Category: Lord of the Rings Online

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Good Night / Bad Night

We took down the turtle with a PUG, and I got the shoulders coin. 6/6, and I never need to enter the 16th Hall on that character again.

Then I tried to do 2.8.3. That is a three-person instance, and one of our members was a Lore-master who could not mez (traited it away), remove corruptions (necessary for the fight if you don’t keep them mezzed), deal damage (that we could notice), heal (he didn’t), or tank (he’s in a robe). But he could repeatedly apologize over voice chat for breaking others’ CC by misunderstanding “right” and “left.” In a 6-person group, you have room for one sub-par member. You do not 2-man a 3-person instance.

: Zubon

Hardly Easy

I hate when instances are made harder after being easy.

I just finished wiping for four hours in the Watcher with my Kinship. I hate that fight. I hate going. But they need me if they are going to go. As it is, we had to PUG a captain because one of our members was a no-show to the raid after signing up. I can’t say these people aren’t practiced. They’ve been wiping an average of three hours a week against the watcher with the same people every week for the last few months. There is a sign-up for next week, and I don’t want to go.

Continue reading Hardly Easy

Survey Feedback

Dear Turbine,
You just sent me a survey on The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢. Things went downhill starting with this question:

“In the list below, please select your favorite features.
Remember that we’re asking you how much you like each feature, not how much time you spend or your thoughts about the current state of the feature.”

So you want to know what features I like, but I should not take into account the current state of the feature? I need a text box here that lets me tell you how lousy a question that is. If I like the idea of legendary items but think the current system is horrible, I should tell you it is my favorite feature? WTF? “New classes” and “new races” are on the list. Am I fond of all possible new classes and races? There have been two new classes and no new races. Is there any basis on which I can answer this question? And it is a required question, so I cannot skip it.

On the rest of the required questions that were nonsensical or inapplicable to my current playstyle, I filled in the least irrelevant answer. I am pretty sure that you just received active disinformation from me, at your own request.

Please hire someone who knows how to write surveys. I work in evaluation, so I might be able to recommend someone to you.

: Zubon

Moria as Waystation

We have a problem of expectations. Mines of Moriaâ„¢ has been a poor endgame. It is an excellent mid-/late-game area. The problem is just this year of waiting for Moria to no longer be the endgame.

Shadows of Angmarâ„¢ had a great endgame at level 50, with three small Annuminas instances, one small Angmar instance, two very large Angmar instances, one twelve-person raid (the most popular endgame target), and one full raid. There were large targets to fight in open areas, and the battlefield instances were strong late additions. It took some time to accumulate all that, but you had most of the options for most of the lifecycle.

Mines of Moriaâ„¢ has had a weak endgame. Six instances with (often annoying) hard mode available, mostly with “unintended behavior” such that folks got their radiance gear far more easily than one can now. A raid that was just one big fight for twelve people. Then a second raid was added: a smaller fight for twelve people. Now there is more activity beyond that, although I cannot comment on it because (1) I have mostly been on break and (2) it is radiance-gated, so it is unavailable for much of the playerbase.

As an endgame, not stellar. As a mid-game? Wow, that is a lot of options as you pass through. In retrospect, all that level 50 stuff was just something for us to do while the next tier of mid-game came along, as is this extra set of MoM dungeons. In retrospect, kind of a waste to have spent so much time developing content that was covering gaps in the development timeline, but you must do something to keep the subscription dollars rolling in.

: Zubon

The Return of Crafting

Late in the life of Mines of Moriaâ„¢, Turbine has decided to make crafting a viable part of the economy again for non-consumables. Crafters can now make equipment only a bit below the best looted gear. The best of the best (radiance gear, 1st Age Legendary Items) is still in the chests at the end of big fights, but crafting now offers respectable armor and 2nd Age LIs (roll the dice!). The best crafted jewelry is competitive with the best dropped jewelry, a big win for the jewelers who already had a steady consumable trade in hope tokens.

Most of the recipes for these are on one-week cooldown timers, so do not expect to see the economy flooded. Many are also reputation-gated, so crafter alts will not have access unless they are level 60 and running around Lothlorien.

Mithril flakes: more valuable. Legendary shards: actually useful! Patch 2.8.1 was small but did much to reinvigorate; the new IXP bounty quests are very popular, despite the travel time. By the time Rohan comes along, Moria might be up to par.

: Zubon

Another Casual Player Definition

I’ve been following Lord of the Rings Online developer Orion’s blog pretty closely where every day he updates the masses as to his redesign of the Red Maid dungeon, Garth Agarwen.  It is really interesting, and reading some of his mundane tasks really gives a good showing as to why design is slow.

One of his latest posts remarks on how Garth Agarwen is going to be re-released in bite-size form aimed at casual players, which is a hard “niche” of players to define:

It’s difficult to define the casual player, so I’m just going to go with the tried and true generalizations that may or may not be true of any given part of the player base: Casual players are those that value play time at a premium rather than a given; their time is precious and spent in many areas and as a result is parcelled in ways that make sense for their lifestyle, play style and life commitments. Casual players would prefer to have a fun bite-sized experience that is entertaining and challenging, but fits within schedule demands that other persons may not necessarily be beholden too. Casual players are not looking for the easiest path to fun, they just want a path to fun.

I have never nodded so much in reading a paragraph written by a game developer.  Like I have noted before, casual vs. hardcore does not really denote the amount of time played anymore.  I think, in line with Turbine’s devs (and hopefully many others), that casual vs. hardcore is based on the unquantifiable amount of fun per time played.

“Casual” like so many terms is becoming a misnomer for a way to define gamers, but the concept is simple.  Does the game let the player actually play without significant hurdles to overcome?  MMOs are a niche market partly because they are one of the few video gaming genres that requires hardcore play in the majority of gameplay.  Console gamers and non-MMO PC gamers probably scratch their heads in wonder.  After all, the point of playing video games it to actually play, right?

–Ravious
the majesty of my tower of hats

Elite status

I was reading a post on the US LOTRO boards about a person who wanted legendary weapons to be much more rare. This poster also called for there to be deeds to do things like kill 10,000 orcs to achieve “signature” or “elite” status. Players who completed this deed would have rare and powerful characters.

Somehow, this person actually thinks that putting in a massive grind and tying it to a massive reward is a good idea.

Continue reading Elite status

Dreams Undreamt

A Casualties member mentioned Crimecraft last night. Ah, a gang-based online thing. “I’ve never dreamed of being in a gang, so not really interested.” Then I thought back through some previous games. I never dreamed of being a dwarf that set people on fire by writing on a rock, of making charcoal and growing flax, of summoning headless ice monsters that rained frosty death upon my foes, of being a buffing psychic cyborg, of…

: Zubon

Shallow Thoughts by Ravious

PC gaming is just starting to pick up again.  The Ravious Conglomerate moved from a being-foreclosed-on apartment condo to a nice, shiny townhome in order to give Daughter #2 her own room.  I love that Daughter #1 can now dance, skip, and sing all she wants without a crabby, lonely lady banging on her ceiling below us.  I hated yelling at Daughter #1 to not do what a young kid should always be allowed to do.  With the move and ensuing chaos, the past few weeks have been gaming light, but forsooth, I say, there was gaming nonetheless!  It was all just in bite-size form.

Guild Wars: Oh how I love your little Dibs of enjoyment.  The small amounts of farming and bartering at the weekly Traveler’s Market to get the precious gifts are nice quick hits, and I am forever in love with Fort Aspenwood.  It lets me jump in to some fun, casual PvP instantly.  Deathmatch gets old for me, but objective based PvP seems to always be fun (95% of my TF2 time is payload maps).  I put up the build I always play in Fort Aspenwood here. 

Wizard 101: I hit a stopping point because the evil overlord in charge of the Conglomerate’s accounting (read: wife) says I can’t spend any more money because of the move, security deposit, and feeding/clothing children costs.  I am right at the end of Kroktopia too!  Don’t overlords understand gameplay flow?  The lightning cave in Karanahn Barracks was seriously breathtaking.  I stood upon rocky platforms while a silent lightning storm occurred below; I logged there in quiet contemplation.  Great artistic direction for that one.  Fortunately, a bonus check is headed my way so Mass Effect and a bajillion Wizard 101 crowns will soon be mine.

Lord of the Rings Online: I don’t know how I managed to sneak this one in given the higher activation energy to play, but I did.  Two kinnies and I started on Volume 2, Book 8.  We entered the Hall of Mirrors with nary a walkthrough, and had a blast figuring the puzzles out (even with a 600 silver repair bill each).  Hall of Mirrors is a three-man dungeon with a dungeon-long puzzle of repairing reflecting mirrors to send light to Moria below.  It is fantastically designed and just challenging enough.  Hall of Mirrors and developer blogs get me very excited about where Lord of the Rings Online is headed.  Unfortunately a serious bug at the Defiler/Mistress encounter wiped us to the point where a full, tactical retreat was required.  We are armed with better knowledge (of the instance and bug workaround), and are all excited to return.  Once I have time.

–Ravious
Repent, Harlequin!

Grass is greener on the other raid planner

So my husband looked at another kin’s raid planner recently. They had all these raids set up. We were jealous… Who am I kidding. We are jealous. On the one hand, I want to gear up my character, I want to see the new raids, and I want to get back to that feeling of excitement at being at the cutting edge.

On the other hand, I only know one person in the other guild. In my current kin, I’m on friendly terms with everyone and know their name. I’ve been with them for six months. If I went over to that new guild, I might not come to be friends with anyone there, and I could really hurt my relations with my current guild.

I probably won’t go to another kin, but sometimes I wonder if I’d enjoy the game more if I left.