Announcements
Spring Festival Horse Vendor AWOL!
Mar 28th
Now that I’ve gotten your attention with a sensationalistic headline, Sapience posted a couple of days ago that there are some problems with the Spring Festival horse vendor that require a client side patch to fix, and therefore the vendor has been removed until the next planned patch, which should be at the end of the festival.
Sapience said:
The horse vendor will not be available until sometime near the planned end of the Spring Festival. Possibly later. The nature of this issue requires a client side patch to resolve.
Because we have a planned patch due around the end of Spring Festival, we intend to roll the fix for this issue into that patch. Because this will occur after the planned end of the Spring Festival, we will either extend the festival for an additional week or re-enable it once the patch is live to ensure everyone who has earned their Spring Festival mount can trade for it.
In the meantime, you’ll still be able to acquire all your tokens and everything you need to obtain the horse, you just won’t be able to trade them in until we have the fix in place.
We realize this is an inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. We want everyone who has earned their mount to be able to enjoy it.
So there you have it. You can still collect everything that you need for the horse, but you won’t be able to get the festival horse at the moment. We’ll keep you updated and let you know when the vendor returns.
See you in-game!
LOTRO on Sale!
Mar 28th
Turbine has set up a great deal to celebrate PAX East, with the LOTRO Collector’s Edition, Mines of Moria AND Siege of Mirkwood bundled together for $10. This deal will only last until the end of today, so if you know anyone who is thinking of trying LOTRO out, have them give this a try.
Personally, for $10, you can almost think of this as a 30 day trial, instead of a 10 day trial. Spread the word!
See you in game!
The LOTRO Lottery returns!
Mar 17th
The LOTRO lotteries have returned! According to a post by Sapience (here), you can win Mithril Flakes, a mount, silver, even Skirmish Marks! It seems like Turbine has worked out all the bug, and we can look forward to more of these in the future. Check out my.lotro here.
Good luck, and I’ll see you in-game!
Bullroarer Took Day Screenshot Contest
Mar 17th
A new contest has been announced by Turbine and Codemasters in celebration on Bullroarer Took day! The contest will run from March 17th to 22nd and has several categories:
Solo or Group shots
- Best toast
- Wearin’ the green.
- Best picture taken beneath Bullroarer Took’s statue
Group Shots
- Best party band – 3 or more people using the music system
- Best party – 5 or more players in any housing area, city, or tavern/inn
- Most dangerous party location – 5 or more people in the most dangerous party location you can find.
So get out there and take those screen shots! Full rules for the contest for Turbine players can be found here and for Codemasters players can be found here.
See you in-game!
Welcome to the new LOTRO Reporter
Mar 11th
Welcome to the new LOTRO Reporter blog and podcast. We’re all grown up now and we’ve moved out of mom and dad’s house, ummmm, I mean, we’ve gotten our own domain name.
We will still have all of the same great content that you love, but we’re now much easier to navigate, and it should also solve many of the Podcast feed issues that we’ve had over the past few months.
Don’t worry about your podcast feed in iTunes, as we’ve already changed everything at our end, so you won’t have to worry about anything at your end. If you follow LOTRO Reporter in an RSS reader, you should also not have to change anything, but please check the RSS link to the right just in case.
Thanks for sticking with us through this transition. We look forward to many more posts and podcasts in the future!
See you in-game!
LOTRO-Europe Welcome Back Week
Mar 5th
European players can look forward to a welcome back week from March 8 – 15th. Former subscribers will find that their account have been activated for this time, and everyone will have a few nice bonuses to entice them to play:
- All travel is on us throughout this festive week so flit around Middle-earth to your heart’s content at no cost! Also, earn yourself 5% bonus XP for every mob killed.
Free Travel and Bonus XP!
- During the LOTRO welcome back week, many monsters throughout Middle-earth will drop rare items when defeated. Exchange these items for a special gift box that will reward you with a variety of in-game items to aid you in your adventures in Middle-earth.
Volume III: Allies of the King Announced.
Jan 28th
Volume III: Allies of the King
Book 1, Oath of the Rangers Announced!
Turbine today released some information about the next volume in the Lord of the Rings Online Epic Story. As is to be expected, the announcement does not have many details as of yet, but I expect that over the next few weeks, more and more details will come, until the entire update is revealed.
Here is what we do know:
1) 12 Man versions of some of the Book 9 skirmishes:
- “At the Necromancer’s Gate, a powerful Olog-Hai thinks he’s king of the hill, and your force must prove him wrong.”
- “Before the Gate of the Ringwraith’s Lair, creatures of nightmare seek to lay a deadly trap.”
- “Man the catapults! A powerful force seeks to capture the outpost at Thangúlhad, and you must drive them back into the darkness.“
- “In the dungeons of Dannenglor, captured elves face torment and destruction, unless you can rescue them from the Enemy!“
2) Update to crafting at the higher tiers with the addition of level 65 crafting recepies. This should be good, as it will allow people to feel that crafting is actually worthwhile at the higher levels. Doesn’t seem like Scholars or Metalsmiths are getting much love though.
Not much is said in the annoucement about wether or not there will be new zones, although I would expect that there would be. Also note the lack of any new on new instances/dungeons.
There isn’t much there, but it does get me excited to move forward in the story. I think that this will be a great chance for players to continue to explore Mirkwood. It will give some of the more Casual players a chance to catch up a little, and it will flesh out the skirmish system at the high-end.
Some thing that I didn’t like?
The lack of any mention of new dungeon/instances. I hope that Turbine isn’t moving away from these and more toward skirmishes. Although I like the scaleability of the skirmishes, and how that allows for more people to see the content, perhaps they could apply this to dungeons instead of simply adding more skirmishes. I don’t think that this is the case, but I still worry about it a little.
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
See you in-game!
Welcome Adarel!
Jan 8th
I am extremely happy to announce that Adarel has joined the LOTRO Reporter team. She will be writing columns about the Lore-Master class.
I’ve been following Adarel on twitter for a while, and I am also a reader of her blog. I’ve always been impressed with her writing and her approach to writing about games in general. She takes a unique approach to discussing a game and I always enjoy reading her posts.
A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to take part in and read a Google Wave conversation that she started discussing Morale in LOTRO and whether it was anti-immersive. I was once again impressed with her writing style and her ability to clearly articulate very complex thoughts, which is something that I often struggle with. Her first post will be a summary of this conversation, and I have to say, it’s a very interesting read.
You can look forward to future posts by Adarel discussing the Lore-Master class in many different aspects. I know that I’m looking forward to reading them!
You can find Adarel’s personal blog here.
Welcome Adarel!
Skirmish Weekend!
Nov 20th
With the bug that players faced during Tuesday night’s Skirmish preview, where most players where not able to try skirmishes, Turbine has decided to open up Bullroarer for the entire weekend (Nov 20-22) for players to log on and try them out!
This was confirmed during LOTRO Reporter’s interview with Sapience, a.k.a. Rick Heaton, Turbine’s Online Community Specialist. Bullroarer will be taken down Friday, Nov 20th, for maintenance, and when it comes back up, your should be good to go for skirmishes.
So there you have it. Transfer your characters, patch up Bullroarer install, and get ready to have some fun!
See you in game!
Siege of Mirkwood Announced!
Sep 4th
Wow. I wasn’t expecting this this morning. A new “digital download” will be available this fall titled “Siege of Mirkwood”. The official announcement is here.
Some of the new features:
- Increased Level Cap to 65
I think that this will please the people who enjoy leveling. Personally, leveling is not my favorite thing in the world. As long as they make it interesting, and don’t just make it a grind through five more levels, I think it’s a good thing.
- Answer the Call of War! Jump into the heat of battle with the new Skirmishes feature. Skirmishes offer endless action in repeatable, randomized instances where players can create and lead customizable soldiers into battle, training them to greater skill as they earn victories against the forces of shadow. Answer the call of war wherever violence erupts with the new “World Join” function that lets players and their fellowships band together to fight in various locations throughout Middle-earth.
What? WOW! This sounds awesome. Leading customizable, trainable soldiers into battle is something very different, and I’m not sure that this has been done in an MMO before. Yes, Guild Wars and DDO both had henchmen that you could hire, but I don’t think that this is going to be something similar. This seems like each player will be leading a squad of soldiers into battle. I can’t wait to get more information. Will this be like an RTS, where the view changes to a 3/4 perspective and you worry about the strategy, or will this be from the traditional LOTRO 3rd person view, and your squad will follow you? Will they add Squad commands like a Squad Based shooter? AHHHHHH. My head is about to explode with all these questions!
- Take up Arms! Infiltrate the dark jails, deadly arenas and savage stables of Dol Guldur, the fortress of the Ringwraiths, and strike a blow against Sauron’s forces in new 3 and 6-player instances. Call upon your fellows to adventure into the most deadly 12-player raid yet and face the ultimate challenge – the Nazgûl Lord!
New instances/raids/adventures? Check!
- Major Gameplay Enhancements Turbine continues to improve the award-winning experience of LOTRO with major improvements to the combat and Legendary Items systems. Players will experience improved responsiveness when in the heat of battle. Players will also be able to create and craft their own customized Second and Third Age Legendary Items from raw materials and grow their weapons’ power to level 60. Achieve new Legacies, new titles, and a fourth Runic slot that will make Legendary Items even more unique and powerful.
Now this part worries me? Major improvements to the combat system? Ummm, is it broken now? Turbine, have you heard of a little game called Star Wars Galaxies? Do you want to me to explain to you what happened when they had “major improvements to the combat system”? THEY BROKE THEIR GAME AND HAD THE POPULATION OF THEIR SERVER DROP DRASTICALLY! Be careful Turbine. Please don’t break my game!
Upgrades to the Legendary Items system, from what I can tell, will be very welcome.
More Legacies, titles, etc? Great!
So there we have it folks. To me, this seems like it will be a free content update, and not the next expansion. I don’t think that it was a big enough announcement for one thing, and I also don’t think that the amount of content is in line with what Turbine put into MoM. This would be a great way for Turbine to finish off the MoM expansion though, and get us ready for Rohan! At least, I hope that the expansion is to Rohan. We’ll have to wait and see.
Oh, and Turbine, you missed something in your post about this update. GIVE US HORSES EARLIER!
There, I’ve said it.
I feel better now.
See you in game!
