Comments on: Siege of Mirkwood Beta Thoughts

By: LotRO: Skirmishes = Awesome « Im Talkin Games

LotRO: Skirmishes = Awesome « Im Talkin Games — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:39:35 +0000

[...] of Kill Ten Rats has even gone as far to call this feature the potential future of the MMO landscape, and while that may be a bit of hyperbole, he’s on [...]

By: Stormwaltz

Stormwaltz — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:27:21 +0000

The new LM skill is similarly useless. You know how LMs have abilities to remove Disease and Wound debuffs? They cycle nearly instantaneously and can be traited to affect all your fellows in a PBAoE?

We get a skill that removes Diseases *and* Wounds.

Like, at the same time.

It’s like trying to be excited about getting one extra quickbar slot.

By: Zubon

Zubon — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:30:05 +0000

It is important to tell them that THEIR MOMS have been playing with other people at the same time under singular purpose, and it doesn’t seem to have helped.

I don’t think that means anything, but YOUR MOM seems to be a good universal internet comeback.

By: Zar

Zar — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:12:21 +0000

I’m sure the hardcore players that must make up 99.999% of all games will be sadened that the “Hardcore Casual” player that is willing to put in the time and effort based on their playstyle will be able to achieve rewards and see more places scaled down to their level of play. It’s about time! Honestly, from having played many years in the past in other games as a “Hardcore” raider, I never understood what the big deal was in allowing other players the same content scaled down to how they play and rewards that have either a “Fast Track” (Raiding) or a casual slower pace to suit the other styles of play. I finally left EQ2 after years of playing because all the great spots that were designed to bring back fond memories of Everquest Live were out of reach to the casual and small group player. I felt rather cheated to discover that they were bring back zones that I enjoyed soloing and duoing for hundreds of hours in the original game only to discover most were high end raid/instance encounters that my playstyle would not afford. Well done Turbine!

By: Docholiday

Docholiday — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:13:47 +0000

I pretty much agree with most of your thoughts, I’m pulling together my post on this topic as well as a fellow beta tester. Overall I’m excited for Mirkwood, but I think there are a few misses for me.

By: Ravious

Ravious — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:13:42 +0000

I don’t know what else to say, you pretty much wrapped it up. It is “dumbed down” in a sense, but the recent dev diary wraps it up pretty good. Most end game players only used the slowest weapon they could because of the non-normalization and damage/speed equation. This was silly. No burglar would use daggers, for instance. So yeah, now all that really matters is what you want or what drops you get, rather than REQUIRING one weapon per class.

By: Longasc

Longasc — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:04:09 +0000

Can someone give specifics about the “weapon speed/damage” normalization?

It sounds really odd to me that Axes, Daggers, Swords, everything one-handed now swing at the same speed and apparently also cover the same damage range.

The only difference would then be appearance and the inherent weapon type modifier, like +1% crit for daggers or increased hit for swords.

This is my only gripe with the combat revamp, which I consider to be about as important and new as the skirmish system. I actually like what I hear about the new combat system, but this weapon speed consolidation has a bit the taste of “dumbed down”. “Normalized” seems to be a new code word for that.

Julian, you are probably right. I was already concerned about beaming from Dalaran to instances with cross-server LFG tools, and beaming into skirmishes from everywhere in the world is indeed fostering a certain trend:
All endgame content takes place in holes called dungeons or instances.

They seem to be the contemporary crutch to tell stories and deliver tasty content to the masses which is harder to do in a non-instanced environment. Still, I will reserve my poison for later. Things might be even worse, after all. :>

By: Julian

Julian — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:46:16 +0000

“Skirmishes.”

I give it 48 hours until the faithful hardcore descend en masse and declare how this is killing MMOs because everybody knows you’re not -really- playing them -right- (the way God intended you to) unless you play with other people at the same time under singular purpose, unity of vision and other undiluted pieces of hogwash like that.

By: mbp

mbp — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:41:00 +0000

Quick off the mark there Ravious, your’s is the first review I have read, everyone else is just posting screenies.

It sounds good in general but I am just not in an mmorpg place myself at the moment. I will probably put off Mirkwood for a few months.