My first 3D exploration in an MMO was in World of Warcraft. There were some delicious herbs to be found off of Westfall’s shores. Stranglekelp was found amidst roaming Murlocs, and when the herb was smoothee’d with some Blackmouth fish oil, my priest could be underwater for in-game hours checking out wreckages, looking for pearls, and generally enjoying the freedom of the z-axis. There was one area, if I recall correctly, in Stranglethorn Vale where some elite Murlocs were guarding a sunken ruins. I played an interesting game of agro-Operation trying to swim down to the bottom without alerting the bug-eyed fish-lizards to my presence. It took a few tries, but I remember being so proud and feeling so clever. The quest suggested a group of people after all. Continue reading Under Da Sea
Category: Lord of the Rings Online
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.The Alt Economy
It’s weird to see the progression of material prices as I scum the Auction Hall. Tier 1 is pretty cheap. Tier 2 jumps about a magnitude in price. Tier 3 is about double in price to Tier 2, and so on… until the last two Tiers where the character leveling curve slows to a crawl. Tier 6 materials only cost as much as Tier 2. That makes most expensive portion for leveling my alt’s crafting the mid-game. The end game crafting experience will be an easy coast downhill towards mastery.
–Ravious
pork bellies
Learning the Watcher
My hardcore casual kinship started Squiddy Saturday’s last weekend where we are learning to take down the 12-man Watcher in the Water raid. Most of our core officers were present to learn from a benevolent Loremaster saint. We were running button hooks and other maneuvers just outside the Vile Maw’s door. I imagine it was a humorous spectacle to the hardcore groups that passed by. After almost 2 hours of discussion, we went in… and died.
Our benefactor said that the raid was rife with random occurrences some that are nearly impossible to overcome. Our first time, someone got hit by a dangler (a tentacle that grabs a player and hangs them in the air until it is killed) next to a first stage tentacle. The Watcher screamed and half the raid died. Two runs later we almost beat the second phase. This time the other captain got hit by a dangler in the shark pool (insta-kill roaming tentacles people lovingly call sharks), and I mistimed a shark while trying to free him. The patron Loremaster was still pleased with the progress, and so were we.
This is my first time really learning a multi-phase boss fight, and during our two hour lecture I kept wondering what I got in to. In the end it was quite fun to have multiple strategies and stages. Our benefactor believed that we might be able to down him next weekend with discussion and practice. Now our only problem is finding ~12 people to meet consistently on Squidurdays.
–Ravious
but you still have Zoidberg
SoM(e) Valuation
Release news of the next buyable offering for Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online MMO hit the ‘sphere pretty hard yesterday. The global chat was endlessly looping all night with one person flashing the newly received Harbinger’s Cloak by diligently buying something the day Turbine offered it, and then multiple people asking whether that person also got his goat. I kid you not, the loop recycled every 15 minutes with brand new actors. (Customers will not get the goat or character slots until Siege of Mirkwood is launched.)
I heard the news first from a friend. He copy/pasted the entirety of the multiple options in to my tiny Google chat. I read through the many options, scratching my head a few times. I had to make sure I knew which class of customer I was, and that I would be able to buy what I wanted. The weird part was that what I wanted to buy was Siege of Mirkwood for about $20.00, but I couldn’t. I had to buy the Adventurer’s Pack to actually receive what I wanted to buy in the first place. The whole pricing scheme felt like a huge gimmick. Admiral Ackbar kept screaming in my head until I told him to shut up. Continue reading SoM(e) Valuation
Siege of Mirkwood – Date & Details
Announced here: Will launch on December 1st in North America.
The LOTRO Lifetime Membership is now available for $199.
Any current or former player who renews or upgrades their subscription to any multi-month plan by October 31st gets the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion for FREE!
All players can pre-order the new LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack which contains 2 character slots and one shared storage slot that allows players to share items with all of their characters on the same server for $19.99 and get the Harbinger’s Cloak which provides 8% speed boost and the Dusky Nimblefoot Goat mount for FREE!
Starting today, existing Lifetime Members who pre-order the LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack get the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion plus two in-game items (Harbinger’s Cloak which provides an 8% speed boost and a new mount) for FREE!
– Ethic
Lotro doesn’t cower from radiance problems
A few weeks ago, Turbine gathered questions from players so that they could choose a few to answer. Well, the answers are out. Most of the questions felt like they were planted to highlight features we already know exist in the Mirkwood mini-expansion. Sapience admitted to answering a dev-written question during a dev-chat back in June, so I’m not too surprised. But that’s not the point of this particular blog entry. This is about gear-gating.
Continue reading Lotro doesn’t cower from radiance problems
Of Community Norms
Of course, I am the one with the problem. Community norms differ, and if you arrive with different norms, failure to meet your expectations is your problem, not theirs. “Impolite” is a culture-relative term.
If most lower-level instance runs have been “level 80 plus 1-4 alts” for the past year, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that someone is going to do it for you. The group leader might be amiss in putting together anything else without warning people. If you receive a tell with two to four characters and a question mark, your interlocutor might reasonably expect you to recognize that as an invitation to a specific instance, zone, or quest line.
I find it annoying and rude that people use the trade channel for guild recruitment when there is also a dedicated guild recruitment channel. I am obviously at odds with the norm, because I have never seen a single message on that channel. Realistically, one channel will absorb almost all the discourse no matter what it is labeled. In City of Heroes, it was our badges channel; in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢, global looking for fellowship. Whichever channel has the most people will have the most chatter and attention-seekers, so it should not be surprising to see a trade channel filled with discussion about who sucks.
Announcing what items you just put on the AH, though, you’re obviously a screwball.
: Zubon
The Tyranny Of Levels
WoW has reinforced for me, in ways I had nearly forgotten, the way that levels swamp all considerations of skill or even sanity. This is especially striking coming off a long binge of Team Fortress 2, where a good headshot kills anything.
Level-related modifiers stack to make it pointless to play outside a narrow range. It would be enough to have the numbers get larger with every level, as they do, so good luck using that 50 damage attack against the 200,000hp enemy. Most games add a modifier based on level differences: it is not just that you get higher stats and better accuracy as you level, but also that you have a bonus to hit lower-level targets, with a corresponding penalty against bigger targets. You also face reduced damage against them, above and beyond their improved defenses, while they get those benefits against you, the lower-level target.
Let’s linger there a moment. Long long ago, City of Heroes had its “purple patch,” which imposed level modifiers. Your 50 damage attack against the 200,000hp enemy would only do 20 damage, and that was before applying the enemy’s defenses. Even if you could take down higher level enemies, it was not worth it for the time involved. (And, just in case you found a time-efficient way to do it, much higher level enemies yielded less or no experience.) WoW feels similar. Asheron’s Call assigns levels to enemies but intends them as rough guides to how powerful they are, with modifiers to experience gains but not relative effectiveness.
This makes fighting an even-con elite easier than a higher-level normal foe. Sure, it may have three times as many hit points, but I do not have an arbitrary accuracy penalty, so I can hit the thing. I can kill a caster six levels higher than me, but it takes a few minutes, and I could get the same reward from killing two lower-level foes in half the time.
: Zubon
I am open to the notion that WoW looks this way due to the way weapon skills work, rather than some additional penalty. A level-based hard cap on weapon skills creates the same effect.
Did Turbine Plan Mirkwood?
I was completely sold on the idea of Rohan being Lotro’s next expansion. The main evidence of this proposed expansion was the registration of the URL “RidersofRohan.com”. Registered way back by Tokien Enterprises on April of 2006 and set to re-direct any visits to lotro.com. It was as good as a confirmation of the next expansion.
Two years later, in the summer of 2008, Tolkien Enterprises registered the following URLs: “siegeofGondor.com”, “treasonofIsengard.com”, “corsairsofUmbar.com” and “firesofMordor.com”.
Quality of Life
Little things make a big difference in your enjoyment. You would not list “cup holders” on your make-or-break features for a car, but you will notice fairly often if they are missing or sub-optimal. If they are really good, you might never notice.
In World of Warcraft, when you mouse-over a monster, the box mentions if you have a quest to kill it. This is very nice if you forget what you are doing with two dozen quests active or are not sure whether you need Prowlers, Young Prowlers, Mature Prowlers, or some or any combination of the three. In World of Warcraft, you carry quest items in your bags. This is not very nice with two dozen quests active or if you need different parts from Prowlers, Young Prowlers, and Mature Prowlers.
In World of Warcraft, you can talk to NPCs from horseback. Mounts are treated as skills, not inventory items. (The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ will be getting both of these in Siege of Mirkwoodâ„¢.) You are not dismounted by puddles or nipping wolves.
World of Warcraft has a currency tab. I have read that there are too many currencies with all the various points, badges, and whatnot you can get. Now imagine that problem when the currencies are treated as barter (inventory) options. Would you like to see the variety of tokens in my vaults for The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢?
World of Warcraft treats inventory space as yet another kind of achievement. You buy bags, and bags can be of various sizes. You buy vault slots, then you need to buy the bags for them. Non-tiny bags cost more than you can afford on your own. Unless someone sends you some nice late-game bags, you will spend most of the leveling game with most your inventory full of quest items and basic supplies. The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ starts everyone with 75 inventory slots, but the only way to increase your space is to buy more vault slots (bag included in the price) or housing. World of Warcraft has no housing. World of Warcraft also has no default button for “open all bags” that I have stumbled upon.
Putting NPCs on platforms, podiums, and stages makes them much easier to click in crowds.
: Zubon