This week, we discuss:

1) Skirmish Soldier Roles

http://wp.me/pyDK5-cf

2) Sauron’s Blog

Did you know that Sauron Blogs? NSFW!!!! Adults only!

http://www.sauronsblog.com

Via sauron’s blog

http://periannath.com/feature/ten-new-years-resolutions-for-fans-of-the-lord-of-the-rings/

3) Skirmish Starter Quest Frustration

http://wp.me/pyDK5-de

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=311072

4) New, Q1 wallpaper/calendar screenshots

http://www.lotro.com/lotro-media/wallpaper

5) Dev Tracker

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=310942

7) Introduce Adarel – New Lore-Master columnist.

Listener Submited

Hey Guys!

One thing I enjoyed about the directional pointer thingy is that it can help you find festivity items. In the spring fling back at the beginning release of LOTRO there was a “find things” quest in each of the regions (Thorin’s hall, Celondim, BreeLand and the shire). Pressing Delete will target the nearest in-animate item (corpse, ore, wood, blue bottle, stack of books, snow pile, etc.) and then tab will select the nearest live target. In any case I found this EXTREMELY helpful when looking for items in Thorin’s hall where it’s dark and hard to see the items. Just thought I’d pass along this tidbit. I listen to the pod casts about a week late so I don’t get to participate as much as I’d like. Real life and all you know.

Also you folks had mentioned in your pod cast 17 that there have been lots of changes…that is almost an understatement! I’m a founding member and got in on the last month of Beta and became a life time member. The graphics (particularly the inventory items) have changed dramatically. The ore and ingots used to one of four color options, gold, copper, silver or barrow-iron color. Also there weren’t any purple or blue items. Only green and grey if I remember right, I love what they’ve done with the horses, I almost want to take the time to collect them!

I also am an Auctioneer and was bummed out at the 20 max bids and the 30 max posts. I suppose that’s ok as I’d buy up everything I could! LOL

Bindolobald – Brandywine

Zeomox – Brandywine

Zelix – Landroval

Mosshammer – Landroval
Hello Lotro-reporter crew! I am Ugmog of Landroval and after your last episode I decided to go ahead and just reply to some of the stuff you speculated about ect. ect.

First off let me say that I really enjoy this podcast. I do however have one complaint on the technical side of things with your recording and that is the lack of pop filters on your mics.Pop filters are mazing little devices that would make listening to you guys a lot less painful and greatly improve the overall sound quality. I know that they can be somewhat expensive/hard to aquire (a good quality one mind you) so I do have a cheap, low-tech solution to offer: Panty-hose. I’m not joking either. If you put pantyhose over your micraphones they will act as a very good pop filter (I learned about that trick from StarWars Galaxies with Yivvits and MrBubble if you were curious).

On to more important things. Bill, you asked Chris who in the Lord of the Rings uses magic besides Gandalf. Offthe top of my head here are the answers to that qestion: Saruman, Radagast, Elrond, Galadriel, Beren, Tom Bombadil, Goldberry, Glorfindel, Sauron, The Witch King, Luthien, as well as all the Valar (and Morgoth) in the Silmarillion as well as just about every single named Elve in the Silmarillion.

As you can see it’s a pretty long list with only people from the Lord of the Rings Trilogoy; and the Silmarillion adds at least twice as many names to that list!

As to my prediction for where the game is going: We will see Northern Mirkwood as part of the regular book updates throught the year, and our expansion for 2010 will be . . . THE LONELY MOUNTAIN! That’s right, I predict that we’re going to see The Lonely Mountain and/or Dale and Laketown. I have three reasons for suspecting this. First, They have bridged the landscape by adding Mirkwood; Second, The Hobbit Movie comes out soon; and Third, turning south (Rohan) means that they are committed to going South, trying to turn around and add more lands to the North after Rohan would be PR suicide after the entire player base would have spent a year assuming (and waiting for) Gondor.

As far as new classes go, I don’t think we are likely to see any new class in the near future but I do have two hopes regarding new classes: First, I would love to see a Goblin class for Monster Play focused on CC/Debuffing or CC/AoEs areas where Monster Players have always been weak. However I don’t really think that this is as likely as the second option. Opening more classes up to different races. Since the game will be going to te Lonely Mountain (according to me) opening up some more options for Dwarves would be natural. I personally hope that we would be able to have Dwarve Captains since buff classes are somewhat lacking and Dwarves have far better shouts than all the other races. Alo it’s time to get rid of the class that only the race of man has access to.

If we were to have a new class I suspect that it would be more based on buffing with a DPS emphasis (rather than the tank/heal combo of the Captain). Adding another pure DPS role would be pointless since every class in the game can go for DPS (although Captains are the worst at this). We also have two classes for every role except buffing so it is the only place that I can see a gap being filled in. I do not, however, think that we will see any new classes in the near future.

I hope you consider my thoughts and read the whole letter. I really love your show but hate having my ears blown out every 10 seconds because of the lack of pop filters! Please get some!

Sincerely,-Ugmog of Landroval

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