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Turbine Unveils Special Pre-Launch Offers Including the New LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack

WESTWOOD, MA – September 29, 2009-- Turbine, Inc. announced today that The Lord of the Rings Online™: Siege of Mirkwood™, the new digital expansion to the 2008 MMO of the Year will launch on December 1st in North America. Turbine also unveiled The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) Adventurer’s Pack which contains what every player needs to survive in the chaos of Mirkwood! Siege of Mirkwood and the LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack are scheduled to launch on December 1, 2009.

SIEGE OF MIRKWOOD PRE-LAUNCH OFFERS
Starting today, players can take can take advantage of several special pre-launch offers to celebrate the release of the second expansion to LOTRO:

    * The LOTRO Lifetime Membership is now available for $199.
    * Any current or former player who renews or upgrades their subscription to any multi-month plan by October 31st gets the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion for FREE!
    * All players can pre-order the new LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack which contains 2 character slots and one shared storage slot that allows players to share items with all of their characters on the same server for $19.99 and get the Harbinger’s Cloak which provides 8% speed boost and the Dusky Nimblefoot Goat mount for FREE!
    * Starting today, existing Lifetime Members who pre-order the LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack get the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion plus two in-game items (Harbinger’s Cloak which provides an 8% speed boost and a new mount) for FREE!


These special offers will be available for a limited time. For more information, please visit www.lotro.com/mirkwood.

The Lord of the Rings Online is an award-winning MMORPG that delivers an interactive experience brimming with life and filled with the familiar people, places and monsters from the most beloved fantasy adventure of all time. From the picturesque surroundings of the Shire to Moria, the great underground realm to the menace of Mirkwood, players will experience the world of Middle-earth as never before. The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood will be available as a digital download for $19.99 or as a bundle with the LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack plus a new mount for $39.99 on December 1, 2009. For more information or to download a free trial, visit www.lotro.com.

About Turbine
Turbine, Inc. is the premier creator and operator of massive, persistent online worlds that foster powerful social gaming communities. Turbine has grown to become one of the largest privately-held online gaming studios in North America. Turbine has created some of the world’s most popular and award-winning online games, including The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™, Dungeons & Dragons Online® and Asheron's Call®. For more information on Turbine, its products and services please visit www.turbine.com.

About Tolkien Enterprises
The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Tolkien Enterprises is the holder of worldwide motion picture, legitimate stage, merchandising, and other rights in J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary works The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Tolkien Enterprises has been producing and licensing films, stage productions and merchandise based on Tolkien’s works for more than 30 years. Its headquarters are in Berkeley, California, and its website may be found at www.tolkien-ent.com.


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“The Lord of the Rings Online,” “Siege of Mirkwood,” “Mines of Moria,” “Shadows of Angmar,” “Middle-earth,” “The Lord of the Rings,” and the names of the characters, events, items and places therein are trademarks or registered trademarks of The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Tolkien Enterprises under license to Turbine, Inc. Turbine and the Turbine logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Turbine, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


Notice: When pre-ordering Siege of Mirkwood, Lifetime Members may see multiple copies of their current price plan displayed on the upgrade page when completing an order. This is a display issue only. Choosing either Lifetime option will not change the player’s current Lifetime plan, nor will it charge them again.

You can choose to go into a multi-month price plan, save about 33% over regular monthly fees and get Mirkwood for free! If you're already in one of our special Founder's multi-month plans, then as long as you keep your account active through Mirkwood's launch you'll get Mirkwood for free. Lastly, if you happen to be in a $9.99 monthly plan from launch, you can switch to a multi-month plan at the same base rate and get Mirkwood for free. Hopefully one of these options is applicable to you.
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It seems odd, took me a while to figure out they're selling 2 different things, Siege of Mirkwood and the Adventure Pack (2 char slots and shared bank) Yet Mirkwood is pretty much free for anyone who cares.

Seems an odd marketing announcement. Once the site is no longer in meltdown I'll pickup the Adventure Pack, $20 seems reasonable for Mirkwood and a Goat.

Is the GA revamp in yet?

Players can now gain access to their first horse or pony at level 20.

15 if you have a founders account  :grin:
And hunter runspeed will work while mounted  :drill:

If you already subscribe via a multi-month plan you're all set. Just keep your plan active through the launch of Mirkwood and it's free!

So is the sow cloak 8% speed increaser cloak exclusive to lifetime subs? If so, blergh.

Looks nice though.

My peeves are that you can't dye it

Man, why doesn't my hi-rez game look that good? I swear it's like the game is only telling me I have hi-rez textures or something.

Well, there are definitely some variances in texture quality, if you ask me.  Some of them really pop, like the gravel on the east bank of Bruinen ford, while others are kinda meh.  Seems like certain roads are like that, maybe the one north out of Aughaire but can't recall.  Mostly I just notice the awesome textures and don't notice the not-as-awesome ones.

O.o

Yet another instance we entered was the Dungeons of Dol Guldur, described to us as a game of cat and mouse. It's set up as a prison, where it was up to us to rescue several prisoners caught in jail rooms. The interesting thing here is that each room is randomized, so you could open the door to either a prisoner in need of rescue, or some enemies who aren't very pleased at being disturbed. Each time you enter the instance, these rooms are different, so there's no way a player can memorize patterns.

The guards in this instance are a whole different challenge. They have patrol patterns (also randomized) that keep you on your toes while searching for prisoners to rescue. If the guards catch you, they turn the tides by throwing you in jail, which requires a really long time to break out; just long enough to make you not want to get caught! Luckily, there are poppy seed barrels you can find scattered around the dungeon that act as traps to put the guards to sleep for a short time.

At the end of it all, you will face The Warden who is not exactly willing to show you the way out alive. One of your incentives to gather as many prisoners as you can (before the final alarm sounds) is that these prisoners will helps you in this final boss battle. The more you rescue, the more you'll have on your side.

Massively has a few details on Skirmishes and the raids in Dol Guldur. (http://www.massively.com/2009/10/26/lotro-siege-of-mirkwood-developer-tour/)

why don't they just improve the LFG system to start?  It's arguable the worst of a lot of MMO's.  Certainly worst than DDO.

Seems like a quest structure issue.  Since everything is repeatable its still useful for me to respond to lfm ad for a quest that I have already completed.  In LotRO, quests are once and there lots of chains, so odds of a lfm being beneficial are greatly reduced.  Which is why I think you see people shout with names of 3 or 4 quests in their lfg, it's the best odds of finding someone in the on the same quests as you.  If the lfg system allowed people multi-select quests needed, it would be more relevant.

I would agree that some easy improvements would be to have a chain flagged, also allow multiple LFF-tagged quests.  Even grouping with my wife, we have a hard time figuring out which quest one of us needs to pick up or advance to catch up, so even the chains themselves could be made easier to handle in the UI.

It's sad when adding a GLFF channel is considered an improvement.

MWB the tool is not global it's only regional.  It also doesn't show stages on a quest (IIRC).  And like you say nobody uses it.  So it just needs more publicity, some user education, and some design changes. 

Its global, type in any zone name. The main issue is no one uses it.

Its global, type in any zone name.

Maybe they need to yank /lff then, force these wowtards to use it.  No, that won't work, but it won't hurt to "relaunch" the tool even if they only make cosmetic changes since it is already awesome(?).  But!  Also make the tool easier to use.  And global (for realz yo).  And show quest chains... somewhere.

Offering to share a quest with my wife is great but if she is already somewhere in the chain then such a thing is useless.  It would be GREAT if I could look at a particular quest and have it show me the chain (as in a list of subquests), or even just filter the quest list by chain name and let me puzzle it out, just anything so we could figure out which quest(s) she or I need to do so that we can both be at the same point in the chain.  I'm all on board with Numtini here, this system can use lots of improvements and it is sad that the fellowshiping system is not on par with the quests themselves.

See, that's a great example of why I drifted away from LOTRO slowly. They aren't good at the item grind. They keep adding them. Big grinds. Which doesn't mean that I won't get Mirkwood but it does mean that I'm not keen on doing Mirkwood endgame. Another Radiance grind is not my idea of a good time.

Is it just me or don't all aging games seem to drift toward grinds. Probably due to development costs and efficiencies but whatever, they seem to head that direction.

No, not saying they're Radiance grinds literally. I'm comparing the potential obnoxiousness of it with the Radiance grind. Although there is going to be another Radiance set with super gear gating again, isn't there?

We are pleased to announce the Non-Disclosure Agreement for the Siege of Mirkwood Beta has been lifted, and our beta players are free to talk about their experiences in the beta! We hope all of our players enjoy the Skirmish event tonight, and look forward to your feedback and discussion! (http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=4182788#post4182788)

I am looking forward to skirmishes for one major reason. They can be joined by anyone anywhere. Meaning we in the guild can be doing our thing solo/duo and then get ported to the kinship skirmish action as a group, and when all done, placed back where we were. I think its going to be a major feature for grouping and respecting peoples playtime.

Sadly, the new backpacks are the only good cosmetic outfits they added.  I was horribly disappointed by the actual outfits.

The visual quality of that backpack is WAY off.

There's a lot coming out with SoM so little things can slip through the cracks.  Here's something that jumped out to me that can be shared now that the NDA is lifted.

1.  The pages are now quest items (I guess that means all of them can be sold on the AH instead of just one trait's worth?)
2.  The books are available from your class trainer at lvl 39.
3.  The drop zones are expanded.  The 1st 4 drop in Angmar/Eregion and the other 4 drop in MM/Forochel.

cheers.

Really now?

Yegolev , look at the top bar there... Next to hide when crafting. :)

Just what was it that I wanted a search function for?  Besides the quest screen.

The vendor window.

WarCry Naithan: hi! do you consider change the trade system, so that the items you trade will stack with the same items at your inventory? Also put items in bank with the right click and stack as well to the existing ones!
Orion: We can take a look into that, though there is no definable time frame that we can offer at this point in time.

...the whole "'Coal' is now 'Lump of Coal'" episode came back to me.

Every time I see a bush labeled "Handful of Blueberries" this change annoys me anew.