I’ve been so focused on redoing MMeOw that actually paying attention to LotRO took a backseat. In the interests of getting myself back up to speed and making up for a week or so of no content, I thought it’d be a good idea to put together a small news/info compilation. This was a lot easier thanks to the awesome LotRO blog collective (and if you have a LotRO focused blog with a RSS feed or a MMORPG blog with a category specifally for LotRO let me know thta I can add you), so thanks guys!
Under the Banner notes that Book 8 is bringing more anti-exploit fixes and the results are apparently good this time! Very happy about that.
Turbine posted an official article about Destiny Points. I like the system’s concept, but I agree with Jaxom92 at The Middle-Earth Adventurer that the Freep side bonuses are lacking overall. Still, the bonus XP can be nice when you’re out of bonus rest XP.
As a side note, I know some people complain that they level up too quickly in this game … I often wonder how much of this speed is due largely thanks to rest XP. I feel is gathered way too easily and quickly in this game, even ignoring the Destiny Points option.
Massively continues their nice screen-shot based developer tours, this time for Book 8.
Here’s a brief update on the Anti-Exploit problems.
The problem involving water affecting AE mode has been fixed. Players on the Isengard Private Preview server are reporting positive results. As one player put it: “… if people can actually kill things in Annuminas and Tyl Ruinen, that’s HUGE news.”
There will still be cases where Anti-Exploit mode is triggered, but they should be predominantly legitimate cases where the monster cannot reach the player.
This fix will be in Book 8 and will be testable on the Bullroarer test server when Book 8 is opened there.
Once Bullroarer opens up again and is updated to Book 8, I hope that others have similar findings. I don’t spend tons of time in the areas that are most affected by this, but it’s certainly annoying. I’m glad it finally seems to be getting cleared up.
Anti-exploit issues have been a bit of a headache in LotRO for a while now. If you’re not familiar with the term, you’ve still likely come across the phenomenon. You’ll be fighting an enemy when suddenly he’ll seem get confused, stand in place and stop attacking. A spinning “!?” icon will appear over his head and he can no longer be damaged. Sometimes he’ll pop out of this and suddenly start attacking you. Sometimes not.
Obviously the anti-exploit mode has good intentions. It’s meant to keep players from defeating enemies in less than fair situations. Unfortunately, it often bugs out as explained above.
Turbine has been working on the problem, which as usual is more complicated than it may seem. They’ve been narrowing down the root causes and Dingorfin has written a post on the subject:
