Bullroarer Patch Notes Update

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

local-bull-c

In addi­tion to the orig­i­nal patch notes, new fixes have been brought to Bull­roarer today. Those fixes were posted soon after the server came back online.

Bull­roarer is already turn­ing out to be more inter­est­ing than Roh­eryn was. Once some­thing was on Roh­eryn, that was pretty much it. It was far more of a pre­view server than a test­ing server. I’m glad to see that changes are being made as necessary.

There was ini­tially a typo in the notes related to slows against bosses by Hunters. This has since been cor­rected. You can read the final notes after the break.

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Eyes & Guard Now Open on Bullroarer

Tony posted this on March 11th, 2009. It has No Comments »
Categorized as News, Patch.
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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.

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.
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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.

Testing Out the New Quest Guide

Tony posted this on March 7th, 2009. It has 1 Comment »
Categorized as Editorials and Thoughts, Patch.
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Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw1256

questguide_intro

Yes­ter­day I decided to try down­load­ing the nearly 10 GB test client so I could access Bull­roarer. Nor­mally I would not have both­ered, but I thought at the very least it would be good to see first­hand how the new quest guide works.

I know this has been a point of con­tention. Per­son­ally I fall in the camp of peo­ple who feel that the quest text in the game is almost always detailed enough to get the job done. I have found that some peo­ple do not feel this way for one rea­son or another, how­ever. Sur­pris­ingly I’ve even seen some peo­ple describe the quest text as “hor­ri­ble” on the forums, which is some­thing my mind can’t even really grasp. I guess it just shows you how much opin­ions can dif­fer on almost anything.

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Bullroarer Public Test Server

Tony posted this on February 27th, 2009. It has No Comments »
Categorized as Mines of Moria, News, Patch.
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Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw1198

souv_bull_roarer

Today it was announced that LotRO is get­ting a new test server. It’s called Bull­roarer and its a bit dif­fer­ent in nature than the pre­vi­ous one, Roheryn.

Instead of being its own absolutely unique server, Bull­roarer will be a copy of an exist­ing server. Bull­roarer will open for peo­ple to test new Books before they go to the main servers and will turn off once that patch is life. The server that is copied will change each time a new Book is com­ing out. In this case it will be Elendilmir.

Here’s the offi­cial word:

Do you like try­ing out new things and see­ing new places? When some­thing is bro­ken, are you excited by the thought of fix­ing it? Are you always the first per­son to try out a new tech­nol­ogy? If you answered yes to any of these ques­tions, Bull­roarer might be the server for you!

Bull­roarer is a pub­lic test server which will be opened peri­od­i­cally to test new con­tent, still in devel­op­ment, before it is com­pleted and approved for the live servers. In order to ensure accu­rate data and a large spread of char­ac­ter lev­els, at the begin­ning of the test cycle we will wipe the server of exist­ing char­ac­ters and copy all char­ac­ters from a live server onto it. The first server to be copied onto Bull­roarer will be Elendilmir. If your char­ac­ters aren’t on Elendilmir, don’t despair! Once we feel we’ve gath­ered enough “clean” data we will enable the Eyes and Guard Tav­ern, in which you can auto-level up char­ac­ters and try out the high-level con­tent before the live servers are updated — and your server will have its chance some day, too!

Your par­tic­i­pa­tion on Bull­roarer is optional and purely vol­un­tary. In order to play on Bull­roarer, you must have an active LotRO account and abide by the terms and con­di­tions of the applic­a­ble license agree­ment, Terms of Ser­vice and Code of Conduct.