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First Information on Book 8 and Beyond: Mirkwood, Skirmishes, Summer Festival and Level Caps
Tony posted this on April 24th, 2009.
Tagged as Book 8, Level Cap, Mirkwood, Skirmishes, Summer Festival.
Categorized as Mines of Moria, News, Patch.
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw1601
Massively edited the article after Turbine made some clarifications, such as Mirkwood will be coming later this year, not in Book 8…
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Lame, I guess I jumped on that too quickly.
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I’m not in-game to look at my map but isn’t Mirkwood down close to Rohan? Turbine did say we wouldn’t get as far into Mirkwood as the Old Forest Road yet but… if Mirkwood is the final Book update before the (alleged) Rohan expansion, I can see that happening much like they did Lothlorien: give a little taste-test part of the zone then save the rest for the first post-expansion update.
Customizable soldiers… should I wonder if that means an updated version of DDO’s Hirelings, or something else entirely?
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Never mind, I just checked the map and Fangorn is the area I was thinking of. Mirkwood is quite a large area to the east of Lothlorien, so it’s anyone’s guess what their ultimate plans will be.
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I love the idea of instances that scale to party size … that solves so many problem at once that I just love it
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It sounds like they’re bringing some of the new tech they’re working on in the upcoming DDO update into LOTRO with those scaling instances. With DDO, however, it almost sounds like they’re retroactively applying it to every instance in the game.
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Sounds like just Dol Guldur is coming out as a book instance. They have previously said that the new 8-boss 12-man raid coming out will be on the eastern side of the Foundations of Stone, so i’m sure that Dol Guldur will not be the new 8-man raid.
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I’m a little concerned about the level cap getting raised again. I like Endgame, when all of my friends eventually get to the same level and can enjoy challenging and group-balanced content together.
I’m not a big fan of the levels always heading upwards. I know that many people prefer the leveling experience, but I’d like to think there are just as many (or more) fans of Endgame.
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I agree, but I’ve never been a fan of the way DikuMMOs handle levels. I would have been perfectly happy if LOTRO had left well enough alone with a level cap of 50 and everything else as more horizontal advancement, but I’m in the minority.
But we all knew the next expansion would raise the level cap yet again. Personally, knowing and accepting that LOTRO is a traditional levels game (and Moria is turning it into a gear game too) I’d at least prefer if they’d stick with the annual expansion schedule but switch to raising the level cap biannually.
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