MMeOw is currently down for the count, but please visit the LOTRO Combo Blog. It aggregates content from some of the best LOTRO-related blogs and podcasts on the net.
The official Lord of the Rings Online Web site has this odd tendency to only report on a lot of their more interesting news on the forum home page and not the site home page. Don’t ask me why.
Anyway, if you haven’t opened LotRO or visited the forums yet you’re in for some good news: Book 14: The Ring-forges of Eregion will be live this Tuesday, July 22nd. The servers will be offline from 6AM until 12PM Eastern time to make the switch. You can check out the patch notes too, if you wish.
If you’re like me and like to have your patches downloaded ahead of time, Turbine is offering a torrent for Book 14 right now. Just visit this page to download it. The file is 563 MBs total.
Fileplanet will also offer the file if you prefer the direct download route.
Looking forward to it! I’ll be talking about some of the things I felt were more interesting about Book 14 soon.
MMeOw is currently down for the count, but please visit the LOTRO Combo Blog. It aggregates content from some of the best LOTRO-related blogs and podcasts on the net.
MMeOw is currently down for the count, but please visit the LOTRO Combo Blog. It aggregates content from some of the best LOTRO-related blogs and podcasts on the net.
Massively’s Shawn Schuster has a new interview with Jeffrey Steefel, Adam Mersky, Meghan “Patience” Rodberg and Aaron Campbell at Turbine that deals both with Book 14 and the upcoming expansion, Mines of Moria.
The interview echoes a lot of the ideas we’ve seen in other interviews. However, there are some interesting tidbits worked in about how Turbine is dealing with the upcoming Korean release of the game, the success of their anniversary pricing, social interactions and the two new classes.
I thought this bit about the Runekeeper was particularly interesting, as we’ve gotten very little direct information on the new classes:
“They also introduce some really interesting new mechanics, such as with the Rune-keeper where you can actually tune the role of that class during combat. You can go from starting the experience of that particular combat as heavy duty DPS killing machine, and then eventually use the right skill, if you know how, to push yourself more towards a healing-buffing class. So it doesn’t force you to go find a bard to re-equip some traits, jumping out of gameplay, but at the same time it doesn’t create somebody that has every power on the planet who can overpower everybody.”
Be sure to check out the full interview on Massively.
MMeOw is currently down for the count, but please visit the LOTRO Combo Blog. It aggregates content from some of the best LOTRO-related blogs and podcasts on the net.
Minstrels have had access to several instruments for quite a while now. Unfortunately The Lord of the Rings Online never really took into account which one was equipped when using their music-based skills.
With the upcoming release of Book 14, minstrels can look forward to new animations and sounds for each of their skills based upon every equippable instrument in the game. Massively came across a video by sabacao that shows all of these off with various Minstrel skills.
[yt]Elr-q3FNBRE[/yt]
MMeOw is currently down for the count, but please visit the LOTRO Combo Blog. It aggregates content from some of the best LOTRO-related blogs and podcasts on the net.
Keith Cross of MMORPG.com had a chance to visit Turbine’s offices recently, where the developers showed off the upcoming Book 14: The Ring-Forges of Eregion. The article focuses pretty heavily on the new NPCs we’ll be dealing with as well as enhanced session play.
We’ve heard a bit about the upgraded Town Crier NPC in previous updates for Book 14. Instead of being essentially useless, speaking to Town Criers will now open up a menu that displays all current events and information on how to reach them. This is going to be very helpful considering that during previous events I always felt like I was forced to check the forums to find out exactly what was going on. I think this is made more exciting by the news that the team will be adding more live events in the future.
Cross also discusses the Sage NPC. Apparently Sages will now give out new repeatable quests and session play options. These new session play quests will allow you to play through story arcs as both good and bad characters, getting a new perspective on the story. Players will be given special tokens from some of these quests, which can be traded in for items and equipment. Interestingly, according to Cross, the more high end gear offered by the Sage has been available previously in the game .… It’s mostly meant as a way to get equipment you might have messed (and, I assume, equipment you might have been interested in, but only one of several was selectable upon finishing a quest).
Turbine is wrapping up Volume I of The Lord of the Rings Online with Book 14, so it seems to make a lot of sense for them to focus on really enhancing the existing story. This game is pretty much the only MMORPG where I’ve bothered to read the quest text, so it’s something I will certainly appreciate. I think this approach to story, something that is a regretfully passive experience in most MMORPGs, will only bode good things for the release of Mines of Moria.
Building Middle-Earth: The Shire: I sometimes need to remind myself how amazing 3D computer generated worlds are. When I was a little gaming-brat I used ...
