Active Thread

[rattran]

I should be on quite a bit for the next week, Oscar is happy to sleep on my desk and drool in between feedings/meds.

And, second Burglary? Was the culprit at least caught this time?

[Ingmar]

Not as far as I know. I don't know if Turbine will tell you that sort of thing, although surely they could find out from logs or something.

[Cheddar]

I cannot wait until next week.  PLUS - they are doing a refund for all marks spent on skirm warriors.  This is huge for those of us who catassed multiple warriors until we found one that suited us.

[Ingmar]

I cannot wait until next week.  PLUS - they are doing a refund for all marks spent on skirm warriors.  This is huge for those of us who catassed multiple warriors until we found one that suited us.

Oh nice. I mean, I only have the one, and I think I'd spend the points MOSTLY the same, but it is nice to have the respec option.

[caladein]

Perhaps that book is just an aberration... the earlier books seemed much better; but there is still something DAoC'ish about the questing... as if riding on my horse over long distances between quests somehow makes the quest feel epic.  I can understand if they don't want the WoW amusement park feel, but so far it seems to me like the lesson they learned was to cut the rides but keep the long lines.  I hope the F2P pass they are making over the entire game improves a number of these tedious aspects.

Tell me I'm just stuck in the land of by-passed content and that they pick up the ball again at Level XX.

Book 4 sucks for a handful or reasons, mainly because of Trollshaws (terrain, quest hubs in different time zones, the sheer abundance of full fellowship quests).  Really, I'd get out of Trollshaws as fast as possible (~40) and just go to Angmar.  If you're still in your mid-high 30s, Evendim works too and has a nice long quest chain that ties the upper part of the zone together... and ends in a horrible instance that you'll probably never get a group for anyway.

In general though, LotRO does have a certain roughness to its zone and quest design.  It also has a lot of group quests throughout the leveling process and doesn't deliver them in useful chunks like WoW does (see: Dragonblight).

When it's done well, I like the chance of pace from taking on groups of normals to 1v1'ing Signatures to running into someone who needs the same Elite dead.  When it's "Go back to the place I just sent you to for one more thing." it makes me stabby.

[Tannhauser]

You've GOT to do the Aughire (Angmar) quest hub.  Packed with quests, including armor and jewelry sets.  I got bored though after this and went to Forochel and have been really investing in it.  Actually decent, not as horrible as I remember the first time where I skimmed thru a bit.  But lots of riding around the icy tundra, lots and lots of it.  It feels like a massive zone, although I wonder if it's the same size as North Downs.

But yeah, the books are pretty bad about riding your ass around, I just did that Thorenhad/Rivendell dance and was all 

There is so much to do in this game it's silly.  If you dedicate yourself this game rewards you with hours of interesting stuff to do.  Heck, I even played my 63 minstrel tonight because I wanted to try the Ford of Bruinen skirmish (rocks).

In a way I wish I had just one character instead of 3 actives and 4 non-actives.  It's just a massive time investment to quest, craft, AH and deed for three.  But man is it fun.

[March]

Thanks... I'll keep plugging along.  There are lot's of things I like about LoTRO, I just wish there were fewer things that annoyed me.

I've rolled into Evendim as part of the Narsil quest and it offers a lot... I haven't found Angmar yet - well, I've _found_ it but didn't know that's where I'm supposed to be at 40 - so I'll check that out too.

[Yegolev]

I went to Evendim today for the rich iron, with Fatwing (34 guard).  Also found some ass kicking.  Those tomb robbers swarm like bees.

[Nebu]

With the release of the Dev Diary, I started to think more about attempting crafting. 

Question: I've never done crafting in game... funny since I've played off and on since beta.  I'm interested in getting started and wondered if you all could recommend a profession that is a) useful or b) fun in a comsmetic/housing sort of way. 


Thanks.

[Yegolev]

I can only suggest you avoid Scholar and either smithing.   Although with the new system you should be able to store a variety of heavy armors as cosmetic, so I guess you could go either way on metalworking.  Tailoring has the cosmetic stuff like dresses and suits, and capes which are also statted equipment.  Woodworking seems to have some furniture items.

Useful, though, I think Farming/Cook (Yeoman?) is pretty good and you can get Farming to Tier 6 without leaving the Shire.  Cook, on the other hand, is the usual finished-goods job where you have to do dumb things like travel and kill things.  Still it's useful for the food.  Scholar is useful for potions and fire/light oil which your hunter and warden buddies will like.  Scholar materials are a bit hard to find as compared to, say, wood and metal.

[Soln]

if you level Cook with Farmer make sure you do it in the Shire (MD) -- the Cook's guild is there and you can level faster via Guild recipes (and unlock Guild recipes via rep in the process).

[rattran]

Cooking/farming is a good combo and quite useful. Explorer means you can grab up all that wood and ore that's just lying around though.

[caladein]

Tailor does the bulk of the crafted Cosmetic/Housing items as well as Light and Medium armors and class items for Burglars and Rune-Keepers.  Forester's the serious prerequisite since it turns looted Hides into Leather.  You also will occasionally need polished gems from a Jeweler, which is annoying, but unless you're making fancy items it's not a big deal.

Tailor's off on its own in both Yeoman (with Cook/Farmer) and Armourer (with Metalsmith/Prospector), but I wouldn't suggest either of those if you want to work on Tailoring because there's really no way to keep Forestry at level on an alt with just Hides.

That leaves Explorer with Tailor/Forester/Prospector which gives you:

• Tailoring;
• the Leather you need for Tailoring;
• the Gems to give to your Jeweler friend/alt to cut for you for rare/high-level Tailoring;
• the Fibers that let you crit Tailoring recipes;
• and Wood and Ore to sell or send to alts.

In terms of "usefulness" I'd side with a Cook over a Tailor because crafted gear, at the level you can farm the materials for it, sucks.  Cook is also super easy to level if you have a Farmer (either on that character or an alt, doesn't matter).

[Yegolev]

Patched.  In the queue, five by five.

219 minutes.

[Ingmar]

When does the actual early-free-time start, midnight? All I have heard is "Sept 8th".

[Yegolev]

I'm on Brandywine right now.

[Cheddar]

Less then 2 minute delay to login.  Damn server is gonna melt when goes f2p. 

[Ingmar]

I'm on Brandywine right now.

Can you hit the store to spend your free points yet though?

[Cheddar]

This... is.... AWESOME.   

[Cheddar]

This... is.... AWESOME.   

Good - Do not know where to start.  Refund on skirm marks, easier access to skirms, improvement on skirm pets.  YES.  New quests across the board.  Vault.  Map improvements (check out Archet map if you get a chance).  New area (have not entered yet, but still gets a check +).  Improved combat (I swear it was improved, waiting on proof). 

Bad.  Log-in took 2 minutes.  Turbine store unavail most the night.  New Destiny options, incredibly expensive.

Ugly.  No TP's, Turbine store took a shit and was mostly unavail.  Devs say its known and are working on it.  Some got some, most did not.

[Azazel]

No wait to login
Still takes forever to actually load the world when you login
No Turbine points (what was the point about early access than?)
Store window can't be resized
It wants me to pay to unlock the first wardrobe space - WTF? - fake edit - I do indeed have a wardrobe, but the store wants to sell me "the first wardrobe space". hrm.
10 more shared storage spaces (and the Wardrobe) are more expensive than expected - $7.00ea
No extra bank bags available
No mounts available
Instance Join and Online help are added to where the bags are in your hotkeys, and at a glance look like more bags.
Seems a little laggier/slower. I think I saw some glitching. Not sure.
LOTS of maps/guides for sale in the store. I think I see why they have gated the fast travel to subscribers only.
Port skills (hunter) for sale as well. Was there ever a group hunter port to East Angmar (Gath Forthnir) or Forochel (Suri-Kyla)? The shop says they're level 40 req. There's also 21st Hall in Moria. Isn't that the one behind the shitty rep grind? (and how much of a rep grind is it?)
Opening the bank is slower than shit - like 30 seconds to open.

I'm not too excited at this stage.

[Reg]

I was on last  night briefly and noticed that my deeds all have turbine point awards associated with them - even the ones I've already completed. Will I be getting those points retroactively?

[Azazel]

When I logged in, I got a bunch of rep spam, along with "you've earned 5/10/15/20 Turbine Points"
I checked the store. It said I have 55TPs.
I added up the spam. I should have 170TPs from deeds. Took a screenie. Didn't notice that shit when I logged on with my wife's account. They also want $10 for the Moria Goat.


I wonder if this big TP fuckup is "accidently-on-purpose", so that those with low patience and wallets to spare will buy all the immediate shit (bank space, wardrobe, etc) with their real cash instead of the TP that they said we'd get when they released this?

[Modern Angel]

The Turbine Store was having some issues. No big conspiracy or anything, just not working 100%. As a subscriber I started getting my TPs in dribs and drabs. Folks in Enedwaith were talking about how some folks had their 5k or whatever, some still only had 100.

[caladein]

Opening the bank is slower than shit - like 30 seconds to open.

That'll only happen the first time you open it up on each character.

Really though, in terms of quality-of-life stuff, it really is a great patch.  The changes to drops are huge.  I can move across 2-3 areas in Angmar, looting everything, and getting tons of class quest items, and only fill up 2+ bags.  The lower aggro range is almost comical compared to how it was before as well.  Accepting and turning in quests is a lot nicer too.

There's some annoying things, and yes, it does throw "You can buy stuff." reminders in a lot of places, but it's such a nicer game to play.

Now if only they would fix the Skirmish Daily if you're outside the old level range, that'd be great.

[Cheddar]

Now if only they would fix the Skirmish Daily if you're outside the old level range, that'd be great.

This.

[Mrbloodworth]

No wait to login
Still takes forever to actually load the world when you login

Allow me to point you to the defrag tool.

[Azazel]

I picked that up several weeks ago. Didn't help much, unfortuately. Barely at all in fact. Thanks, though.

[Mrbloodworth]

Bummer, improved my load times greatly, but I have a really really old install thats seen many many patches.

[Azazel]

General error accessing your
account information. Try again later,
and contact tech support if the
problem persists.



never had that one before...

[Tannhauser]

Bought the shared storage, love it!  Three of us went into The Maze wing of GB instance.  Pretty cool but very short.  We all really like the scaling. 

[Azazel]

I would, if they would give me my TPs. From the 170 the spam said I should have had but 55 displayed, I had 40 when I logged on today. They're just doing so well with all of this.

[Yegolev]

My wife wanted me to come in here and bitch about how Turbine ruined her beloved game.  Mostly about performance, how hard the store is to navigate, how shitty the map ring highlighting is, how hard it is for her to read the font on the XP bar, and the shitty performance.  While she was on the phone telling me this, she was lagged out and killed by a warg in Angmar.

She doesn't have her three months of TP either.  Coupled with news of the short-term price hike, I'm kinda pissed.  Wonder if Turbine would care if I canceled?

[Soln]

they need to get their shit together

http://forums.lotro.com/index.php

Database Error     Database error
The database has encountered a problem.

[Cheddar]

My wife wanted me to come in here and bitch about how Turbine ruined her beloved game.  Mostly about performance, how hard the store is to navigate, how shitty the map ring highlighting is, how hard it is for her to read the font on the XP bar, and the shitty performance.  While she was on the phone telling me this, she was lagged out and killed by a warg in Angmar.

She doesn't have her three months of TP either.  Coupled with news of the short-term price hike, I'm kinda pissed.  Wonder if Turbine would care if I canceled?

A.  They are in the middle of fixing the performance issues.  Currently there is a server limit as a stopgap measure.
B.  3 months of TP will not reflect until 9/17.  No idea why they delayed it, but there ya go.
C.  There was no price hike.  Some items were on sale for a couple days, then went to normal prices.  Do not be surprised if they are lowered in cost (a ton of people were pissed about this - myself included).


edit.  Have her email an executive.   I can probably dig up a direct email.