Siege of Mirkwood: The nitty-gritty details begin to emerge!

Isy posted this on November 8th, 2009. It has 1 Comment »
Categorized as News, Siege of Mirkwood.
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Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw2373

LOTRO_Mirkwood_Logo

Tipped off by my kin­nie Havborn, I have come across an exclu­sive album of Siege of Mirk­wood screen­shots at The Mad­house Tav­ern (a Euro­pean LotRO fan­site). I strongly rec­om­mend head­ing over to the site to peruse the pic­tures your­self as they reveal a lot of small but rel­e­vant tid­bits relat­ing to the Mirk­wood region and skir­mishes!  Some of the most rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion includes:

  • Hunters and War­dens will be able to port/muster to Mirkeaves if they gain acquain­tance rep­u­ta­tion with the Malladhrim.
  • Carn Dum and Uru­gath class items (e.g. Putrid Slime of Helchgam) is trade­able with Skir­mish Marks
  • Skir­mish marks can also get you a lot of craft­ing mate­ri­als includ­ing shards (e.g. Mithril Flakes and Ruby Shards). The craft­ing sec­tion also  includes ‘Tomes of Mid­dle Earth’ which may be new crit-items or ingre­di­ents for craft­ing items between Lvls 60 – 65.
  • The in-game menu has been updated and includes a more colour­ful lay­out with more options. Our char­ac­ter pan­els will also be sub­di­vided into tabs based upon our mit­i­ga­tions and damage-output. Minor  but pos­i­tive changes!
  • At least 3 skir­mishes will be based in Mirk­wood / Dol Gul­dur, and are designed for those at the new level cap of 65.

Thanks to the Mad­house Tavern’s brief write-up of Krispy’s hands-on with the expan­sion, it seems that:

  • Crafters can make 1st Age legendaries.
  • Some class leg­endary skills which the player-base have deemed use­less, are being replcaed or modified.
  • You get to use war-machines dur­ing some of the quests/skirmishes!

Watch Out for the Swamp Thing

Tony posted this on January 8th, 2009. It has No Comments »
Categorized as News, Warden.
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Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw1064

Swamped One

RGilthanas has a post on the offi­cial LotRO forums about an encounter with “The Swamped One”. This creepy, violet-colored crea­ture is both Elite and Level 60 and was (under­stand­ably) pretty much imper­vi­ous to all of RGilthanas’s Level 51 abilities.

It turns out that The Swamped One is actu­ally a spe­cial mob for the War­den’s class quests. He’s sup­posed to spawn in the Foun­da­tions of Stone in Moria, but appar­ently has been pop­ping up else­where. It might be a bit of fun to take him out if you’re capa­ble, but every­one else should just avoid him entirely.

Patience says as dev looked into this and said the fol­low­ing:

The logic gov­ern­ing his spawn­ing was flawed, result­ing in some rather unfair behav­ior towards low level char­ac­ters. I’ve made and sub­mit­ted fixes for this that will go in the next build inter­nally and will ulti­mately end up on the live worlds.

Until then, that place is evil, don’t go near it =)

Should be fixed soon. In the mean­time, I thought it was pretty amus­ing.

Rune-keeper and Warden Developer Diary Video

Tony posted this on October 31st, 2008. It has 1 Comment »
Categorized as Mines of Moria, Rune-keeper, Warden.
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Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw742

MMORPG​.com posted a new Devel­oper Diary Video today. I can’t seem to fig­ure out where they got it and unfor­tu­nately they don’t allow you to embed their videos elsewhere.

The video gives some gen­eral details on the new War­den and Rune-keeper classes, nar­rated by Cardell Kerr, Cre­ative Direc­tor, and Ryan Bed­nar, Lead Game Sys­tems Designer. While it doesn’t offer any new infor­ma­tion, it is a nice way to see both of the classes in action.

Captains, Guardians and Wardens Beyond Level 50

Tony posted this on October 20th, 2008. It has No Comments »
Categorized as Captain, Guardian, Mines of Moria, Warden.
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Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw680

Another group of three Devel­oper Diaries have appeared on the offi­cial LotRO Web site. This time around, they cover the Guardian, Cap­tain and War­den’s advance­ment beyond Level 50. As with the other classes, each diary dis­cusses equip­ment options, skill adjust­ments, new skills and three new Trait Sets.

Read the rest of this entry »

Even More on the Warden

Tony posted this on October 16th, 2008. It has No Comments »
Categorized as Mines of Moria, Warden.
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Shorthand Link: http://mmeow.net/tw640

The offi­cial LotRO site updated today with even more infor­ma­tion on the new War­den class. The arti­cle deals with the pur­pose of the class, who will enjoy it most and what it’s role will be in the game. Elves, Men and Hob­bits can all be part of this class. Dwarves are sadly out of luck.

The arti­cle gives more of an idea of how Gam­bits will work for War­dens early on as well. Here’s a small excerpt:

“You read the Gam­bit panel from left to right. As you add icons to the panel, the right­most sym­bol — the one in the shield — changes to reveal the par­tic­u­lar Gam­bit the cur­rent icons add up to. When you have the com­bi­na­tion of icons you want, just press a sin­gle hotkey to trig­ger what­ever Gam­bit is cur­rently ready in the panel.

Every time you use one of those core attack skills, you build toward a poten­tial Gam­bit. The ques­tion you must always ask your­self while play­ing the War­den is this: How far do you want to go?”

Be sure to check out the full arti­cle, the class really sounds like it’s com­ing together won­der­fully. I’m really happy that both this and the Rune-keeper are offer­ing some­thing sig­nif­i­cantly new to the game and are not just sim­ple exten­tions of exist­ing classes.

Gamespot also has a new trailer for the class, giv­ing you an idea of ani­ma­tions and skills. It doesn’t dis­play the HUD, so you won’t see Gam­bits in action. There’s also one of the Rune-keeper that I missed yes­ter­day.