f13.net

Just announced, LOTRO in the next update will apparently let you play from the viewpoint of NPC's.  Their example playing as a chicken in the shire.  Obvious potential in this mechanic, I am pretty excited about this feature myself.

http://lotro.turbine.com/article/375 (http://lotro.turbine.com/article/375)

"Chicken play has a separate chat channel and chicken players will not be able to speak with regular players"

I can not wait to be a bad-ass chicken.

Will the number of chickens be capped or can the world be swarmed by player-chickens?

Lol. My first thought on this was "Wait, it's not April!"

I thought it may be a joke or something as well.  Well a chicken may not be ideal to start with...I think the mechanic has a solid potential to tell the story of Middle-earth through NPCs and Animal NPCs eyes.  A fun side-bar.


Not sure, I couldn't be bothered to go through the entire thread.  I despise main forums, I might check the dev posts once in a while.  I think they are timed sessions though.  I did skim through the thread while looking at dev comments and it was a mix of good reactions and the expected "why spend valuable dev time to fix problems instead of this chickenshit" type posts.

I don't know what to say.  The more gay LotRO gets, the more I want to play it.

I think the people at Turbine must be doing some hydroponic gardening. Well if nothing else it sure as fuck is original and oddly enticing in a very weird way.

I can imagine entire guilds being formed around (role)playing different NPC factions. It might actually be a good time to leverage a group of players to create intelligent NPC uprisings and invasions just to spice things up. On the other hand, there could be some real potential for grief when the enemies become organized and hostile outside of the bounds of the regular AI.

Heh, exactly what I was thinking.  I was like, "Ah, tommorow is the... wait, July."

Upon reading further, I must say that's actually kinda cool.  Working Radagast in there was a fine idea.

(http://www.imanewbie.com/imatoons/ima18e.jpg)

"at least I have chicken" ...says Leeroy.

Now LotRO too.

Finally a game has come to satisfy my deepest desire to become a chicken!?

Moria before the end of the year, thats all I care about.  Gonna camp the Balrog spawn and get phat lewts.

would make the chicken avoidance tasks -- like the egg retrieval quest -- probably raid worthy.

Will you be able to do anything as an NPC (like being a Monster) or will you be on autopilot? I would assume the former, but being able to play one of these guys in public space is, err, interesting in its exploitability.

It sounds like they haven't hammered out a bit of the specifics because the forum replies from the LOTRO community rep are all very vague. They say your quests will be done in the real world and you'll be able to see people. You can't get beyond level 1 as a chicken, so you wouldn't be able to do much damage or be able to bother someone. You're a one hit kill for things outside the chicken session.

Expand on this...what do mean by "anything" and what exploitability are you referring to?  What does playing as a chicken in public space have to do with exploiting potential? maybe some egg-sploiting situations......  :rimshot:  You may be right, but I fail to see it.

NiX answered it somewhat in that you can't get beyond level 1 as a chicken and the fact they haven't nailed down a number of details. I'll withhold the question until details emerge.

I don't want to be a chicken. I want to be the egg.

Can the chickens get tophats?

The chicken play is amusing. Mostly Fed-Ex type quests where you have to avoid aggro as you are level 1.  The quests take you into all current zones to talk to various animal NPCs, but I have only done the shire thus far.  Your run speed is probably twice as fast as character speed, plus you get limited turbo run.  Other skills so far I have seen are a 50% range evade and a reveal stealth. 

There is a limit on the number of session players playing as chickens, so the world would never be wholly occupied by chickens.  You can't talk to players, but chickens have their own chat channels. 

Overall, it seems to be a pretty good diversion from normal play.  I do hope they expand on it a bit.

I've been enjoying it. It's a nice thing to have available for a change of pace or if you just have an hour to kill.

How do you start it?