f13.net

This is the sum total of information at the link:


http://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/warner-bros-interactive-entertainment-and-turbine-announce-lord-rings-online%E2%84%A2-helm%E2%80%99s

Hm.   

Can I opt out of legendary weapons yet?  :heartbreak:

That's a lot of levels. I think my main is around... 62? I don't think levelling has gotten any easier, or has it?

I dunno.  I'm back in and dumped maybe $50 or more in the last few weeks on convenience items and fast crafting.  I'm leveling alts and enjoying the ride, since I don't own the last 3 (!) expansions.  Don't feel I have to own them, and not sure I want to.  I like feeling good with my lvl 65 2nd age bow.   Any higher and things start to feel... well you know.   Everyone is at the cap and chasing teal recipes ("this-has-all-happened-before-and-will-happen-again") in 6-man and 12-man's.  I've been happy with the new Moria but things don't seem really that fast TBH.  I think you can play LotRO, watch GLFF, and ignore the expansions.

Still wish they had a cross server instance finder, since one can't queue up and wait for anything.  

Edit: people seem disappointed with War Horses, but I have no idea.  War Horses were the last major new feature added to the game, other than the usual run-o-the-mill content grinding and economy sinks.  Yay currencies.

What was improved about Moria? That part broke my will to play the game within like 1 or 2 levels of entering the zone.

Same here. Moria just sucked the life out of me and when the free to play transition tried to make me pay extra for instant travel via horse I was done.

There were many small changes -- like making sure there is consistent lighting, adding way more goat routes -- to full passes on quests.  It feels faster and more fun.  I actually enjoyed it. But to be clear, I got as far as Redhorn Lodes and Fiery Deeps -- I didn't bother with ShadowyPitFungusPlace or the CavernousBalrogHole zone after.  I just went straight into Dimril Dale and start raising my Lorien rep.  I also *always* skip Nud Melek, which is that hateful zones of hallways and stairways with LoS failures southwards below the 21st Hall.  Skip those.

Here are some summaries with links:

http://casualstrolltomordor.com/2012/05/dev-diary-update-7-moria/
http://casualstrolltomordor.com/2012/12/update-9-moria-revamp-part-2/

My impression of the Dimril Dale orc camps (from having played through them over a year ago) was that they'd be quite harsh for a soloer, unless that soloer was accompanied by a mass of other soloers, if you catch my drift.

In other words, it felt like Turbine tuned it to accommodate a rush of levelers for the first days of the expansion, and then left it.

Fortunately I was duoing with my brother, so it was more of a fun challenge than a death trap.

While Moria made most of my guild quit, Lothlorien was the area that broke the camel's back. SO MUCH FUCKING BACKTRACKING. It went like this:

Go kill x orcs at orc camp 1, orc camp 2, orc camp 3, and return.
Next quest: Go gather y items at orc camp 1, orc camp 2, orc camp 3, and return.
Next quest: Go kill some named mobs at orc camp 1, orc camp 2, orc camp 3, and return.

I mean, I've seen some bad quest design, but jebus... next time I'm bringing a pickup truck with me and just putting the entire orc camp on it, so I can turn those quests in all at once.

And after that came the Lorien rep grind through boring-as-heck daily quests. Hnnng. (I understand it's not needed nowadays, thank cthulhu)

Unfortunately, that's the design that's used in Rise of Isengard as well. There were many places I found first by simply exploring, and but there was no playable content yet because I hadn't "unlocked" the area by completing previous story quests elsewhere. Then I'd get 2, 3 quests in a row that would send me back to the same area. Individual quests in ROI are often clever and original (the tech they've added is quite robust), but the way hubs are chained is actively hostile to explorer-types. Terrible, terrible region design.

I miss how Fallen Earth would send you someplace for a kill or collect, and if you took the initiative to defeat the local boss, he'd drop a head that was an alternate on-ramp for the next quest in the chain.

Yeah, I slogged thru Moria, endured Lothlorien and overcame Mirkwood only to finally quit in ROI.  Too many narrow channels, poor quest layout, etc.  I rode out to see Orthanc then logged out.

I might take it back up if I can hang out in Rohan at 10th level though.  Honestly, this is a good game, I just got tired of it.

I fucking loved Moria and you're all crazy! No MMO has ever conveyed vertical scale like LOTRO in Moria. It was just as I pictured it when I was a kid.

So, this. I didn't buy the last expansion because they didn't have the dungeons in at release (they didn't come until what, three months later?). And I'd just sort of played it out. Loved it. Still sort of love it. Might jump back in, just to see Helm's Deep. I wish they'd do something more with the PvP. It's time for a new zone and a new outlook.

Yeah I think Moria was a pretty amazing achievement. I mean, I don't think I'd want to level through it again, but I'm glad I did and glad I saw it.

I got there late to the party, but Moria was fantastic. The most fun I've ever had in LOTRO. Unfortunately, once you leave the doors, it goes downhill really really fast.

I'm likely doing something incredibly wrong, but my main is level 33. Gaining levels feels like a walk through knee deep mud. It is such a slog to gain even one level. I cannot imagine ever attaining level 65, let alone 95. Honestly, I think this game has the leveling speed that is closest to EQ1. But, as I said, I could be doing something wrong.

Quest XP?  Leveling via monsters is horrendous.

You are doing something wrong. Go to new area.

Hmm. Ok. Have been doing nothing but quests, but it still seems god-awful slow. Am I high enough to start poking around in the Trollshaws?

If it helps, LOTRO levelling in my experience has been slow as molasses compared to other DIKUs. Have they modified the XP curve in the last 4 years or so (after that one patch way-back-when) at all? After several expansions, it's usually customary to greatly speed up levelling for vanilla content as well as 'old' expansions...

I never noticed it being tremendously slow during my occasional visits. I outleveled zones fairly often, actually.

Well, my only real frame of comparison is WOW, and everything is slow as molasses compared to that.  :grin:

It's not just the xp curve, either. There was a LOT of downtime while levelling and doing quests (especially in pre-Moria zones)... like, I'd spend 30 minutes on horse rides just to get to the next step of the epic quest, and lots of riding around between quest 'hubs' and the destination. There were also way, way, way too many group quests that were impossible or hugely tedious to solo (small-group quests were OK to solo, but they were rare). They may have addressed these problems with the way-overdue zone revamp 1-2 years ago, but... yeah.

The one good thing about Moria (and the outside zone) was that quests flowed about as well as WOW-BC -- which was a huge improvement, actually (and I was pretty much the only person in my guild who didn't outright hate Moria... well, I wasn't crazy about that winding "flight path" that took 10+ minutes for no good reason and I had to crank up the alpha WAY too much in the silverlode mines in order to see anything, but eh). Then Lothlorien came out, and with it, the clownshoes were strapped right back on.

Here is a page that tells you what level quests/mobs are in each zone. (http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Zones_by_level)

If you're 33, there should be some level appropriate questing to do in Trollshaws, North Downs, and Evendim.

Yes, on downtime I *definitely* agree. My self-appointed mission in LOTRO is to do the entire epic, and because I was skipping stuff and burning through the epic I cannot tell you how much time I spent on horseback just to stop in and tell Elrond 2 or 3 sentences before he sent me back to wherever I came from, repeat ad infinitum.

The leveling curve is slow if you are a completionist like me.  Lotro has way more quests and quest lines than you need to level, which is good!  It gives you options.  However, just simply following the story line will have you out leveling the content, even if you do nothing else.  At various points, if leveling is your primary concern, you just have to stop what you are doing and move to a higher area/zone.

Also, the 30's is a pretty low point leveling wise.  I have several alts that I could never seem to get out of those ranks without getting distracted.

Chiming in late to say that Moria was also my favorite part of LOTRO. It felt real, like an underground city could exist and this might be what it would like like if a kingdom inhabited it. I finished it up a few months before RoI came out and immediately lost interest in playing after taking a few quests in Lothlorien/Mirkwood. They all just felt like generic MMO zones after Moria. It stands as my favorite area so far in any MMO.

You can actually get bogged down the other way: doing too many quests.  I didn't think that was the case, but maybe so.

That's what happens to me.  I hate dropping them, but there are so many, even if done in order, that you out-level the xp curve.

Awesome. Thanks for all of the information and feedback. It sounds like I am running into several issues: the 30s being a slow decade to work through, having too many quests that are too low to make much of a ding in the experience bar, and not leveling in the right places. I'm off to bigger and better vistas!

Apologies for de-railing the thread. Please resume the discussion of Helm's Deep and bitching about Moria. :D

So, back to bitching about region design post-RoI.

I ventured into Great River via dead reckoning - I had no quest on-ramp, so I just went south from Lothlorien. After completing a couple of super-basic quests at the forest's edge it took me over an hour to find more content that was available to me.

Over.

An.

Hour.

This is absolutely awful design. Whatever clueless manager was responsible for the decision to chain content like this should be transferred to QA so they can spend all day running around to make sure no quest is available if it shouldn't be. Or janitorial.

They were laid off.

Twenty questions about how the Helm's Deep battles will work. (https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?519694-20-Questions-%E2%80%93-Big-Battles)

Relevant to My Interests: you can do them solo.

So we got a dev chat today about the upcoming revamp of class traits converting from a mix and match system to trees.

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?521014-TRANSCRIPT-Twitter-Dev-Chat-August-21-2013-Class-Changes

Seems many of the old timers who really tweaked with the old system are very concerned. Target if for 20 skills per class and some classes have many more then that now. So the complex and utility class will get hit the hardest. ( I think I saw a post from Stormy on the forums to that effect).

They seem to be really throwing the deck of cards up in the air here and although past performance is not an assurance of future results, there is good reason for concern. If the expansion hits by years end, I think we could be looking at next summer before the boat is upright and steering properly again.

Here's my beef:  I don't get to play very often, but when I do I have to reallocate my fucking legendary points, seemingly every god-damned time.  There was already a UI change that caused me to scratch my head when looking at traits and virtues, and now all that shit that I figured out is going to be flushed down the hobbit hole.  I'd really like it if they could just fix the existing problems and not create new ones.

Yeah, I was among those concerned. I adore my Lore-Master. She's a Swiss Army Astromech Droid. They're pushing very hard on "specialize" when the LM playstyle has always been "generalize."

In other Helm's Deep news: dirty hackz0rz extract possible expansion maps from game data (http://www.containsmoderateperil.com/helms-deep-map/).

Has there been anything posted recently revealing these new "class trees"?  Everything I'm finding is all dated from back in March.

I've never been a fan of the skills with very high cooldowns, but I'm hoping they don't dumb it down too much with twenty.  Does anyone know if you can start a new toon in Rohan?  I heard something about being able to go there at level 10.  Hope so.  Love the game, but it's oooollllddd.

I think you might be half-remembering one of the Helm's Deep things, where you can get into the HD instances starting from level 10 and get auto-levelled up to 95.

I don't know of any way to start a character except in the traditional way, though one of the expansions (RoI?) gave everyone a rock that would improve their XP gain until they reached the level of that expansion.

OK thanks.  Not going to start a new toon, but might log on to see the skill revamp.  Highest guy I have is a 83 mini.

At 83 the opening areas of Rohan will con green to you, with occasionally light blues.

Screenies on a German site:

http://www.hdr-seite.de/witn/screenshots.html?go=gallery&catid=23&page=3 (http://www.hdr-seite.de/witn/screenshots.html?go=gallery&catid=23&page=3)

General comments:

It looks to be greener and have a more varied terrain then RoR.

There is a screenie of the talent tree.. leaves many questions about the class revamp unanswered of course.

It gives the generalist Lore-Master even more to worry about, since many of our current skills/traits appear MIA, and unlocking all the icons I do recognize requires going halfway down all three trees.

"Specialization is for insects."
- Robert Heinlein

It's pretty likely that the talents mostly don't unlock the actual powers, just enhancements to them, like in other games. If they do it like WoW, SWTOR, etc., there will be a couple powers gated behind talents, but not what it sounds like you're imagining.

They've said on their forums that their intent is to get all classes down to around 20 skills (not including auxiliary stuff like travel abilities). As an LM, I think I have around twice that many now (I'd have to log in to be sure).

Yeah, that was my understanding, but what I mean is you're probably not going to have to put 20 points in each line just to get to those 20 powers or whatever; the icons you recognize are probably more likely things like '+5% to this skill' rather than 'ok now you have this skill', other than a couple key ones for each spec, like a capstone ability or whatever. WoW trees, not Diablo 2 trees. Maybe I misunderstood your first post.

Today Burglars get to learn about how they've been messed with. (http://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/developer-diary-burglar-class-changes-helm%E2%80%99s-deep)

Burglar is the only class I couldn't even get to 10 as. Any opinions from someone who plays one?

It's not as detailed of a report as I'd like.  The summaries sound no different as compared to how you specialize now with traits.  Give me the nitty gritty "these are the exact changes you're getting and the talent trees to go with them" if you want a better answer.

Honestly, the description sounded like how I played my Quiet Knife anyway.  Not enough detail.  Helm's Deep looks pretty good.

They now have a preorder page up.

I don't think I'd recommend it until you know how the class changes will affect you and decide you're okay with it.

The class changes are affecting us regardless, right? Makes it easy to wait and see I guess.

Yep. But I wouldn't "vote with wallet" until you're sure what you're getting. Could be Kang, could be Kodos.

Given that the pre-orders are implied to be available right up to release day, I see no need to rush, although I will likely pre-order for the expansion in any case. The pre-order goodies don't seem like much special to me.

Can you pre-order with points? If so I'm already playing with house money (lifetime sub) so I'll do it for the bonuses, otherwise meh.

nope.. real money only

Selling expansions is the only way they can monetize lifers.

They do eventually make them available for points, at least sometimes - that's how I bought Rohan. But yeah it seems like the pre-orders are never up for points.

Yeah, on reflection, I think I will wait and buy it with TP. I realized I am trudging away trying to get a third character to 85 for the expansion. And, not having a ton of fun doing it.

So play something else this fall, then perhaps EQ Next landscape or whatever it is, if it gets released, then finally this expansion for early next year.

That is my current plan, which I am sure will stay in place until sometime tomorrow afternoon.  :oh_i_see:

Turbine posts an apologist piece for the massively unpopular class redesigns.

http://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/developer-diary-trait-trees-helms-deep

Um wat?   Massive role changes are going to alienate the (small) devoted player base they still have.  Are these changes helpful to generalize and make group combat easier?  More approachable for new players?  I'm just wondering what it does for the VIPs.  LotRO is my go to return MMO.  Although I'll never see end game again.

Also, this feels really like radiance all over again.  Apology and all. 

Except Radiance only affected raiders. This affects everyone who plays the game - raiders, PvPers, casuals. Radiance came and went without my ever noticing it. This rips the guts out of characters I've been playing for six years and 1300+ hours.

Right now I'm hard-pressed to see any logic beyond the spurious NGE (Godwined!) logic of, "it doesn't matter if we lose a few grumbly old subscribers, because the game will become more accessible and attractive to a fresh crowd of free-to-players."

Are there even any devs left from before the WB takeover or the FTP transition?

Wow, you and I share a mind.  I was also totally thinking of NGE, but thought it was too much to add.  Sad we're both there. 

With radiance, it felt more like a deep and stupid decision that echoed through a lot of the game, not just raiders.  This feels the same, inasmuch as they are at least starting with an apology before they level a stupid mechanic (or series of changes) on everyone.

I'm pretty much the opposite of alienated by this, the ability bloat is maybe my least favorite aspect of the game behind legendaries. On the other hand, I play a champ, so my bloat issues are probably more legitimately bloat than people who play loremasters or whatever.

Same, though I mainly played a Warden, so bloat wasn't really an issue. I'd log onto my hunter or champ and ho boy.

The reason I've played Lore-masters and not much else for the last six years is that it's a generalist class, able to handle a wide variety of situations. They're effectively taking away 66% of my bread & butter skills and traits, and lecturing me about how they're doing me a favor by forcing me to turn my generalist into a specialist.

Forcing this change on characters six years old is just freaking boneheaded. It's a mistake others have made before - a mistake TURBINE has made before - and they're offering little justification for a change no one was really asking for. If this had been some new bolt-on system to optionally enhance my character, I wouldn't be upset. But it's not, my LM is (IMO) ruined, and I'm pissed.

The new skills will bring me back, at least briefly, to check them out.  I hated skill bloat myself.  I'd die and then find a skill that would have saved me but I never use it because it's on a one hour cooldown so it's not in my THREE skill bars.  Killing 60 orcs to get a skill that I'll never use so I can 'check the box' is not good design to me.  On the other hand, I'd say my offensive mini is about to become a heal bot.  Downside is that all my friends have moved on so I'll solo poorly.  That will probably shorten my time back in Middle Earth.

I certainly see Storm's objections; the LM class, if skillfully played, is amazing.  But this game is old and bloated beyond belief and they are trying to entice old and new players to try it out.  In my case it will work, but for how long remains to be seen.

Perhaps the ftp revenue bump has gone down, and they're just just to bring in new players for more cash. 'Dance with the one that brung ya' does seem to be a foreign concept to many teams.

That said, Champ bloat and redundant abilities has been an issue forever, stance-dancing is annoying, and anything to fix it would be good.  LMs Minis and Hunters have bloat, but it's kinda needed bloat the way the classes are designed.

It had the opposite reaction from me. The idea of relearning everything again and the winnie corporate answers as to whether they hold the license beyond spring just turned me off. I will have enough TP as a lifer to buy and try.. may be in late November or December.. but certainly won't be sending any cash their way for a while, if ever.

Well the totality of what they're saying reveals a game that is quite ill, I think. No raids, okay, whatever, but no dungeons. Just... Big Battles. Coupled with the class changes and the way Rohan didn't have instances until three months post-release and I see this game sputtering along poorly until Mordor.

Maybe I'll check the expansion out. I'd like to, but I skipped Rohan, making it a 60 dollar buy in for me.

Have they actually shown exactly which abilities are being removed and which are going to be spec-only? Are we talking 'only tank-specced champions get improvements to their defensive abilities via talent points' or 'only tank-specced champions can use defensive abilities at all'? There's a big difference.

While I'm certainly not going to gainsay anything that a dedicated player like Stormwaltz will feel... I'll just chirp in that as someone who desperately *wanted* to like this game, and has returned to it many, many times... changing how combat works is something I will certainly check-out.  I also (tried) to make the Loremaster my main, but I could never get past the very long cooldowns and slow combat.  I'm not in any way advocating for twitch combat (heck, I'm fiddling with Might&Magic Legacy and think turn-based is a lost art), but from the beginning combat always drove me away from LoTR... for a game predicated on killing things, I just didn't like doing that with their mechanics.

But... will I come back and give them money for these changes?  I'm skeptical; the game is old, the character graphics and animations are dated... and more fundamentally, the world is not LoTR (this is a meta complaint difficult to put in words...) nor is it fun to explore - these are critical failings that improved combat will not fix for me, and nothing I read seem to address these "problems" (if they are even seen as such by the public at large).

So, on the one hand, I am curious to vette the changes... while simultaneously wondering why they are making them.  Pour moi?  That's not a good idea, then.

Sounds like low-budget desperation.. no money in the kitty to do big changes and a dwindling revenue stream.


It's a sort of miniaturized theme-park version. Still, playing as a lore-master didn't help... they might be awesome at high levels but damn it was boring as far as I got.

Well, there have been a lot of QoL changes since I last played, and the +100% xp bonus until Nov 17 has made leveling by just doing the Epic line much more pleasurable. I'm kinda looking forward to Helms Deep, and having someplace to spend the ~8000 toilet paper points my account has accumulated.

I was going to try things out a bit again and take advantage of the 100% bonus xp gain but I can't even log in.  It keeps saying "no active subscription found" or some such thing.  Huh??? :headscratch:

I noticed something this weekend. Maybe it's just me not paying close attention before now, but; all of the class revamp diaries were written by devs I've never heard of before.

Verizal, Deviled_Egg, Jinjaah, and HoarseDev are all new names to me. And the Warden dev diary doesn't have an author listed at all.

Fills one with confidence no?     :oh_i_see:

There are rumblings about an NGE level reaction on release. This is probably a bit overstated but I don't see good things coming from the class revamps.

As someone who's tried to get into this game again and again and loosing interest at around lvl 20, the revamp is exciting to me.  Rolled a new Hobbit Warden the other day.

As someone who's always loved it, the revamp is exciting me. Because the game really does need to be shaken up a bit.

I'm unfortunately one expansion behind already.

Good choice.  Warden is about the only class in that game with engaging combat mechanics.

Lotro is a game that I wanted to love, but I never really got attached to.  The world was wonderful, but the mechanics just turned me off.  It hasn't aged well.

NDA has dropped.  Enjoy the info dump  :awesome_for_real:

Many ragequit threads? 

Seems like mostly ragequit or 'class X sucks now' threads.

I'm still waiting for luckton's promised infodump!

The drama is deep but I don't think anyone is covering themselves in glory here. The pro-change folks are some of the more toadying forum folks I've read in a good while. The anti-change folks are freaking out over what are some very needed changes.

I don't see how this ends without fracturing the community. Today there was a minor but kind of gross moment where someone mentioned the impending removal of Traveler's Rations and making porting free. Sapience said "You know it's been like that on live for awhile now, right?" Which, uh, it's not. So this guy who is apparently a VERY well respected forum guide writer (Fredalas is the name, I believe) very calmly writes some stuff about how there was no need for the head CM to snark on some guy like that when it could've been phrased as "That change is actually on live" or something more neutral and, further, that that sort of thing on the beta forums was really contributing to a bad atmosphere. He was permabanned. I scrolled through the dude's posts to see if there was any real rationale for it and, nope; the guy was always respectful, measured in tone, and several levels smarter than the average forum poster.

I dunno. The changes are necessary. I bought RoR to check it out and on my very average geared Warden, first time playing in two years, I could take on 20 odd mobs solo. And everyone admits that their classes, all classes, are overpowered. Because all your shit is just there and available to you. High DPS with killer CC and maybe off-tanking? Let's fucking do this.

But nobody wants to give it up, even as they're admitting that it's too much. And I can't blame them in the sense that why not just let it ride? There's no more group content in the game, or at least nothing which requires a group, so who gives a fuck if you can solo explicitly soloable content. There's no army of new customers coming in. Let the legacy game have its legacy crowd, even if it's a less interesting approach than choice as you level.

O Hell!  If it's solo-to-victory and fast leveling they can have my monies.  Love to go back and raise my 70 to whatever the cap is now.  I thought it was just more uninspired content and token grinds.

As a non-raiding, non-PvPing casual player, I can assure you that my Lore-Master never, ever felt overpowered in the last six years, and the early levels were outright pain.

Content probably is still uninspired. I mean, LOTRO is gorgeous (I don't know why the hell complaints about the look are suddenly popping up everywhere; 7 years on and it's still gorgeous) but it's still boar asses. I'm enough of a Tolkien geek that that's never bothered me but RoR feels like a slog, even as it's some of the best looking areas they've created yet.

It's been solo-centric for awhile now, too. Hell, RoR didn't even consider it a priority to launch with an instance cluster and there's not going to be one at all for HD. Now, while I dislike forced grouping, I think that's a shame. I really liked LOTRO's instances back in the day.

Starting point for data dump

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?529680-Helm-s-Deep-NDA-Dropped-as-of-Today-November-4-2013 (https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?529680-Helm-s-Deep-NDA-Dropped-as-of-Today-November-4-2013)

Ouch, Dire Need is a spec skill, first thing I don't like champ-wise.

Wait.  All the classes have been nerfed?  Or people just feel overpowered?  I want to play with more power the better.  Don't give a shit about balance. 

Apparently the NGE to make the classes more balanced and simpler to play has resulted in Wardens getting more buttons. 30 combat buttons now according to one of the beta people.

As of the last time I'd checked, Lore-Masters lost all their healing skills... unless you trait yellow-line.

In which case, you've sacrificed DPS (red-line) and pet tank ability (blue-line), so you need healing even more to survive a fight.

Genius game design at work. Hope you like buying those no-cooldown healing pots from the store!

I thought the whole point of Wardens was that you didn't need bunches of buttons because you did your little combo dealies?

I only ever really played Captain and Loremaster.  I think my Loremaster hit HOLY SHIT number of buttons around level 20, but I just ignored half of them.

Well, there's already ~6 javelin skills, and 4 buttons for basic combo stuff, the 9 combo-combo builders, and a spare handful of other situational combat things. Then there's pots, heal skills, etc. Plus a good number of musters and things that don't count as they're non-combat.

Doubtless in preparation for the housing upgrade they've been putting off for three years, house chests have be revamped to work more like bank vaults. Which is fine if you're a vet who has the current storage unlocked, but going forward new house owners will be paying hundreds of times more.

http://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?529727-Helm-s-Deep-Housing-Chest-Changes

Current prices:
First chest - 100 silver
Second chest - 500 silver
Each housing chest can store 30 items.

Helm's Deep prices
15 Space = 1g = Total of 15
Next 15 = 5g = Total of 30
Next 15 = 25g = Total of 45
Next 15 = 125g or 100 mithril coins = Total of 60 (note this is equal to the current amount of space)

No further slots available for Standard or Deluxe housing with coin.
Next 15 = 100 Mithril = Total of 75
Next 15 = 100 Mithril = Total of 90
Next 15 = 100 Mithril = Total of 105
Next 15 = 100 Mithril = Total of 120

Cost of 60-item storage currently: 600 silver
Cost of 60-item storage in HD: 156 gold

It's worth nothing here that until I reached Rohan, I never had more than 50-60 gold to my name at any point. But hey! You can buy Mithril coins with real money and buy more!

The more is revealed of this expansion, the deeper and more obvious the money grabs.

That is bananas

I'm beginning to think that, too.  It seems like all these changes are just ways to make it easier to monetize even more.  I've been playing a bit here and there the past few weeks but if it turns out they're going to try and nickle and dime me for every little thing, then I'll be done with the game for good.  Hopefully the combat changes are an improvement since combat has always been LOTRO weakest feature, IMO.  However, I have yet to see an MMO that has made drastic changes to how the game is played be successful (see swg and the nge for the most famous example).

I figure I'll wait until they make this live before I cancel.  I don't want to be a hanging chad.

Isn't the license up for renewal/expiry early in spring? Perhaps it's a last minute money grab, damn the future, full pockets ahead.

Yes, I am suspicious of this. When asked (repeatedly) about the license renewal/extension,  the answers have been weaselly worded corporate speak like 'We plan to support the game for years to come' and in the best evar from their wonderful CR, 'We have answered that repeatedly'.

So no real dollars from me until it verified as renewed or perhaps ever. I hate fucking corporate bullshit like this.

Word is that Turbine has the option to extend for another however many years, not TE.

Well I legit feel bad for Turbine right now.

Apparently a large data center went down last night due to the storms, the backup power didn't fire, and a whole bunch of shit went down. LOTRO's entire infrastructure was part of it. Judging by the Facebook posts, they've only just gotten the servers back up in the past hour or so. AND they had to delay the expansion launch until they don't know yet. So all-nighters, pissed off customers, delayed expansion, and it's not their fault, for once.

I think most of the servers are back up. At least the ones I play on are.

Yes, unfortunate but unlikely to have any impact in the longer run. A day or two delay in release will be completely forgotten in a few weeks.

Yes, in two weeks they'll probably be screaming about the class revamps and broken/missing content instead.  :awesome_for_real:

Bah, and on my birthday no less.  Ah well  :roll:

Looks like the fail didn't hit them that hard.  HD is launching today, patcher is updated and patching up.

There doesn't seem to be the massive, roiling forum meltdown I was expecting. Partly because the class changes seem mostly good.

I dunno. The trees are kind of boring for the most part and the decision to make things out of your spec tree both count toward your unlocks AND cost two for one is really weird but I feel effective. Most of all, I don't have a massive screen of button bloat staring at me.

I'm positive the generalist classes like LM and Captain are feeling the pinch, since being able to do a bit of everything was kind of the focus in the original design, but a quick tour of my Warden, Hunter, Champion, and Burglar all feel good to me. Warden surprised me; I was expecting a disaster but I just soloed an Elite level Warband with no serious issues, which is precisely where I was before. I don't have any more buttons, really, than I did before, either.

So I'm digging it. I think some tweaks are in order but the system, as a whole, feels sane to me compared to the monstrosity the combat system had become.

Yes, there seems to be a fair level of acceptance given the scale of the change. Not surprisingly, the old timers (like me!) seem to be the most negative.

That said, I think they have cranked up the DPS on everyone so they feel pretty powerful, at least on the landscape. While this certainly helps with the initial acceptance, it remains to be seen if (more) people will begin to complain about the challenge level on the landscape and if this stays in place longer term.

They have gated the landscape quests behind the first book of the epic, which is ok I guess. This part of the epic felt more like reading a book then playing a game to me. You run around and click on a few things and listen to speeches. It didn't feel terribly interactive. Now I am on to the expected 'help village X' phase.

I just want to add that combat was never really my thing, so I don't feel I can critique it well. I look forward to hearing other's impressions.

I rolled a new LM yesterday and while I don't know how it was before it was pretty fun and the dps seemed high.  Even my pet bear hit like a truck.  I haven't tried my 39 champ yet so I'll have to see how it is tonight. 

Combat has always been the weakest part of the game so if this makes it better and more fun, then it's worth pissing off a few long time players.  It's not like this is anywhere near what happened with swg and the nge.

Yesterday I got the game up to date before I left for work.  When I got home I was greeted by a two hour download.  :oh_i_see:  OK fine, the servers being blasted etc.  I get on and try out my Hunter.  Disappointed that it's been WoW'ed with the spec trees.  But I pick one and it seems to work well.  Too bad my cappie now has to SPEC to heal.  Thanks for nothing Turbine.  Caps and LM's seem to have been changed from a versatile support to another generic hero.  Combat's slightly better I admit.  My Hunter was owning faces.

 Oh and I'm currently 20 minutes into another patch. 

Yeah, Captains and LMs are the ones that I think have solid standing to freak out. But it's done now.

On the plus side, I hear both have really solid DPS, so it should be a smooth run leveling one.

Specced as Animal Master on my LM.  Got the Lesser Giant Eagle.  Completely broken.  At level 39 fighting 36-38 mobs, the eagle was two-shotting targets.  Crazy.  At least my LM was very very fragile to make up for it.  He does have a couple of skills to help him escape though.

My captain isn't quite as insane.  Specced him to be a healer.  At level 50 he's very durable and I was fighting three and four mobs with not too much trouble.  My shout lost its stun but picked up two great melee attack skills that do great damage.  The herald pets are good but still annoying. 

Turbine is still in love with cool down skills.  They have cut down their cooldowns, but again, you put a skill with a 5 minute cool down I won't use it.  You give me a melee skill that only does 10% more damage AND has a 1.5 minute cool down?  I won't use it.  With the bathtub full of skills why should I bother with it?  Sure, there are some long cool down skills that are great but I don't understand all of these skills with 1 minute or more cool downs.  Ain't nobody got time for that.

Did they ever improve the Instance Finder?  Is it a real LFG tool now? 

IRC you would just join and hope someone would show up.  It was a tool only useful if you already organized a group *outside* the tool.  So, GLFF and being in a kin.

The instance launch thing seems to work pretty well, and levelling is damn fast now. I decided to break out my ancient level 20 Minstrel, who died to flies and got abandoned. After a long evening of play, he's level 41, and that's just from doing the Epic and a few right-near-epic quests. It's fun to play a toon that has a few attacks and explodes things after playing a warden. I see why there are so many Minis now at max level.

Seems odd to rush stuff to the endgame, when all the endgame is now is scaled instances and kinda meh BigBattles.

Welp, I am nearing the cap on my Huntard so I will throw a few comments up about Helms Deep...

Landscape is really well done. More varied then RoR and lots of nice little details. Also, some of it is relatively sparse on mobs, which I like because it seems more realistic to me.

The quests, while following the style of village to village progression, seem better to me then either RoI or RoR quests. There is a lot less mindless slaughter and more trivial preparation stuff (everyone is supposed to be headed out of town to HD). People that like a lot of combat will not like this I am sure. My only complaint with the quests is they are too tightly sequenced and tied to the rails. You are often required to complete all the quest in certain sequence or issues of phasing come into play and can give you headaches.

As noted here and elsewhere, leveling is fast and easy as nearly every class has a dps spec, is a bit OP, and can blow through the levels very quickly. I estimate about 20 hours of play to get to 95, the Big Battles, and the end game. Seems a bit light for a true expansion.

I find my will to level alts pretty well nonexistent. Perhaps after six years I have just seen all the quests too many times.

Solo or with the usual GLFF crew?  My ongoing experience with LotRO is that you eventually run out of quests in an area and were stuck to skirmishes to fast level.  And while instances were great/meh, you still needed available kinnies or PUGs. 

That was solo questing on the landscape.

I have no experience with leveling rates below 85 since the change.

I haven't played this game in aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages.

What's the rundown on this game these days? (Assuming anyone is reading and doesn't mind helping me be lazy.)

Levelling is fast as shit, the landscape mobs aren't much of a threat to any class. Grinding away at Big Battles and scaled instances is the current end game. Rumor is that mobs are getting a significant DPS increase in the next patch. Playing on and off for the last few days, my minstrel is now level 68, and climbing rapidly.

free level 50's!

Quick everyone, fill up your spare character slots!

so fantastic, i hate 1-50.

Free level 50's, for 4995 Turbine Points (about 60USD)

And that's PER CHARACTER.

Plus, 1-50 can be done in about 12-16 hours of play. Apparently less if you skirmish/instance to 50.

I still like the early parts.

I do too.  I'm back playing my Mini and Hunter.  Had Turbine Points accumulated so I bought The Great River quests, anxious to try that out.  My Mini is in Dunland and I'm...having a good time?  I saw Saruman!  He's a cock.  :grin:

Maybe it's because I just saw the Hobbit 2, maybe it's the  new skill revamp, maybe it's that I only quest and ignore all other game aspects, but I'm having a good time.  Same with STO, I guess I'm learning to take what the game gives and not play it if I don't like that.