Author: Ethic

Turbine has wrapped up some holiday presents for players of Lord of the Rings Online. Current players subscribed at the normal $14.99 per month have the option to sign up for $9.99 per month if they pay via 3 month chunks at $29.97, not a bad deal if you are enjoying the game and missed out on the Founder’s pricing plans.

Speaking of Founders, Turbine has put a horse under the tree. This is a special horse to be used by level 25 and higher players. The normal horse was not available until 35, so this is a nice step up. Currently, it is only available to Founders and Lifetime account holders. I’d like to see it offered to all players and perhaps it will down the road. Since I have a Founder account and I’m almost level 22 right now, this is a perfect present for my Hobbit. Naturally, the level 25 horse is slower than the level 35 horse – but it’s got to be better than running everywhere.

More details can be found here and here.

– Ethic

Thanks to some leg work by one of my Kinship members, I have some housing numbers to share from Lord of the Rings Online. This study took place on 11/02/2007 @ 8:30 pm EST on the Landroval server. Standard and Deluxe houses are purchased by individual players and you can only purchase one house per account per server at this time. Kinship houses can only be purchased by a Kinship leader with a Kinship rank of 7 or higher. The stats are broken down by race/location for Man, Elf, Hobbit and Dwarf. The numbers are the total number of houses sold. Considering houses are not cheap, these numbers do not represent the total number of players at all. From my impressions, the majority of players do not own a house yet.

Continue reading Housing by the Numbers

I wish. Take a look at the screen shot and you’ll see how Turbine messed up housing (I know you are all shocked). This is a listing of the available neighborhoods. The first column is standard houses, the second is deluxe houses and the third is Kinship housing. I can only afford a standard house. See all those zeros in the first column? The only two houses that are still available are the same house lot and I don’t like it (it would seem nobody else does either). I’ve got a list of 5 or 6 houses that would be nice to have, but until the deluxe and Kinship houses start selling, I shall remain homeless because they will not open a new instance until the old ones sell (clarification: ALL the houses do not need to sell before they open new neighborhoods. I’m not sure what method they use, but that is not it). I don’t understand why they thought it was wise to put that many Kinship houses in each neighborhood.

Still, the neighborhoods are very well done and it’s fun to run around in them. I just wish they would have put them closer to a real town. Also, the fact they put farmland and a town center in each neighborhood means they are seriously considering adding crafting abilities to them, which would be a Very Bad Idea.

– Ethic