Bree, and Council of the North) will now drop with the same frequency as rep items in Moria. Players should be able to receive these items at a pace that is now consistent with newer regions in our game.
• All instance based deeds will now appear under the correct deed tab.
• Versioned several old instance deeds that were incorrectly setup. These are deed-completion deeds and should successfully advance if you have them underway.
• There are now seven new titles based on instance deed completions.
• It is now possibly to barter a number of Lothlórien Silver Branches for a single Lothlórien Gold Leaf.

Graphics/Animation/fx

• Elf banner bearers will now function correctly, bearing their banners like every other banner bearing bearer of banners.
• Attack animations with Spears should appear faster.
• If you are looking at and outfit in the character journal and equip something by double-clicking on it in inventory, your avatar in the journal will now update appropriatly with the item you just equipped.
• Small races will now ride a size-appropriate goat (the goat-pony!).
• Attack animations with Spears should appear faster.
• Great Delving – Gragan – Legendary Champion Trader’s animation has been changed.
• Several Guards in Annuminas had shields going through portions of their bodies. This should no longer happen.
• Lone-Lands – Constable Bram Ashleaf: This NPC should no longer occasionally clip through the wall of the Forsaken Inn.
• Fixed an issue with some scenery flickering when moving around the world.
• Sack masks should no longer let faces poke through.
• The Moria Captain and Champion shoulder pads have been returned to their previous position on the character’s shoulder for Human males.
• Festival mask will now have beards that poke through the mask.
• Hobbit males wearing any variant of the Moria upper body light robe should no longer appear to have invisible legs during horse riding.
• Gramsfoot hobgoblins will now correctly use their large firepots to attack players.
• Corrected display of weapons by Ghash-hai Orcs in Crafting Halls.
• Some Boss monsters will now display more attack animations rather than always reacting to being hit.
• Updated the water ripple texture for swimming, wading, and raindrops on water.
• An Elf male hairstyle did not meet the back of the head. It was sort of creepy. Fixed.
• Corrected a rare case of NPC archers shooting arrows at targets locking up into a T-pose.
• Elf male hairlines have been adjusted to show a little less forehead.
• Mount textures have been updated to be more accurate with the various horse designations.
• Moria breastplate armor will no longer clip through cloaks on Man male avatars.
• Warden shields should clip with shoulder pads a great deal less for characters in idle pose.
• Human female helmets should be back to their normal size.
• The appearance of big helms on Elf females has been adjusted.
• NPC: The Twenty-first hall – Thorth Splintershield and Kettil, Son of Athils, appearances may have been rather disconcerting, as they were missing their skin textures. Disconcerting? It was down right freaky!
• Fixed a problem with some underbrush objects (grass, bushes, leaves) not appearing at night when using DirectX 10 graphics.
• Thaguzg the boss of Halls of Crafting has acquired a bow so he will no longer just throw arrows at players.

World

• Be cautious moving through the borders of the Weather Hills and northeastern parts of Bree! Very powerful forces have moved into the ruins there.
• The Elves of Lothlórien have constructed superior farms south of Hythe.
• A rare spawn Maurading Deep toad now has the name Swartgut.
• The word is out! Bards and innkeepers have spread tales of the turtle known as “Nanu.” As a result ,the little turtle’s hiding place isn’t so effective in hiding him anymore. Expect to see more sightings of this cute little creature in the weeks ahead.
• Dusk-wolf Leaders have been brought into line with other monsters in the Bree-land level band.

Town Services

• Ered Luin – Celondim – NPC – Laenin the Glade Watcher – This barter NPC now has correct icon and map note.
• Shire – Little Delving – NPC Postman Newbuck now has the blue barter icon over his head.
• Eregion class trainers will now offer the level 45 class quests that can be found on other trainers throughout Middle-earth.
• Lórien class trainers will now offer the level 58 class quests that can be found on other trainers throughout Middle-earth.
• It is now possible to barter a number of Lothlórien Silver Branches for a single Lothlórien Gold Leaf.
• Rose Thronley has authorized her farmhands to start buying and selling materials at the work site.
• There are now vendors at Dead Man’s Perch and the pass between the Barrow-downs and the Old Forest.
• The provisioner in Gath Forthnir no longer wanders and is now located in the main chamber.
• Ailn the Healer, found in Tyrn Lhuig, now sells Distilled cures and salves. She no longer carries Greater cure and salves.

Travel/Maps/Radar/Mounts

• Adso’s Camp and Hengstacer Farm now have Stable Masters
• Lowered the travel route cost from Bree to Bree-land housing from 10 silver to 5.
• Forochel and Angmar travel routes that were gated by “Ally” reputation with associated factions are now open to players with “Acquaintance” rep. Players will now be able to access convenient travel routes while questing in these regions without having to grind for rep beforehand.
• There are new mounts for those who are instance deed completionists.
• Icons now appear on the mini-map showing the location of the skill trainers for new Dwarf players.

Questing

General Questing

• Intro Class Quests – In certain cases, a few skill based objectives in the NPE would not activate when the player landed a critical or devastating attack. This has been fixed. All skill executions are now counted correctly.
• Hobbits completing the Skip Tutorial quest will now, correctly, appear in front of Kate Henseed at the quest’s conclusion.
• Voice responses have been added to the following questions in Goblintown to maintain consistency througout the game.
  • Other Prisoners
  • Stirring Up Trouble
  • Plan in Motion
  • Matuga and the Jailor’s Key
  • The Great Escape
  • A Great Goblin
• Due to some changes made to the first tier of Jewellery-crafted items, the Jeweller-focused crafting quests for level 10 have been updated with the correct names. Barton Tyne and Verity Tyne of Bree now ask for “Brilliant Copper Rings” rather than “Amethyst Rings,” and Nefi of Thorin’s Hall asks for a “Brilliant Copper Necklace” rather than an “Agate Necklace.” Affected quests:
  • Crafting: Nefi’s New Setting
  • Crafting: Verity Tyne Has Lost Her Ring
  • Crafting: Barton Tyne Has Lost His Ring
• The following quests have had their rewards adjusted:
  • Bounty: Mangemaw The Wolf
  • Bounty: Morrafn, The Flame of Hate
  • Bounty: Rothlúg, The Drake of Storms
  • Bounty: Dhít The troll
  • Bounty: Farathlúg The Ice Worm

Eriador

• North Downs: The Billboard for the quests “Wargs of Annundir” will now display a complete billboard upon investigation of the burial mound.
• Bree-land: Carrying the bucket from Goldberry’s Spring back to Adso’s camp has been given a small speed boost.
• Lone-lands: The quest Weavers Beneath the Ruins now longer calls for you to organize a fellowship. Go stab the spiders on your own.
• “The Hideout” Instance no longer displays as a fellowship quest.
• Produce for the quest “Unwelcome Strangers” will now spawn at the rate of other like quest objects rather than the standard landscape mobs.
• At the end of the quest, Unravelling the Thread, players were told that they would return to Lenglinn’s camp. This has been corrected to refer to Strider.
• The quest “An Ancient Story of Evil” will now spawn creatures at the outset of using the forge in The Great Barrow.
• “Breaking Alliances” instance and regular quest are now both set for level 19 players.
• Orcs to the north of the forgetful dwarf in the quest “Stolen Notes” have been told that they should drop the dwarf’s notes.
• Trollshaws: Mountain Raiders – The quest guide was showing a spawn for a timed spawn for another quest. This area should no longer display when the quest is active.
• Angmar: The Cauldron of Death – Ironbound Giant will now take longer to reset so that some classes.
• The Shire: Longo’s Missing Wagon – This quest has been changed. Players currently with this quest currently underway will have the quest removed from the quest log. After this quest is removed, it can be taken again normally.
• Evendim: Forsaken Smial – A Formal Complaint – Both the quest and instance quest are marked as small fellowship quests, and are set to the correct level requirement.
• Forochel: Icereave Mines – Foreman’s Quarters – The Dourhand Captain occasionally would attack players and be unable to be attacked. This will no longer happen.
• Evendim: The Bleakleaf Crest – Hobgoblin’s Recipe – The quest item now appears in quest log.
• Bree-land: Ill Gotten – The quest guide has been updated to be more accurate.
• Foroche: The Hunt is Afoot – Quest Guide marks area on map now displaying correctly.
• Bree-land: Find Malin – When clicking on Malin for the quest “Find Malin” his “dead” body will no longer spin.
• Ered Luin: Seeds of the Past – If you have not completed Seeds of the past, and you are post intro raid, it will be removed from your quest journal.
• Angmar: Gorothlad – Quest – The Tincture – Nightshade plants respawn a bit slower and Quest items no longer spawns in the tree.
• The quest in that place that requires the thingy drop from the whatchamacallit has been adjusted for clarity. (Just making sure you’re paying attention!)
• Evendim: Quests – There and Back Again – Was not properly giving its rewards, it now does.
• Forochel: Beacon in the Snow – Quest Guide for this quest will now provide clear direction.
• Ered Luin: A Rare Vintage – This quest will now complete, and be removed from your Quest Journal as expected.
• The Shire: Rushock Bog: A Gift for the North – The Travel Now button upon finishing the quest teleports the player to the quest giver.
• The Shire: Rushock Bog-Quest: A Gift For the North – The Travel Now button upon finishing the quest teleports the player to the quest giver
• Bree-land: In the Great Barrow quest “Collecting History”, all players in the fellowship will now be able to collect the ancient chalices in the dungeon at once, without having to fight over spawns.
• Targets for the Dead Water quest have been made signature. Spawns surrounding the location of the red maid’s altar have been decreased.
• The quest “The Vigil” now correctly states that you can complete the quest solo and at any time of day.
• Thickets for the quest to clear the stream outside Noglond are now functioning like normal quest objects.
• Bree-land: Spider-bane is no longer able to be completed twice. You either get the quest from Atli or kill Ironaith and get the quest from her head.
• Thorin’s Gate: The quest “The Old Dourhand City” is no longer a fellowship quest.
• The quest “Into the Crags” in the newbie area of Ered Luin now directs players to the Mirkstone Tunnels at the bottom of the Axe head Path
• The quest completion text for the quest “Old Bones” in Ered Luin no longer alludes to the player having visited Gondamon with the wight skull.
• Fixed a typo in the background of the Enfeebling Foe quest.
• Goblin-town quests are now called out as small fellowship when taking in or immediately around the goblin-town space.
• Dunlang now reset properly in the Garth Agarwen Fortress.
• Radagast’s offer to teleport players into the solo version of Passage to Agamaur will now offer red text warning them that it is a solo instance.
• Radagast will now have voice overs for solo and group versions of the passage to agamaur travel dialogue.
• Brigands will now count toward the kill count in the Option Objective to kill Creoth in the Garth Agarwen Fortress.
• Grim and Wretched Wights will fight when standing toe to toe with the shades in passage to agamaur.
• Ruby ring is now the proper output of the Eglain rep quest for Jewellers.
• The Dourhand Overseer is now a signature creature.
• Lowered the surrounding monsters from war-singers in the camp in the eastern stretch of ruins near the blood swamp.
• Increased the number of gaunt-men spawns in The Dead camp in the lone-lands, also decreased the spawns surrounding the half-Orc boss Hontimurz.
• Rose Thornley’s assistants, quest givers since the Book 8 launch, were difficult to see. One of the bestowers was moved closer to Rose in an attempt to let people see that there is more to do at Thornley’s Work Site.
• Dusk-wolf Leaders have been brought into line with other monsters in the Bree-land level band.
• Bill Ferny will no longer double spawn on the quest “Adso’s Delivery”.
• Rose Thronley has authorized her farmhands to start buying and selling materials at the work site.
• There are now vendors at Dead Man’s perch and the pass between the barrows and the Old Forest.
• Bestowing quest giver for “Mr. Haybank Meet…” now gives quest commentary.
• Inconsistent text that made it sound like you previously completed a quest for Eriac the Strong in Agamaur has been removed from the quest “Cutting off the Hand”.
• There are now quest comments on the quest “Predators Become Prey” and “Materials For Our Weapons”. Nos decided to stop being the strong, silent type.
• Directions now state that the NPC for the quest “A Deadly Bloom” appears in Frerin’s Court.

Moria

• Dimrill – Dale-Dru-garmadh – Catapults and Siege Machines – In certain cases, several types of large quest objects would spawn on top of players, and push them through the world. This should no longer happen.
• Moria – Silvertine Lodes – Know Thine Enemy – The quest item for the quest was being dropped by the wrong mobs. Now only Orcs and Goblins in the Silvertine Lodes will drop the quest items, and the quest helper has been updated to match.
• Moria – Zelem-melek – Budkhul-tharakh – Quest: A Thousand Campfires – All bonfires should now be able to be lit.
• Moria – Hold the Line – Spawned Enemies will now despawn if quest is failed.
• Consignment Quests – Work Orders from consignment quests no longer stay in your inventory, after advancing past the first portion of the quest.
• Mekeb-Faham – Book End – The failure timer now matches other similar quests. The failure timer for this quest was for a stage of the quest, rather than for the entire quest. The quest will now fail in 1 hour.
• Moria – Durin’s Way – Chamber of the Crossroads – Emissaries of the White Hand – Quest now listed in the correct area. It is now listed in Moria Upper Levels.
• Moria – Zelem-melek – Allies of Mordor – From time to time, certain dwarf traps would become unresponsive when one was used. This no longer happens.
• Moria – Zelem-melek – An Attempted Theft – The Quest directions have been updated to reflect the location of the object. Additionally quest tracker will display the correct location for the object.
• In the Moria quest “Stronghold of the Goblins”, the escort NPC named Krum has been improved to be a signature instead of a normal. He will be more durable during this escort now.
• The introductory quests to the Dimrill Dale, Talan Haldir, and Echad Andestel now offer increased reputation to accelerate access to Lothlórien (and through Lórien, to Mirkwood.) If you have completed these quests, you will receive retroactive rep compensation with the Galadhrim faction.
• A complete overhaul of the structure under-the-hood of ‘We Cannot Get Out’ in order to deal with some of the issues causing it to become uncompleteable.

Lórien

• Galadriel and Celeborn should now give you Hope during ‘Sons of Leaf and Stone’ and ‘The Worries of Lord Celeborn’
• We have added 19 new quests to Fanuidhol. More opportunities for Galadhrim rep, silver branches, and gold leaves!
• The Sentinel’s Challenges have been versioned, so you will need to re-acquire them if one of them was underway in your quest journal. They will now fail if you fail The Battle of Lórien, in order to keep the timers from counting down even once the Battle is done.

Epic Story

Volume I

• Book 2 will now correctly be reported as an epic quest and display all the correct rings as well.
• Book 2 Chapter 6 Candaith now has a travel route available upon reaching this chapter.
• Book 12 Chapter 9 Weapons of the Enemy: Corpse of Narucham at the end of the instance should show the quest ring properly indicating that you can use him to get out of the instance
• Book 13: NPCs now have quest comments for all quests in the Book.
• Book 13 Chapter 9: Changed the destination of the door you can use to leave the I.13.9 instance.

Volume II

• Prologue – The Unusual walking-stick will no longer display three billboards when taken.
• Book 1 Chapter 1: Torthann could become unresponsive during certain circumstances. This will no longer happen.
• Book 1 Chapter 13: Fixed Rathwald’s Voice Over.
• Book 1 Chapter 13 Instance: The Watcher in the Water – All NPC’s should now have voiceovers.
• Book 3 Chapter 1: Added quest comments to the Dwarves.
• Book 5 Chapter 1: Added some text for the Pulpum to say when they’re defeated.
• Book 6 Chapter 5: Removed the Full Fellowship tag as it should be soloable.
• Book 7 Chapter 8: Removed some Orcs from the difficult pull at the end.
• Book 8 Chapter 6: There was an invisible fire debuff. It’s even more invisible now, because it’s gone.
• Book 8 Chapter 1: The shackles are now 100% less invisible than they were.
• Book 8 Chapter 3: Fixed several typos.

Misc

• Addressed a crash on exit issue.
• The number of files required for a new installation has been reduced.

So it’s Tuesday morning, the servers have come back up, and you’re wondering what you can do now that Siege of Mirkwood is live. Well, here are some thoughts:

1) Go directly into Mirkwood. The nice thing about this expansion is that the Epic Quests in the start of the region are going to be instanced. This means that the typical land grab that happens in the first few hours of an expansion will be mitigated somewhat. So feel free, if you’ve got a level 60 character, to rush right over to Mirkwood.

2) Take a level 25-30ish character through Lone Lands. I know that a lot of people have stopped leveling their character at around that level so that they can experience the new Lone Lands, so finding groups should not be an issue. You may find that there are more people in the zone that usual, as it is getting a very big revamp, and people are itching to take a look at the area.

3) Skirmishes! Find your nearest skirmish camp, finish the introductory quest, and get right into Skirmishes. I can almost guarantee that you will not have a problem finding groups for skirmishes, or, if you want, you can do a few skirmishes solo to get a feel for them. I don’t think that that’s really necessary though. Skirmishes are very user-friendly, so having your first skirmish be a group one will not cause you any issue.

4) Ignore the expansion entirely and keep doing what you where doing before.

5) Ignore the game completely, in case there are any launch day issues. Turbine has a fantastic history with its launch days, Mines of Moria included, so I don’t think that you’ll find that it is a problem. You may find that you’re happier staying away for a couple of days if you want to make sure that you come back to a perfect experience.

Add some comment below and let us know what you’re going to do.

What am I going to do? Skirmishes!

See you in game!

So, you’ve got one day left before Siege of Mirkwood comes out and you’re wondering: What am I to do on this last day of pre-SoM content? Well, here are a few ideas:

1) Try to get a group together for Garth Agarwan. With the changes comming to the Lone Lands, GA will no longer be the same instance that it has been since launch. It would be a great experience for you to run it now, with the old, 6 man content, and then run it again in a couple of days, as a couple of 3 man instances and a 6 man.

2) Run some of the high end Moria instances. When SoM goes live, there will probably be quite the land rush, and you may find it hard to get groups together for a while as people explore the new areas available to them.

3) Park all of you level 60 character in Lorien and wait for the servers to reboot.

4) Park all of your level 30+ character near where the Skirmish Camps are going to be (pretty much any major city!) and wait for the servers to reboot.

Any other thoughts on what to do this last day before Siege of Mirkwood?

See you in game!

I recently discovered the LOTRO Lorebook.  Yeah, it’s not exactly a new thing in the game, but it’s a new-to-me thing!  The Lorebook, which is a wiki (database), with some player-created content and some Official Turbine Stuff, contains all kinds of useful LOTRO information.  It can be accessed two ways:  in-game by selecting the icon on your mini-map, or online at http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Lorebook_home .  I find that it is extremely slow when accessed in-game, and since I always run LOTRO in window mode, I just open the Lorebook website in another window.

When the Lorebook page opens, scroll down to see the Table of Contents.  One of the first things I found in the Lorebook was the list of 133 available emotes (in the Character Attributes section).  I had no idea there were so many!  Emotes like ’scratch’, ‘juggle’, ‘giggle’, and ‘tantrum’ can add a bit of fun to otherwise boring moments when your fellowship is waiting around for something or someone.  Yeah, there’s even an emote for ‘bored’, but one of my favourites is ‘pick’.  Give it a try! 

One of the sections I have found extremely useful is the Deeds section.  Until recently, I never really appreciated the value of completing deeds, but I am now trying to complete as many as I can.  The exploration deeds are especially interesting, because I get to see new places in the game, places that probably would have been missed if I’d only been going through quests.  One of the big attractions of LOTRO for me is its beauty, so I enjoy seeking out new scenery.  What I usually do now, when I go to a new region, is open the Deeds section of the Lorebook, click on the region I’m in, and see which deeds are available.  What do I have to kill?  What places should I explore?  Is there anything interesting I need to find (such as Bilbo’s Buttons in the Misty Mountains)?  If I’m doing some soloing, knowing which deeds to pay attention to can give my usually rambling progress some sense of direction!

I also found this great page about Traits through the Lorebook:  http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Lord_of_the_Rings_Online_Traits_Compendium .   It is exactly what I have been looking for in terms of a comprehensive collection of Trait information.  I was frustrated before, because if I wanted to work on a particular Trait, such as Charity or Justice, I had no way of knowing where to go or what to do to gain more points for that Trait.  This webpage is just perfect and tells me everything I really, REALLY wanted to know (well, about Traits, at least!).

There is a lot to read about in the Lorebook, whether it is finding out information about your favourite (or most hated) mobs, learning where to find that elusive item for a quest, understanding more about Reputation points, gleaning tips for crafting, or finding out the history of your favourite places.  The Lorebook has lots to offer, so have a look through it.

Happy gaming!

File this one under “Dark Humor”, but Mark Jacob’s (former Warhammer Online lead designer) now-dead blog was called “Online Games Are a Niche Market”, a title that at the time was used as a joke because Mark believed MMOs had ‘made it’ and were mainstream because of WoW. What Mark has now learned, and at some point people like Tobold will realize, is that the MMO genre IS a niche genre, and taking one pop sensation and trying to pretend that’s the actual market size is well… a good way to merge servers after a few months and a quick way to get fired.

Which is not to say that as a niche the genre can’t be hugely profitable, just ask CCP or Turbine. What’s not profitable is looking at one outlier and thinking your great idea is enough to draw that population in, a population that NO MATTER WHAT is not interested. They do a good job of pretending to be interested, sure, but the sooner you realize they are not, the better (for your game and your job security).

Sadly games like WAR, Aion, and soon enough SW:TOR don’t seem to understand this, and the aftermath can/will be brutal. The one big question I have is; does Blizzard understand this? Is their next MMO aiming to replicate the EVE model of slow but steady growth over 5+ years through superior MMO design, or will they go even further than WoW has and remove even more of what makes an MMO an MMO to appeal to the far larger but fickle non-MMO gamer segment? Are they prepping Blizzard’s take on sandbox MMO design, or a highly polished Mafia Wars?

Continuing my posts on the updates coming with Siege of Mirkwood, I am writing today about some changes to the Instance system and the changes to Garth Agarwen that come about due to those updates. This is the post I promised you all in my previous post on the updates: Siege of Mirkwood – Lone Lands Revisited.

Changes to Instances

When Turbine rolled out the Lord of the Rings Online expansion Mines of Moria, they introduced a system for Instances known as Hard Mode. Hard Mode allowed players to return to instances and complete them at a higher difficulty for greater rewards, the system was not without its flaws however. Besides having a name that just didn’t quite fit (Turbines words, not mine!) there were also problems in that objectives were not spelled out quite as clearly as was intended; This not only lead to the change I am going to talk about, but to players maligning the system qutie often (apparently).

In order to revamp this instance system, Turbine has come up with the Challenges – here are their words from the developer diary on what these are:

Challenges are daily quests that are bestowed to all players who have not already completed them for that day, and meet all other quest criteria – prerequisites or level restrictions. These quests will appear in the quest tracker and display the success and failure cases for the players. Upon opening the quest journal, players can read the background on the quest and see further instructions on the challenge before them[Rewards for Challenges may vary slightly from instance to instance but, typically, they will be the following: coin, faction, and a barter token of some type. In the case of Garth Agarwen, the barter token is used to purchase rewards from the Eglain at the entrance to the Garth Agarwen area.

It looks like they are taking some of what is being put into the the Skirmish System and using it to beef up instance runs. For those people who enjoy this sort of play, this update should provide them with a lot more fun than the current iteration.

Turbine is also beefing up instances by adding Optional Objectives technology to the game. Optional Objectives will be able to appear within any given instance space, and target mobs within that instance – Optional Objectives may also be different for each player and may be completed daily like the Challenges above. This particular update is being instituted right away in the re-vamped Garth Agarwen instance in the Lone Lands. Here are Turbine’s words on the Optional Objectives:

In addition to the new Challenge system, we have added another piece of tech to allow for Optional Objectives to appear for players inside any given instance space. Like Challenges, these appear in the standard instances and target monsters or other targets within the instance. Also like Challenges, these quests can be completed daily and reward players with coin and/or faction for their completion. There can be multiple optional objectives per instance. The first of these quests, appearing in the Garth Agarwen Cluster, provide up to four different objectives within the instance. Optional Objectives may be different for each player..

Optional Objectives are meant to follow the main path of the instance with minimal extra effort so that groups can work together to achieve each other’s goals. Further, since the optional objectives can each be completed once daily, players will have reasons for entering the same instance multiple times per day.

Garth Agarwen Changes

Garth Agarwen was the first instance introduced into the game and, as such, didn’t have the sleekness of instances that came along further down the line. When the developers were looking it over during the Lone Lands revamp, they realized that the entire instance had to be given a complete make-over. Heres what they said about the upcoming changes to GA:

Garth Agarwen was the first instance created for LOTRO and was in need of a revision. As we set out to make the changes necessary to bring this instance into line with the rest of the game, it became apparent that only a significant overhaul would do. Thus, the Garth Agarwen cluster was born.

The former entrance of Garth Agarwen now houses a small number of NPCs who will provide players with a little more guidance for quests that go into the public area outside of the Garth Agarwen instances. NPCs in the area will also show  players the items they can earn for completing the Challenges within the spaces. These rewards include new consumable tokens to remove defeat Dread — only defeat Dread — of the next tier once in a twelve hour (real-time) period, and weapons and shields for player classes of Incomparable quality. These items can be used at level 32 and should be useful to players well into their mid- to late-30’s; but not so good that they overshadow or replace the better crafted items in these levels. To obtain these items, players must acquire a number of Challenge tokens and then turn them in for the various pieces. All pieces are unique and cost the same amount of tokens, save the Dread-removing tokens.

This sounds great to me – GA could be a serious pain in the butt to get into and through. The mobs tended to be annoyingly tough, and annoyingly close together at times, not to mention how the whole quest system for the area worked (you always tended to pick up the quests for there when they were very very RED to you).

With the launch date for Siege of Mirkwood just around the corner, I find myself looking forward to the update more and more. I am still a little hesitant about the Combat changes I wrote about a little while ago, but overall I am optimistic.

The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood launches on December 1st, 2009. Web Servers (including the Forums, my.lotro.com, and the Lorebook) will be undergoing preparatory maintenance on Monday, November 30th from 9AM to 2PM Eastern Time.

(NOTE: Times are provided for reference purposes only, actual downtime may be less than the times provided – or longer. During this the services mentioned may be unavailable for periods of time).

~Branadoc

In the upcoming Lord of the Rings Online expansion – Siege of Mirkwood – Turbine is revisiting the Lone Lands and giving the area some much needed love. Developer Orion talked about the upcoming changes to this zone in his most recent Developer Diary, and I am going to give you all my views today.

The Lone Lands have always been a sort of ‘Red Headed Step Child’ in the game, there exist some serious disconnects between Epic Quest lines here, and the area itself had some amazingly crazy difficulty jumps (Being sent amongst a bunch of elites in a Group Quest area to complete a Single Player quest for example). Some great questing moments have happened here though, I am willing to bet that any LotRO player will be able to tell you memories of their first time Retaking Weathertop, or their first venture over the Last Bridge that crosses between the last of the ‘Settled Lands’ and the ‘Wilds’ of the Trollshaws (If you remember The Hobbit you will certainly remember the bridge).

The Last Bridge

The Siege of Mirkwood update will be changing the difficulty of getting into the Epic Quest parts in the Lone Lands and will introduce a new faction to facilitate this:

With the release of Siege of Mirkwood, all players following the Epic storyline will find that Gandalf now sends them to Saeradan to enlist the aid of the Rangers, to assist with finding another of Gandalf’s order. After making their way to Saeradan, players will find that he will now offer them a free ride to Candaith’s camp in the shadow of Weathertop. Be careful and watch out for any folk in need of assistance on the ride to Candaith! Once at his camp, players follow Candaith’s tale through the battle at the peak of Weathertop and learn of a new faction within the Lone-lands, the Eglain. (This is discussed further in the diary.)

Weathertop will also be receiving a make-over – players will now have the option of playing it as a Solo character, or playing it as a Group [the original method]:

To ensure that we continue forward with the same practices that we attempted to utilize in the Bree-land revamp, there will now be two versions of Weathertop. There is the group version, which remains unchanged, and a new solo version that will enable players to assail the great hill alone against the forces of the White Hand.

This is a pretty good idea in my eyes – it means that more people will be able to experience the great story line in that quest, though part of me is sad that so many quests are going in this direction. While forced grouping isn’t really my thing, some of my best memories come from working through a challenging area with a good Fellowship at my back.

As I mentioned above, and quoted, there is a new faction that will come into play in the Lone Lands – the Eglain. People who have already done quests there know who these people are, they are the broody folks in Ost Guruth who don’t have much trust for outsiders. In Mirkwood, these folks will be added to the Reputation system – anyone who has completed quests in the past for them will retro-actively receive reputation points for those quests, and there will be new quests added for more reputation. At different levels of reputation you will be able to get some nifty gear, including a set of jewlery. Gaining reputation up to Friendly should be as easy as just doing the quests in the area, and more can be obtained by purchasable profession quests.

Garth Agarwen (GA to most) will also be receiving a face lift – which is great because finding folks willing to take the time to run that area could eat up entire play sessions alone. GA has always been a thorn in the Lone Lands experience, the difficulty of dealing with all Elite mobs is just a bit much for many people – especially with how long that particular quest chain is. More on the changes to GA in a following post (as the changes tie in to another update coming with the expansion).

Many more changes to the region will be included in the expansion, most of them I see as being awesome. One of those little nice changes is the reduction of the Goblin Elite mobs to solo-able signature goblins in the central Lone Lands area, the annoying spiders in that area have received the same face lift thankfully (that could be one tough couple of levels dealing with those quests).

Overall the upcoming changes to the Lone Lands are something I am looking forward to experiencing – LL could be a frustrating place to do quests if you were not high enough to move on to the next area yet. North Downs will be receiving a similar update in a future expansion, so the lower levels will become much more easily manageable as time goes on. Orion puts it very well at the end of the developer diary:

The Lone-lands has undergone a massive overhaul and should prove to be a good option for players looking to level from 22-32. In our next update, we plan to continue the revamp effort focusing on the second of the level 22-32 areas in the North Downs. This revamp will target areas from Trestlebridge to the Fields of Fornost, then east toward Kingsfell stopping short of Esteldín, Orthrikar and Meluinen.

Read the entire Developer Diary discussed in this post here.

Stay tuned for a post on the GA changes, and what changes to the game as a whole are related to those updates!

~Branadoc

Woops. Looks like I missed a couple of episode’s worth of show notes! My apologies.

This week, on our extra special Friday the 13th edition of the show, we discussed:

Well, it’s official: Lord of the Rings Online hasn’t totally dominated my attention. Though I’ve played the release state game exclusively lately, today I only made time for City of Heroes. I found those three hours in Cryptic’s City of Heroes more thrilling than during the last three days I spent playing Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online.

Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar has, thus far, failed to hook to me. It is not a bad game, but I’ve already played the fantasy MMORPG genre to death. Turbine has done a fairly good job of rounding up some of the best features of popular MMORPGs, as well as introducing a few new features of their own, but the overall experience feels derivative.

About the only way this game could interest me is if it were exceptionally deep or visceral, and so far it has not been. Activatable power variety per class, being an important measure for MMORPG quality for me, is about on par with your average American-made MMORPG and no greater. The animations are good, and the classes distribute the skill sets a little differently from your standard Warrior/Mage/Thief/Cleric setup, but it’s not quite a saving grace.

I haven’t given up yet, and currently plan to continue to experiment with the various classes in LOTRO and see if I can find one that plays in an entertaining fashion for me. So far I’ve tried a Lore Master, Rogue, and Captain. They start off promising enough but the treadmill asserts itself quickly. Soon, by around level 5-10ish, I’m too bored to continue playing them. Well, there’s still the Champion, Hunter, Guardian, and Minstrel. Hopefully, at least one of those will prove entertaining to me, or else maybe I’ll find the fun in one of those I’ve already played.

These three entries about Lord of the Rings Online are actually some old entries I re-published because I was noticing that LOTRO is currently performing quite well on MMORPG.com’s charts and was putting some consideration towards playing myself.  What’s being said here actually more pertains to my perception of LOTRO back when it was released.

By popular demand! (Well, basically, a friend asked me to write up a pro and cons list of each and I figured this would be a good way to communicate my findings.)

World of Warcraft

Pros:

1. Very, very popular.

This is beneficial because there’s no real shortage of players to play with (especially later on when you run into everybody’s high level characters). Due to fear of losing customers, sweeping changes are unlikely, and this will lead to a very stable unchanging game.

2. Stable with very low system requirements.

You can run WoW comfortably on computers made 3 years ago. My computer, a middle-of-the-road configuration, can run this game butter smooth with every single graphical option enabled.

3. Well-balanced and refined gameplay.

Blizzard knows how to craft games – frankly, their reputation won’t tolerate less.

Cons:

1. Very, very popular.

Problematic due to busy servers, attraction to gold farmers/sellers bothering you when you’re trying to play, and finally because Blizzard fears change lest they hemorrhage millions of customers. Static games may interest some, but others prefer their MMORPGs to make big sweeping changes to stay interesting.

2. Blizzard.net mentality.

Where Chuck Norris is never allowed to rest. Blizzard.net players have a reputation for being rather immature little dweebs… this reputation, while not deserved for each individual player, is not entirely undeserved on the whole. The channel spam on WoW is, at times, a form of textual lobotomy that has you searching desperately for ways to turn it off.

3. Graphically unimpressive game.

World of Warcraft doesn’t use great polygon counts nor textures to impress. They use very simple graphics intended to easily support hundreds of players. That’s how they keep those low system requirements low. Individual character appearance variation is very low.

4. Old.

World of Warcraft was released in 2004. Three years is about all you need for all the major guilds of players to have thoroughly gutted and claimed the bounties of this game world. If you’re looking to get in on the ground floor, expect to stay there unless you know people in high places.

5. EverGrind Enabled.

World of Warcraft started off as a very casual friendly game. You could get maximum level in about 200-300 hours. Then they opened up level 60. And level 70. And level 80. Frankly, this game now suits those who have forever to play. If you want a casual game, one suited to playing a half hour every once in awhile, you’re better off with City of Heroes/Villains. LOTRO, while it will eventually be equally grindy, currently requires much less time to max out than WoW.

Lord of the Rings Online

Pros:

1. Better Atmosphere

Lord of the Rings Online not only has a flashier graphics engine than WoW, but the overall graphical style is more believable. Lord of the Rings feels like a collaborative effort of Turbine and JRR Tolkien. WoW feels like a collaborative effort of Blizzard and Fischer Price. The players are pretty mature too. Due to its similarity to WoW, some Blizzard.net riffraff have invaded LOTRO, but they’re not nearly as common in LOTRO as the source.

2. Unique gameplay additions

You can play notes on instruments, smoke pipeweed, and the classes are not balanced in the typical manner.

Cons:

1. You’ve got to buy it

You probably have a copy of World of Warcraft all installed and ready to go. LOTRO, on the other hand, $50.

2. Derivative, not as well balanced gameplay.

Lord of the Rings Online starts with a World of Warcraft foundation – and why not? WoW is, after all, a popular game. From there, unusual balancing has occurred. None of the classes in LOTRO play like you would expect.

3. Higher system requirements

Minimum: Pentium® 4 1.8 GHz or equivalent, 64 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 3 or ATI® Radeon® 8500, 512 MB System RAM, 7 GB of hard drive space.

Recommended: Pentium® 4 2.8 GHz or equivalent, 128 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® FX 6800 or ATI® Radeon® X850, 1 GB System RAM, 10 GB hard drive space.

You might even need to upgrade.

Overall, I would have to say that Lord of the Rings Online is most likely to appeal to JRR Tolkien fans (or fans of the recent movies) that have never played World of Warcraft. A very tight niche.

One of the lead perks of alt-i-tus for me is the class balance discussions. I just love to see the interplay of the various professions the developers have designed into the game. Today, I turn my roving eye to the classes of Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar.

The funny thing about this game is the developers tried to make the class roles really simple by boiling them down into a few words, for example, “Nuker.” Nevermind how immersion-breaking that is: For whatever reason, these official roles are often inaccurate. Fortunately, a little research is all it takes to assemble an understanding closer to the truth.

Class: Burglar
Official Role: Debuffer
Actual Role: DPS, Crowd Control, Off-Tank, Stealth, Debuffer, Conjunction Starter
Summary: A powerful combatant who does so on his own terms.