Kitty Just Says No To LotRO

Update 9 for LotRO was released a few days ago, bringing the winter festival into the game, crafting XP, worldwide open-tapping and auto-looting, and the first instances post-Rohan.

The Rohan instances have nothing to do with Rohan, much to the dismay of a lot of players. Turbine is creating Hobbit-centric dungeons instead, but no advertising or leveraging of the Hobbit release have been reported at the time of this writing.

Meanwhile, both World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 are showing ads at the Hobbit movies instead of LotRO.

Turbine also added more store-pushing in the festival, as well as several new obtrusive store buttons on the interface, including silver coins on the quest tracker to buy an insta-port to turn the quest in, and a large button on the stable NPC (all fast travel NPCs).

This includes a lovely counter (see pic) showing how many store short-cuts you currently own.

I won’t bother bombasting over why dislike these new “features”. I’ve wasted enough time posting in the forums. What I will do is no longer post about LotRO on my blog.

Moreover, I am converting my LotRO guides into guides to Rift instead. My Newbie Guide To LotRO, with 3,668 views in a little over a year, is no longer a 100% happy, positive, pro-LotRO document. I just state the facts. I cannot in good conscience promote this company while in a state of disgust.

Yolari is checking out Rift again, although she echoes what I said in my previous post about too much action and not enough story and immersion. I logged into SWTOR last night and lasted about zero minutes in the game. I didn’t even create a character because most of the races were greyed out. I could not re-create my beta character.

A SWTOR expansion “Rise of the Hutt Cartel” was announced yesterday. If they bring the LGBT content, I will be 100% to buy and play SWTOR this spring.

Here is a fabulous hint to all brain-dead MMO developers out there: players who like their character will keep playing. Players who don’t, won’t. I didn’t get into DDO because Turbine didn’t let me create a viable character without paying at level one. I seem to be in a state of F2P shock. I need a stomach pump and some oxycodone.

Rift honestly treats its player base amazingly. They gave me a special account title over there honoring the fact that my Rift guides have been visited about 50,000 times. I don’t even have a forum title at LotRO.

I was actually thinking about Neverwinter all day today at work, and creating ideas for a campaign I’d like to make. A lot depends on the scripting events you can do, so I’m hoping Cryptic will follow through with the beta invites for Champions lifers.

The Cryptic guys seem supremely confident with this, too, in video interviews. They should be confident given how much longer they’ve worked on this project than either of their previous releases. When I look at the Elder Scrolls rep people in video, I see some tension and uncertainty. Of course, their stakes are probably higher and the expectations are a lot bigger.

Rohan Kudos

I’m really enjoying Rohan so far. I proudly wore my hand-painted Rohan stud earrings to work on Monday. I finished them Sunday afternoon. I did some Gondorian white tree earrings a few weeks ago.

Rohan is a beautiful wide-open landscape that you might expect, but with the usual evil, marauding enemy warbands that are tracked for you on the mini-map. Those would be targets for ye olde mounted combat.

The NPC’s are especially well-characterized through the writing, a little more than the dwarves were for Moria, maybe. The Chance Thomas music is also a stately affair that reminds me that I’m playing a successful, top-tier MMO. Yes, familiarity can sometimes breed a lack of proper respect.

I was mainly inspired to write this post to give kudos for a little thing: the new female gender kinship titles. This was a player request in the forums during previous months, and Turbine delivered. Per the official patch notes, “Male-gendered kinship titles now have female-gendered counterparts. If you are a female Lord, your title will now be Lady, if you were a female Caun, your title will now be an Aranel, etc.”

This is a warm fuzzy. Sometimes it’s the little things. I’m curious what some of the other titles will turn into. Will female hobbit leaders still just be “chiefs”? Will the Man kinship “Master” turn into “Mistress”? Yes, please!

So. I’ve been so busy with updating and fixing my Elven Adventuress interface elements that I’ve yet to get further than the warhorse proving grounds, which is where I got during beta before my accident and broken shoulder put me out of gaming.

If I had to pick one thing I really like so far about Rohan, it’s the writing. At my audience with the Thane of Langhold, I noticed the writers taking a page from Bioware’s ego-stroking playbook. Frankly, a little respect pleases this adventuress. He didn’t even make me fetch sticks or truck supplies around!

Thane of Langhold: “Ah…the famous wandering Champion! Your reputation precedes you, Beldamire. I bid you welcome to Langhold. I am sure you will find plenty to keep you busy here, for we are beset by ruffians and wild creatures.”

Ah yes, the sound of a classic call to adventure, and I don’t even need a full voice-over to hear it loud and clear, which is the way J.R.R. Tolkien also did things. Based on everything I’ve seen and heard, Turbine deserves a lot of praise and dollars for this fine effort, and I hope they get them.

Girls With Dragon Tattoos

I’ve been snarking about the over-use of dragons in video games lately. Dragon Age. Dragon’s Dogma. Skyrim. Guild Wars 2. WoW players recently finished off Deathwing in their Dragon Soul raid. Even LotRO recently put in another dragon raid with Isengard.

In WoW, you’re a scrub if you aren’t riding around on a dragon, and with the new revamp to Refer-A-Friend, dragon shape-shifting is still more in vogue (it was available before via the Archaeology hobby. Those poor archaelogists–they could have just referred a friend instead of spending hundreds of hours trying to get the Vial of Sands.)

I was recently looking at a video of a coming Asian action offering (the name escapes me) that shoe-horned dragons into their game in a way that made me flat out laugh.

Dragons are beyond the point of trite and overused. Rift is maybe the exception. Their big bosses are of course more dragons, but taken to an extreme of being extra-planar gods. You can’t argue with that being kind of cool.

When I saw the image above, I thought of another exception–an MMO that lets all players play as dragons. Something like that would be a mold-breaker. The point is to give dragons back their dignity. They’ve totally lost it as raid fodder and WoW mounts–whether rampaging or cute and tamed, they are still pimped for dollars. Even the dragons in Rift border on caricatures when you boil the lore and presentation down.

So. An MMO with a playable dragon race on the verge of extinction. A view from the other side with liberal irony and humor. Unfortunately the name World of Dragons is taken. The devs will have to think of something else (sigh).

LotRO has dragons. It just needs tattoos now. I support the suggestion threads on this. Criticisms tend to involve tattoos “not belonging” in LotRO, or “they don’t exist in Middle-Earth.” Both of those arguments are wrong.

The “not belonging” argument comes from a prejudice of tattoos born largely from the spectrum of modern American culture. I’m not a history buff on this, but I know full well that Japanese and some primitive cultures took a sacred stance towards tattoo, taking body modification into a level of ritual and rite of passage.

The primitive cultures of LotRO do have tattoos, including facial tattoos. I can’t remember if there was a quest text about them. So to those who say they don’t exist in Middle-Earth, have you played LotRO lately?

If you’re wondering where these tattoos are, check a few pics here. For more LotRO eye candy, VG247 posted some nice new Rohan pics yesterday.

Riders Of Rohan: Hands On

Massively’s Road To Mordor has a nice article posted tonight about Riders of Rohan mounted combat, featuring a lot of new details including screens of the horse control panels. I call them control panels because that’s what they look like–all the configurations and controls you’ll need to build a well-oiled combat machine.

The most interesting thing is the new legendary item. What could be a legendary item for a horse? That’s a fascinating question. A blanket? A saddle? Horseshoes? (ed-it’s supposedly going to be a bridle.)

One thing I don’t like is full super-speed all the time. It seems a little unrealistic and contrived. I like the suggestion in the Massively comments–a stamina bar for a more realistic horse experience. The five speeds are nice for the style and animations, but why have them if the devs expect the players to rarely ever go slow because there is virtually no point?

As Justin Olivetti says, I’ve never heard of an MMO that successfully featured mounted combat as a serious and central gameplay mechanic (that means a lot more coming from him.) If Turbine can really pull this off, they will be keeping up with the Joneses, since their MMO competitors are bringing it this year–Funcom, Bioware, Arenanet, and Bethesda are pushing next-tech flagship MMOs to bear on the saturated market.

In other words, special game systems and designs with great programming are becoming more and more of a selling point when so many other old standard features like mail, housing, auction houses, and PvP zones are firmly in the ho-hum expected category at this point.

I’m still with Turbine for Rohan. Of the new MMOs, I admit to being interested in a more mature, polished, and feature-enriched SWTOR in the near future. I backed off of a new computer in favor of a new leather sofa (a girl’s gotta have her priorities), so I’m also waiting a bit on Secret World.

When there are a lot less players in six months, the Secret World will feel more secret right? A reduced $30 price tag will also be nice. I’ve got a new case fan to buy. (Or whatever–I’m not really looking forward to breaking out the pliers and soldering iron. Just kidding about the soldering iron.)

I could also mention that I’m currently working on a lot of LotRO skinning. If you like my Elven Adventuress UI, I have a new wood-and-flowers toolbar for that, and I minimalized the vitals for an overall sleeker appearance. I’m also spending a lot of time on developing a completely new LotRO skin named Crystals And Moonlight. It’s a midnight/electric blue interface with motifs of gemstones, crystals, tinkering, gears, and mining. It includes some new art like for the mailbox background (below).

It’s a little-known fact that elves are better mail carriers than hobbits.

More reading:

Join the LotRO forum discussion here.

Is Your Pet A Person Or Just More Damage?

I honestly went a long time without paying any attention to my Captain pet in LotRO. I didn’t even name him. He was just an Oathbreaker archer. He sat back and plinked. I noticed if he didn’t show up. That was about it. I tried naming him. I named him Mathilda.

No. I like Criss more, my skirmish soldier. She’s just a wildwoman.

My Lore-Master pets are different. Each has a special character, and they do special things. My black lynx, Bones, saw me through a lot of levels. She might be my favorite. The bog-lurker is goofy and makes loud crittery noises. He’s big and powerful. You can’t ignore his presence.

I almost feel guilty playing both pet classes in LotRO without caring enough about pets.

Do you care about your pets? Do you have one or two special pets? Do you feed them regularly? Do you take pains to give them a pleasing appearance, even if it means purchasing skins from the LotRO store? Do you give them cute names? Do you imagine your pets have private lives?

In the recent epic quests through Enedwaith with the Rangers, we saw that Oathbreakers are actually sentient, human-like beings who are not devoid of emotion even in death. In the most recent LotRO forum thread suggesting new races/classes in LotRO, I suggested Oathbreakers as a playable race–just like WoW Death Knights.

I felt like I owed it to Mathilda.

Buttons, Buttons, Who’s Got The Buttons

Road To Mordor yesterday had a nice overview of Rohan from the information that we currently know. It’s nice to see the hype building. The screenshot linked at the bottom of this post is from the Massively comments. This anti-button attitude is truly terrible to see among the youth! It’s also partly why Elder Scrolls Online will only have a small handful of skills you can use at any one time aside from block, jump, and dodge.

I admit I was a little snarky and off-the-cuff there–an emotional reaction born from good intentions. There are perfectly logical and good arguments on all sides, especially in the case of the LotRO Minstrel, who was revamped. I actually agree with that facet of the remark. I couldn’t figure out my Minstrel either after Orion revamped it.

Maybe the 7 page dev diary would have helped me, but if I recall, I’m not sure that I knew it existed when I went to pick up my L63 Minstrel after months away from her. Minstrels today remain a very popular class, so the evidence holds that the revamp was a success.

Still, dumbed-down is not something I want, and I know young people are smarter than I am when it comes to games. They can cope if they make an effort. This is all about smashing orcs and burning zombies. It’s an art form, but it’s not like it’s advanced mathematics.

Why do I no longer play Rift or WoW? Kind of bored with them. What would make them less boring? It’s complicated, but character development is one thing i.e. complexity. The pillar of “Story” is misleading. The crux is the journey of the character. Horse development and weapon development are good also, (especially if one can keep them). Endgame gear tiers have never interested me.

LotRO looks to be in a good position right now. Even after five years, lots of people are complimenting how good the game looks, and Rohan is bringing enhancements to the engine. SWTOR has taken a bite of out LotRO in the story category, but even with F2P, SWTOR won’t be a 1000kg story gorilla. Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars 2 will cater more to PvP and a console style of playing an MMO.

Guild Wars 2 is holding its predecessor to account for its skill bar mold, while Elder Scrolls has been a console game since Oblivion. Is Bethesda designing with an eye to porting their MMO to the next gen? I would think so, and maybe so is ArenaNet. I’ll try these MMOs, but I’ll expect LotRO to be my go-to in the future.

Why I Prefer A Subscription Game

The LotRO forums have exploded into chaos over the past days thanks to more allegedly nefarious pricing from Turbine. (In related news, hyperbole is becoming the de facto standard for writing lively commentary about MMOs, per Justin Olivetti’s Massively article on this topic.)

As we’ve learned, Turbine will not release a dungeon cluster with the Riders of Rohan expansion. Despite the raised price of RoR compared to previous expansions (due to the expansion being larger and mounted combat likely expensive to develop), the dungeons for it will not be included in that price–instead they will be released later. A lot of players pre-purchased based on an error in the FAQ that said the dungeons were included in the pre-order price. The error was evidently corrected.

Are end-games normally sold separately from expansions? No. According to a thread in the LotRO forums, this is a world first, but technically it’s a second since Isengard dungeons were also sold separately. That’s the way I bought them months after Isengard released. I haven’t even played them yet–the first tier of the grind plus catching up with the virtue cap increase was enough work.

The Rohan pre-order table of perks and bonuses is another complicated beast that requires study to decipher. Am I going to do this for you? No. Just thinking about the Rohan pricing and when/how to pay gives me a headache. I like shoe-shopping. I know what the shoes will do. I don’t have to pay extra for the laces or straps. They have one price, and that price is on the tag.

When I tried to play DDO, Turbine’s other MMO recently, (and quit before I really got started), I spent days studying character builds, the Turbine store, and the DDO F2P pricing to decide what all to unlock and how much it was going to cost. I decided I had to unlock 32 point builds just to start playing because +1 to two of my attributes seemed important in the D&D system. It’s also important for me as a player to feel like my ladies are half-heroic and well-played, not ragamuffins that gimp a group.

For example, the cost in $ to buy higher stats at L1 (an objectionable idea to begin with) was $X, but that was a bad deal. I needed to spend $X+10 or better yet $X+20=Z, leaving me with (Z-X)*points + bonus points – (price of must-unlock item A) – (price of must-unlock item B) – (I hope you get the picture). I was boggling over the money. I wasn’t having fun, and I knew it was a tip-of-the-iceberg situation.

Based on what I’ve seen in the LotRO forums, a lot of players are starting to feel the same way.

What is the MMO industry coming to? Surely players are going to get fed up at some point with these repetitive sales pitches. Who likes dealing with a flood of deals, perks, bonuses, 10% offs, 20% offs, buy-now buttons, XBOX-exclusives, and on-DVD-pay-to-unlocks? It’s all driven by the money, but its getting out of control.

I was thinking a lot today about this, and I thought of my Netflix membership. I love Netflix. It delivers great entertainment to my home, and the payments show up on my credit card bill–”out of sight and out of mind”. I’m happy paying. I don’t even know quite how much I’m paying. I just know it seems cheap even though it’s more expensive than an MMO subscription.

If the gods erased the Turbine store forever from DDO, I’d subscribe right now. I’m confident that underneath the OMG! Buy Now! buttons, it’s a great MMO. As it stands, it’s too much of a headache to deal with. I hope future F2P MMOs will incorporate a “pure” no-store-presence-whatsoever subscription option. This has been requested in LotRO, but it’s an impossibility. The store is fully integrated into every panel and game system, and it grows like the Borg.

I’m playing Dragon Age 2 tonight. I won’t need a degree in Accounting or Marketing Psychology to play that game. If a merchant NPC in Ferelden tries to sell me a dungeon for $10 U.S., I’ve got a bottle of Smirnoff vodka ready in the kitchen–an old Russian remedy re-purposed against the increasing madness of capitalism.

Instant Travel, Teleports For Dummies

There’s a Daily Grind on Massively today about instant travel in MMOs. The question is whether it “trivializes” MMO worlds. My answer is a more or less a yes. I remember complaining about this in the Bethesda forums after Oblivion was released. The ability to teleport anywhere turned the entire Oblivion map of Cyrodiil into a little amusement park.

The game actually felt smaller than Morrowind. Bethesda could cite the numerical facts that Oblivion was bigger than Morrowind, but it didn’t play bigger, and that’s all that mattered. I loved exploring Morrowind and running down those dangerous roads, exploring, and admiring the scenery around every bend. I guess players don’t have time for that any more.

LotRO recently removed rep restrictions from Lothlorien, which caused a big debate in the forums. Turbine said it was necessary so players could get to Great River and later zones, while players countered that the game was being EZ-moded and dumbed down because you no longer have to grind any rep to get to a zone. Maybe Turbine had some exit interviews from newbie players that gave up playing because they got shot by elves (rightfully) and didn’t know why. I certainly don’t know.

The frustrating part is this shouldn’t even be an issue if only MMO designers would dare to add immersive, interesting travel modes to their game instead of cheating–because it’s easy to let the player open a panel, click something, and teleport using a few lines of code. I liked the short-travel speeders in what I played of SWTOR. In LotRO they could have done the same thing with Lothlorien by adding a guide NPC.

I first saw the idea of a guide NPC in Neverwinter Nights a long time ago. The idea is simply a teleport that doesn’t break immersion. What a concept! You walk up to a caravan driver outside of town, pay a fee, and he takes you to a place. The same could have occurred in Dimrill Dale outside of LotRO’s Moria east gate. You speak with a scruffy, renegade elf and he ferries you down the river to the next zone. The boat mechanic is already in place in Evendim. One more NPC, done. There was no need for Turbine to toss off the last crumbs of their integrity if they’d used a little creativity.

Dungeons don’t have to be miles away from any town, either. The Stockades in WoW are a beautiful little favorite, while there is simply no reason why Deepstrike Mines in Rift had to be located all the way on the far side of a field full of things that drag along to attack you. There is no reason a legitimate fast travel method can’t take you to a dungeon entrance, either.

If it would truly be impossible based on the layout of the enemy, then a summoning stone or class can be called in. If there were one MMO job that might interest me, it might well be level design. My NWN2 toolset-made levels were highly complemented, but that project never left the planning stages due to the barriers posed by Obsidian’s game design.

Anyway, environmental immersion seems like an endangered species these days in a cash marketplace that values fast entry to lots of killing and action. It’s always nice when great game design shows up, and clicking a button to teleport wherever you want in the game just isn’t great for an RPG that adheres to the traditional values of creating a living, breathing fantasy world.

LotRO Update 6 Patch Note Overview

Update six–Shores of the Great River releases today for LotRO. Here is a concise ‘TLDR’ review of the most important notes, with a collection of other helpful links and a list of relevant dev diaries and additional information at the end. I’ll expand this as a reference when I find more useful information–there are always those practical everyone-needs-to-know things that pop up in these patches.

Content
• New zone–Great River, with seven areas extending from Lothlorien towards Rohan. 200 quests and a lot of new shinies. You need to finish book 5 to get book 6, which will take you to the Great River. Otherwise, just go to Lothlorien and find the path around the vineyards. It says “To Great River” on the region map.
• Epic story continues, going back to Lothlorien.

Mechanics

• Skirmish soldiers can be summoned on landscape, restricted to areas outside of high-population zones. Landscape soldier tokens provide one hour of soldier time. Get tokens from skirmish barterer or the store. The time you buy is stored time that is used only when your soldier is out! Dismiss your soldier when not needed to conserve your usage.
• Commendation and Audacity system added to PvMP. See links below.
• A new lock-on camera mode engaged by default with the ‘x’ key.

Legendary

• Stat Tomes and Relic Removal Scrolls: all tiers of can now drop from the final bosses in scaled instances.
• Melding recipes for the store exclusive relics can now be found in game on the Relic Forging Master.
• Marks, Medallions, Seals, and Relic Currency, and Heritage Runes are all now bind to account.
• Melding recipes for Tier 8 relics, Level 75 relics and Level 75 legendary items have been added.
• New damage type scrolls available from vendors in the new zone. Deconning legendary items leveled up to 60ish or higher will give higher than Tier 4 relics now. Source.

Crafting

• New recipes for Level 75 crafted relics are located on the Crafting Guild vendors. The Compendium of Middle Earth, Volume III, can be acquired via a reward for completing the daily repeatable quest “The Forges of Isengard,” given by Bron in Galtrev.
• Worn Symbols of Celebrimbor are now available via Skirmish barter vendors.

Deeds, Skirmishes, Instances

• Players may now exchange 50 Marks for 1 Medallion at the Currency Exchange NPCs found in the various Skirmish Camps across Eriador. There are also options to exchange for 10 and 50 Medallions.
• Unique class titles have been added as rewards for the level 15, 30, 45, and 58 class quests.
• Virtues have been extended to Rank 14. They are working but displaying improperly–this is a known issue at the release of update 6.
• Fornost is closed for renovations (from the known issues.)
• Other instances had minor updates, most notably Orthanc, where worn symbols of celebrimbor will now drop 100% on T1, and elder king has increased chances in T2, and will always drop in challenge. Cloak clasps have an increased chance to drop from Saruman.
• The Skirmish instance quests are back, and will award gold, reputation, XP and IXP. This quest, unlike the old daily quests, will be awarded every time the Skirmish is completed, and will scale more accurately.

Classes

• Wardens and Rune-Keepers updated greatly. See the dev diary links below.
• Other classes had minor bug fixes and improvements. Highlights: Minstrel self-bubble reduced in power. Lore-masters now have a choice of two items that can go in their ranged slot: the Brooch of Rage and the Brooch of Regrowth. The Brooch of Rage increases the Lore-master pet’s critical rating while the Brooch of Regrowth increases the pet’s in-combat morale regeneration and evade rating. Both of these items are available via multi-output Jeweler recipes. Aside from the Tier 2 recipe which is available from the Novice Jeweler vendor, these recipes can be found via treasure for Tiers 3 through 7.
  New talismans are available for the Lore-master class: Talisman of Nature. These talismans will turn the Lore-master’s Spirit of Nature pet into one of the following: Sprit of the Raven, Spirit of the Bear, Spirit of the Lynx and Spirit of the Saber-cat. These talismans are made via a multi-output, single-shot Jeweler recipe. The recipe requires Friend standing with the Men of Dunland and can be found on the Dunlending Quartermaster in Galtrev. There are also a couple of stand-alone talismans that can be found as drops in the new instance.
• Weavers and Wargs updated. See the dev diary links below.

Other

• Dunlending Quartermaster now has a Travel to Galtrev skill, available to all players with Kindred standing.
• New auction house category is called Task Items.
• Lua plugin coding had many improvements. Check the patch notes.

Further Reading:

Official Notes
Known Issues for Update 6
Skirmish Soldier dev diary
Rune Keeper Dev Diary
Warden Dev Diary
Warg Dev Diary
Weaver Dev Diary
Great River zone dev diary
Improved Instance Finder Dev Diary
Ransroth–T1 3-man should not need a healer.
Commendations dev diary
Audacity dev diary
Questing, Great River Region dev diary
Deeds of the Great River

Guide To LotRO Dual Boxing

I have to post a clarification. I recently broke all links to my updated dual boxing guide by changing the blog post date in order to bump it up to the top of my blog. This was a really silly newb mistake that I only really noticed after visits to this guide vanished like a hot pie off a Shire picnic table. If you’re looking for my guide to dual boxing LotRO, which has been updated with additional information, the post has now been returned to its original location. Sorry!