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 Interview with Turbine

Tony posted this on July 12th, 2008. It has No Comments »
Categorized as Mines of Moria, News, Rune-keeper, Shadows of Angmar, Warden.
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Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw35

Book 14 Screen Shot

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.

Book 14: New Minstrel Animations

Tony posted this on July 12th, 2008. It has No Comments »
Categorized as Minstrel, News, Shadows of Angmar.
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Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw32

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.

MMORPG​.com Explores Book 14

Tony posted this on July 12th, 2008. It has No Comments »
Categorized as News, Shadows of Angmar.
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Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw33

Book 14 Screen Shot

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.

You can check out the full arti­cle at MMORPG​.com.

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.

More on the Mines of Moria

Tony posted this on July 8th, 2008. It has No Comments »
Categorized as Mines of Moria, News.
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Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw24

Mines of Moria

The Lord of the Rings Online is my MMORPG of choice cur­rently and so you’re prob­a­bly going to be sub­jected to a lot of posts about it. Deal with it!

Allen Raucsh of Game­spy vis­ited Tur­bine to find out more about the game’s upcom­ing expan­sion, Mines of Moria. The result­ing four page arti­cle reveals some pretty inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion about the game. While not all of it is totally new per se, it is more fleshed out than what we’ve heard pre­vi­ously. Here’s a list of what I thought was interesting:

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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.

Things That Suck in MMORPGs: Patching

Tony posted this on July 5th, 2008. It has No Comments »
Categorized as Editorials and Thoughts.
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Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw20

With MMORPGs, patch­ing is a nec­es­sary evil. After all, when you have to con­sider the sheet amount of pos­si­ble device com­bi­na­tions on com­put­ers prob­lems are inevitable. Of course, there’s also major con­tent updates that come through patches, as fans can attest to for the more suc­cess­ful MMORPGs out there.

Still, wait­ing for these down­loads sucks. It espe­cially sucks for those get­ting in on the game late or those who have to rein­stall for what­ever rea­son (both of which have hap­pened to me numer­ous times).  After installing from a disc for a decent amount of time, patch­ing for hours sim­ply isn’t fun. If any­thing, it kills some of the buzz you might have had from the excite­ment of get­ting to play a new game.

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