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.

Preliminary Book 8 Notes Coming Today, Bullroarer to Open

Tony posted this on May 21st, 2009. It has No Comments »
Categorized as News, Patch.
Tagged as , , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw1730

The pre­lim­i­nary Book 8 patch notes will be up tonight, some­time before Bull­roarer opens with the patch at 7PM EST. Sapi­ence warns that Bull­roarer is going live with a ver­sion of the game that has some things that the final ver­sion of the patch will not actu­ally have.

As an exam­ple, he cites that on Bull­roarer First Age Leg­endary Items will be bind on acquire. This change will be noted in the pre­lim­i­nary Book 8 patch notes that will go up today. This change was reverted the other day and is too new to be part of the ver­sion of the game that will be on Bullroarer.

Despite this, once the final ver­sion of Book 8 hits all the nor­mal servers this note will no longer be true. First Age Leg­endary items will not be bind on acquire at that time.

So what­ever hap­pens with these notes, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber these are not nec­es­sar­ily final. Things could be removed, added or adjusted. Sapi­ence says the notes won’t con­tain all the new addi­tions to the game either … but he’s cut us a bit of slack with this one:

Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to give you one lit­tle sneak peek.

  • All rep­u­ta­tion tokens now stack to 100.

No more piles of Math­oms for me!

And later this bit of nice news (and impli­ca­tions)… I used bold for emphasis:

It’s funny you should men­tions ‘tasty secrets’. See­ing as most food items will now stack to 50 and travel rations to 100.

Did I say that out loud?

Seri­ously, my hands are tied right now. Patience is review­ing my rough draft to make sure I didn’t do any­thing stu­pid like spell my name wrong or some­thing (it hap­pens! That i before e thing really trips me up some­times!). Until she gives me the green light I’m forced to be a big ol’ meanie and tell you absolutely noth­ing about the new barter tokens for first ages. Not a word!

If you’d like to test every­thing out on Bull­roarer, you have to down­load a dif­fer­ent client. You can get read more about that at this link: http://​forums​.lotro​.com/​s​h​o​w​t​h​r​e​a​d​.​p​h​p​?​t​=​2​6​8​325.

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.

Bullroarer Stress Test Was a Success

Tony posted this on May 15th, 2009. It has 3 Comments »
Categorized as News.
Tagged as , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw1690

Last night Tur­bine held a small event on the Bull­roarer test server. This event was meant to stress test the server to give them more data to help improve the reli­a­bil­ity of the main servers we usu­ally play on.

Don’t feel too bad if you missed out. It was largely a laggy, unplayable expe­ri­ence. There were a lot of peo­ple online, but on top of that Tur­bine cre­ated sit­u­a­tions we don’t see in-game such as attacks on friendly areas like the 21st Hall and Imladris. Per­son­ally, I was unable to get there as I was rub­ber­band­ing like crazy. :)

Despite that, it was def­i­nitely a worth­while thing to par­tic­i­pate in if you had the time (of course, the con­test prizes help, but per­son­ally I’m happy to be part of help­ing improve the servers haha). If this data can help Tur­bine improve the servers and stop some of the issues we had seen over the past cou­ple of months, then I think it was a huge suc­cess for every­one. Tur­bine was def­i­nitely happy with the results:

Mar­ketroid: It’s not that sim­ple. We’ve been adjust­ing and mon­i­tor­ing many dif­fer­ent aspects of server per­for­mance tonight. Most of that isn’t vis­i­ble to users. So even if all you did wa stand in place and lag, every per­son who was logged in today con­tributed to us lear­ing more about our new server tech improvements.

Those improve­ments will find their way into the game soon, and every­one should benefit.

Thanks to every­one who participated!

and

Mar­ketroid: The test is still run­ning for about another hour and it’s been a suc­cess. That means we’re waaaaaay over­load­ing the servers. Because of the load, play­ers may not be able to log back into the test world before the end of the event.

If you have already been in the event tonight or logged into the Bull­roarer launcher then we’ve got your entry in the contest.

Thanks to every­one who turned out tonight!

Did any­one have any bet­ter luck get­ting in on the real action than I did?

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.

Bullroarer Patch Notes Update

Tony posted this on March 11th, 2009. It has No Comments »
Categorized as Mines of Moria, News, Patch.
Tagged as , , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw1302

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.

Eyes & Guard Now Open on Bullroarer

Tony posted this on March 11th, 2009. It has No Comments »
Categorized as News, Patch.
Tagged as , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw1295

screenshot00159

As noted in my last post, Eyes & Guard was set to go live today.  There was a bit of a delay, but the tav­ern is now avail­able in-game. Patience offers a warn­ing, how­ever:

The Eyes & Guard Tav­ern is now open for busi­ness! How­ever, as many of you have found, the level-up process is not work­ing cor­rectly; Keth is only tak­ing char­ac­ters to level 49 with approx­i­mately 15% left to get to 50.

Here is the workaround from our QA team:

Workaround for Keth

1. Use Keth to get to level 49
2. Use Tens and take Book 1 Vol­umes 1 – 5. This will get you to 50
a. You will be ported to Combe after Book 1. You will have to Map back.
b. Do not go past Book 5. This will give you too much XP if you wish to use Liu Tsieng.
c. Assure it is Vol­ume 1 you are doing. If you take the Vol­ume II quest it will give you too much XP to use Liu Tsieng.
The only other way is to grind the XP to 50 manually.

You can then pro­ceed to Level 60 if you wish:

1. Go to Liu Tsieng and take the 5 quests that will level you to 60
2. Go back to Tens and take the Vol­ume II Book 1 level Up
a. This will give you Moria access
b. This will place 2 unde­stroy­able Leg­endary Items in your bags
c. This will port you to the Hollin Gate
Sorry for the incon­ve­nience, and be care­ful out there!

There are appar­ently at least a cou­ple Eyes & Guard tav­erns in the game, but the one I used is in Frerin’s Court out­side of Thorin’s Hall. The screen­shot above is of the entrance.

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.

Bullroarer Updates to New Build Tomorrow, Eyes & Guard to Open

Tony posted this on March 10th, 2009. It has No Comments »
Categorized as Mines of Moria, News, Patch.
Tagged as , , , , , .
Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw1284

bricklaying_large

Thought this might be of inter­est to some of you test server fans out there:

The Bull­roarer Test Server will be brought down on Wednes­day, March 11 from 6:00 AM — 12:00 PM East­ern (-4 GMT) for an update. All live servers will remain up and avail­able dur­ing the down­time. We’re com­pil­ing a list of changes and will have them for you shortly. Thanks for your patience.

And …

We have news! Assum­ing the new build passes QA, we’ll be updat­ing Bull­roarer tomor­row, and will be open­ing the Eyes & Guard Tav­ern as well. So, while not 100% guar­an­teed that we won’t run into a delay, that’s the cur­rent plan.

So these updates tomor­row will bring the server up to date with a new build. Exact changes will be posted on the site at some point and the Eyes & Guard Tav­ern will be open­ing up. For those not famil­iar, the Tav­ern allows you to level up your char­ac­ter so you can test out higher level content.

Wednes­day Update: The changes are live, but E&G and the patch notes have yet to appear. Patience has posted that both will be avail­able soon. I’ll edit this post when it’s time.