LOTRO

LOTRO Developer Orion writes his latest blog entitled "Problems & Solutions #1", which discusses the issue surrounding the fact that the developers designed LOTRO to be a story-centric MMO, but that players are largely skipping the Epic Storyline content past Volume 1 Book 1.

The source of this issue is the fact that most of the player population is concentrated at the higher level range due to how long the game has been out, and that newer players are unable to find groups to tackle the epic storyline content, resulting in them having to skip what Turbine considers a focal point of their game.

So what’s Turbine’s proposed solution? The introduction of an "Inspired by Greatness" mode. The new mode would enable players to dig deep down inside themselves and find inspiration to accomplish great things. In game terms, players who select this mode will be given a significant boost to morale and power, in and out of combat morale and power regeneration, damage, and healing. 

"Inspired Greatness" will be available for all books starting from Volume 1 Book 2 with the release of Siege of Mirkwood on December 1st, 2009.

Read more at Orion’s Blog: Problems & Solutions #1.

MMORPG.com’s Jon Wood had the chance to speak with Turbine’s Jeffrey Steefel and Aaron Campbell about the upcoming Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Siege of Mirkwood.

MMORPG.com:

Presenting Siege of Mirkwood as a digital expansion is a fairly radical departure from the aggressive retail box release of LotRO’s first expansion, Mines of Moria. Is this an indication that a second expansion couldn’t hold up to a retail distribution, or are there other factors at work?

Turbine:

Players and the industry should look at this as another example of Turbine exploring more and more ways we can continue to bring quality entertainment to our customers, and provide choice and diversity of offerings. Mirkwood Digital distribution means neither the end of retail LOTRO releases nor the end of free content updates. We are simply doing something different for Mirkwood to bring significant new content to players just a year after Moria, and in the most appropriate way possible for this particular product, and time. We want to continue to provide serial entertainment to players through both free and paid content offerings and this will continue to be the backbone of the LOTRO experience.

Read the Siege of Mirkwood Interview.

A new dev diary published on the official Lord of the Rings Online website details the reward system for the upcoming Skirmish feature to be introduced with the launch of Siege of Mirkwood next month.

LOTRO developer Brian "Zombie Columbus" understands that most players will play new content for the loot, explaining, "People play new content for the rewards. Sure, if the content is fun it is more likely to get replayed, but even if we made the hardest, most boring boss fight in the game drop the best loot, a lot of people would still play it. With that in mind, we’ve tried to design the Skirmish rewards system in as free-form a way as possible, allowing players to play the content they want and receive mostly equivalent rewards."

To accomplish this, players will earn Skirmish marks in a number of ways, and will be able to trade them in at vendors for their shiny rewards.

For the full rundown, read the dev diary here.

The upcoming digital-expansion, "Siege of Mirkwood," will conclude the storyline of Volume II: Mines of Moria, but what of Volume III? According to a GamerZines interview with Turbine’s PR Manager, Adam Mersky, Volume III will kick off in early 2010 with the game’s next content update following the release of Mirkwood.

The story also originally incorrectly presumed the title of Volume III would be "Riders of Rohan," but Turbine has contacted GamerZines to clarify things:

Siege of Mirkwood will arrive in December and will mark the conclusion of Volume II of LOTRO’s epic story. We will be kicking off Volume III in our first update of 2010. The story incorrectly presumed that Volume III is called Riders of Rohan. Beyond the fact that Volume III will begin with our next update, we have not released any more details about our plans for the road ahead and we will do so when the time is right.

Siege of Mirkwood, the recently announced digital expansion to The Lord of the Rings Online will launch on December 1st, 2009, according to an announcement released by Turbine today.

The announcement of a new LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack was also part of today’s announcement. The new pack will launch simultaneously with the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion, and will contain 2 additional character slots, and a shared storage slot allowing for players to share their items across all their characters on the same server. Customers who pre-order the Adventurer’s Pack will also receive two exclusive in-game items, the Harbinger’s Cloak which provides an 8% speed buff, and a new Dusky Nimblefoot Goat mount.

Both the Siege of Mirkwood and the LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack are available for pre-order now and will run you $19.99 each, though there are some special offers going on as well. Former subscribers who renew their accounts, or current subscribers who upgrade their accounts to a multi-month (3, 6, 9 month) subscription between now and October 31st will receive Siege of Mirkwood free. Also, Lifetime Subscribers who purchase the LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack will receive the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion free of charge.

Speaking of Lifetime subscriptions, they’re back, and will run you $199 if you’re interested.

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