2015 in LOTRO and what's coming!

.

The new Producer's letter has just been released with some very exciting news for PVMP players.

Major 2015 Initiatives:

Legendary Items: With the Osgiliath update, you will be able to Imbue Level 100 Legendary Items. An Imbued item continues to gain experience and will no longer need to be deconstructed to advance. These items are already in internal testing! There are many details still to work out, but you should expect a developer diary on the topic early this year.

Osgiliath is one area I've been excited to see from day one, and I always felt it would make an awesome PVP zone...

New Fellowship Challenges: As we push into the heart of the War of the Ring, this is the perfect time for us to renew our focus on group content and instances. Expect new instances in Osgiliath, along with additional Roving Threats and group content on the landscape.

Much of the playerbase will welcome new instances. I'm not much of a raider myself but I'd love to get involved for this area.

Quality of Life: We have been working to identify your most persistent bugs. You can expect a renewed focus on resolving issues that may be small but troublesome, to improve overall gameplay experience.

Finally!

Episodic Content: We are currently in development on a new type of quest content that will roll out like an episodic TV show, a little at a time, as you follow a new friend across Middle-earth seeing familiar places in a new light.

This sounds very interesting. Perhaps Turbine are taking notes from Guild War's Living Story and Star Trek Online's episodic model.

Server Populations: Based on your feedback, we’re taking measures to get everyone onto the more populous servers, so that finding parties is easier and festivals and live events are more fun. We are working on both improved server transfer tools and upgrades to our environments to improve playability. Also we will be moving our European servers back to the EU! More details on this coming soon!

Key for me is that they drop the price, or do away with charging altogether.  Making it easier is all very well, but if I wanted to transfer all nine toons from Windfola to Landroval, we're talking $200+, plus the charge for extra slots to accommodate the characters.

 

PvMP: The team is also seriously investigating a new PvMP map in Osgiliath. This landscape would tell the story of the Battle of Osgiliath, and the layout of the city (split by the Anduin) is perfect for smaller and more tightly focused conflicts than the Ettenmoors. This would make the perfect platform for gradual improvements to the PvMP experience, overall. We’ll provide additional updates on this initiative as we get deeper into 2015.

I Called this back in 2009. Awesome idea and I really hope it pans out. Turbine have made promises about PVMP before and not fulfilled those promises.

Celondim Comedy on the Lotro Landroval server

Celondim Comedy is on 22nd November at 4 PM /servertime Landroval!

The event will feature stand-up and improv comedy and games, including some with audience participation. There will also be a fashion contest with fun, themed prizes.

The Remediators start playing at 3:30, so arrive early to hear their wonderful music! This event will take place just south of Celondim at 29.2S, 92.7W.

$400+ raised thanks to all you lovely people that donated (and continue to donate)!

Here's the final beardy photo and the aftermath.😚

Important Extra Life Update and GIVEAWAYS!!!!!

With just days to go to Extra Life day on Saturday, the last push to get a few extra dollars for the charity is on.

As regular readers may know (and if you're my Facebook friend or Twitter follower, you've already been spammed to death) rather than the usual 24 hour gaming marathon, I've opted to shave my beard for the charity. Originally the plan was to shave my goatee but I decided to go all out and grow a full beard then lose the lot.

Ginger beards FTW

As it turns out, not only has this turned me into a pariah in the local community and my own household, not to mention the constant itching, the growing of the beard has turned out to be a greater hardship than shaving off my goatee, so honestly I can't wait until Saturday!

So, to make it all worth while, I need your help. A small donation will help and the charity supports the Miracle Children's Hospital Network, raising money to help sick kids. It doesn't need to be a regular donation. Even a one off $5 will be greatly appreciated and make my suffering this last couple of months worth while.

As an added incentive for my gamer friends, there are a couple of giveaways I've offered through Twitter. If you comment on this blog to say you've donated, I'll add you to the draws for...

1. Steam Code for the brilliant Orcs Must Die 2

2. Beta code for Trove, an interesting looking new MMO from Trion.

and...Exclusive to this post

3. A $10 voucher code from Looney Labs, makers of chaotic card game, Fluxx

You have until 9am Saturday 25th October to donate and comment and increase your chances by retweeting my twitter posts to your own followers, oh and most importantly,

DONATE! It's for the kids!

Blaugust Day 31 - Gaming recommences and the end of Blaugust.

Today the PC has continued to frustrate And Lotro simply refuses to run smoothly even on low graphics settings. What I did try was to run Guild Wars 2 and amazingly it ran as smooth as anything. I suspect it might be unrelated to my overheating issues, and perhaps a recent patch is clashing with something. Eve seems to running reasonably ok but I was delighted to be able to play a fantasy game so Guild Wars saved the day.

I managed to rack up about four levels, more than I've done in the whole of last month and even obtained a new companion, I little piggy! 

And so this is my last post for Blaugust, and although I came a little late to the party, I've enjoyed having a reason to post every day. I'll certainly be making a concerted effort to post often through September...(Bleptember, anyone?) and hope you'll continue to read.

Blaugust Day 30 LOTRO lag and Lips

It's on somewhat of an anticlimax that Blaugust draws to an end as I'm barely gaming thanks to my PC that is now slowed to a crawl. I did manage to log into lotro and complete my Hytbold dailies. I've now got 5 out of the 6 armour pieces and I've unlocked the smithy to run dailies for compendiums (used to make relics for Legendary Items) so once I have my final piece, I'm done with Rohan, or at least the first section. I don't need to see Hytbold completed - I did it on Windfola already so I'll be wending my way to Wildemore and not a moment too soon..at level 88, everything is just a little bit too easy, even with the soup like lag.

On a brighter note, today we celebrated my nephew leaving for University and my upcoming birthday, with Big ole BBQ. We had some unseasonably good weather and afterwords the alcohol had flowed suffieciently that I was asked to fire up the Xbox for family favourite 'Lips'. This is the Xbox version of Playstations Singstar, a karaoke game with two wifi connected mics. My sisters in law love the game and after numerous attempts at Aha's 'take on Me' Mariah Carey's 'Touch my Body' and Destiny's Child 'Survivor', everyone went home happy.

Blaugust Day 29 - Spyware stops play

Been a quiet few days, gaming wise. On top of the fan issues my PC has been reduced to a crawl by a bunch of spyware I managed to infect myself with. Things seem to be almost back to normal though I definately need to get the fan sorted out.

Got in a little LOTRO. Pinestro the warden has hit 88 and crafted his Second Age level 85 spear. I was almost not going to bother, as at the rate he's levelling he'll be looking for a 95 and then a 100 but according to Turbine, the legendary item grind is coming to an end as you'll be able to 'lock in' the item you have from100 onwards. The endless grind every ten levels is ridiculous currently so that will be a welcome change.

Also played a little Eve but nothing more than mining and training. I've established a trade between myself and my corporation for the sale of the Ice I'm mining, so hopefully the profits will start coming in soon ( as I'm down to a paltry 10 million Isk after buying and fitting a second Mackinaw.