F2P NDA is down. Dish.

[Stormwaltz]

If anyone got in it, anyway. I did not.

[Mrbloodworth]

What would you like to know?

Techies may be interested to know, LOTRO has a version of phasing, its used a good deal in the new story line epic stuff. The have also added seamless layered zone instances.

Some various things from the forums that i was to lazy to write out myself:

- For VIPs, the mount quests have been lowered from 35 to 20, with only the "race" quest remaining. (no horse delivery quests)
- The level requirement for vault storage has been removed, so if you have the in-game gold your crafting alts will have plenty of storage space
- The starting level of all of the Eriador skirmishes have been adjusted (almost all lowered) with skirmishes starting out at level 20 instead of 30.
- ixp has been added to the daily skirmishes as well as xp/marks
- Quite a few new destiny point perks
- All 51+ quests will now have ixp included in the rewards.
- Most vender trash stacks to 50 & mob trash drops have been vastly reduced.
- New reputation deeds have been added similar to the Eglain Faction. This includes new titles, discounts, and more.
-The Wardrobe will allow players to share Cosmetic and Non-Cosmetic items between all characters on a server but it does not "store" items. It stores "copies" of items that cannot be reconstituted from the Wardrobe.
-- In a single slot you can store an item, but in multiple dyes. Say you currently have a gift box cosmetic item in 10 different colors on an alt taking up bag space galore. Now you can add each one to the Wardrobe, taking up one slot, but you can use any of the dyed versions as a cosmetic. It stores all of the dyes that have been applied.
- Most bound items can be added.
- It stores the cosmetic appearance of ANY worn item for use on ANY character.
- It was recently updated to hold non-cosmetic items as well as cosmetic.
-Wardrobe is not limited in size, you don't have to worry about it filling up.
-All characters on any server have the same access for quest pack purchases. Meaning its bought for the account.
-The bank works more like the shared storage vault (Not that its shared), and has a ton of filters.
-With crafting, you can now start to crit once you open that second anvil on a tier. (Instead of after its full, and you have usually out leveled it)
-Those of you with DX11 cards are in for a treat as you can see even further than before, among other things.
-The Inn League and Ale Association now have mounts!
-The IL mount is a horse/pony with ale barrels, and the AA mount is a goat, also carrying ale barrels.
-The extra cool part is that the IL mount gives you a (mild) drunk effect, when mounted
- New festival instance "The haunted cellar"

New armor sets for just about every "classic" instance.

Cosmetics:

The new vault is similar to the Shared storage in appearance, however they are working on making improvements based on the feedback in beta.

What the vault can do

    * You can drop your items in anywhere and it will auto add it to a partial stack if you have one
    * There are 10 chests (actually filters named chest1, chest2...) plus the main vault that you can use to sort your items into. Each chest has an unlimited number of spaces up to your total bank spaces.
    * You can upgrade your vault to a max of 150 spaces at this time.
    * There are dynamically created filters to help you find things.
    * You can filter within a specific chest or filter all.
    * The search function does not need to have the full name - search for Elegant and all things with that word in them show up, it doesn't even have to be a whole word.
    * You can stretch the vault window vertically to show more items at one time.
    * There are item names next to the icons
    * If you right click on an item it will give you a menu where you can choose to withdraw the item (double clicking it does this too) or move it to the chest of your choice.



What the vault can't do anymore

    * You can't see all your icons at one time
    * You can't place an item in a specific place and have it stay
    * You can't have blank spaces



I am sure I missed some things.



Of special note: The devs worked really hard to get the chest functionality in before it goes live. There are several other improvements that they are working on but won't make the launch. They have said that they will be added (unless some unforeseen issue prevents adding that feature) in a future patch. These include:

    * The ability to name your chests
    * Better sort option besides just alphabetical (which is need for item like runes)
    * Possibly (but not sure) the ability to stretch the window horizontally to see even more items.
    * Tabs instead of a list of chests. This is one of those - we're gonna try to make it work if we can items, but the dev sounded optimistic about it.
    * More that I can't remember off the top of my head

Skeletal horse:

[Soln]

from:

New armor sets for just about ever "clasic" instance.

-Symbol of Celebrimdor
Costs 1,005 Skirmish Marks and 5 Superior Third Marks

    or 

[Mrbloodworth]

1k skirmish marks are not that much really. Especially because you can solo, duo, 3 man, 5 man, or raid most of them (with exceptions). You also gain marks from "classic" dungeons activated threw the new dungeon UI (scale and difficulty settings, can't change group size though). So, skirmish marks kinda flow right now. I believe all the normal ways to get...whatever, are still intact, skirmish marks are a different path to an end.

[Soln]

1k skirmish marks are not that much really. Especially because you can solo, duo, 3 man, 5 man, or raid most of them (with exceptions). You also gain marks from "classic" dungeons activated threw the new dungeon UI (scale and difficulty settings, can't change group size though). So, skirmish marks kinda flow right now.

the fact that you can *buy* Second Age symbols was really the point.  That they are fall on the floor cheap should surprise no one.

[Tarami]

Is there an API reference around for the new LUA scripting? I haven't been able to find one.

[Mrbloodworth]

Isn't that for the reforged second age stuff, meaning player made?

[Soln]

Isn't that for the reforged second age stuff, meaning player made?

yes, most powerful LI items and weapons need them

[Rishathra]

I'm pretty excited about all of that.  The wardrobe alone will free up a huge amount of my vault space.  The only exception is making the vault look like shared storage.  I LIKED being able to see everything at once, and sorting it how I wanted.

I'm a little confused about the crafting crit change.  Doesn't that make the whole concept of the second anvil pointless?

As for the Symbol of Celebrimbor, with the prices I've seen it going for on the AH, I was expecting a much higher skirmish mark cost than that, so I'm perfectly fine with it.  I can bang that many out in two hours, tops.

Edit:  I suppose some might consider the addition of the Symbol to the skirmish vendors, at any price, to be a bad thing.  I am not one of those people.  Those things were so retardedly rare that I gave up any thought of ever having second age items of my own.  I think I've seen maybe three or four other players, total, who managed to sport a 65 second ager.

[Stormwaltz]

I hear there's an Inn League Horse?

[Soln]

yes and you can buy rep horses via the store apparently

beta threadnaught details in progress

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm a little confused about the crafting crit change.  Doesn't that make the whole concept of the second anvil pointless?

You still have to max out the previous to use the next mastery tier anvil, so not completely no.

[Rishathra]

I'm a little confused about the crafting crit change.  Doesn't that make the whole concept of the second anvil pointless?

You still have to max out the previous to use the next mastery tier anvil, so not completely no.

But that's what confuses me.  The sole benefit of mastering a tier is so you can crit on recipes.  You only had to master the previous tier to master the next tier, not unlock it.  You can just be proficient all the way up to supreme, if you wanted.  So why would I want to waste time and materials mastering any tier, with this change?

[Mrbloodworth]

You did have to master (full gold anvil) to be able to master the next one. If you did not, you could not advance the next tier beyond the basic. Even with this change, if you do not fill the mater of the previous tier, you wont even advance TO mastery of the next tier, you will be stuck at the basic.

[Hutch]

I'm a little confused about the crafting crit change.  Doesn't that make the whole concept of the second anvil pointless?

You still have to max out the previous to use the next mastery tier anvil, so not completely no.

But that's what confuses me.  The sole benefit of mastering a tier is so you can crit on recipes.  You only had to master the previous tier to master the next tier, not unlock it.  You can just be proficient all the way up to supreme, if you wanted.  So why would I want to waste time and materials mastering any tier, with this change?

Maybe the titles are still tied to filling out the mastery anvil on each tier. And/or you could have OCD about it. Otherwise, yeah there's no need to fill out the master anvils anymore.

[Rishathra]

You did have to master (full gold anvil) to be able to master the next one. If you did not, you could not advance the next tier beyond the basic. Even with this change, if you do not fill the mater of the previous tier, you wont even advance TO mastery of the next tier, you will be stuck at the basic.

I understand that.  My point was that if you don't need to master a tier to crit on recipes, what is the point of mastering a tier at all?

Having gone through the beta thread, the answer appears to be that in order to crit a recipe, you have to be actively working on mastering a tier.  Also, until you have actually mastered it, you can't use crit items in recipes.  That makes much more sense to me now.

Thought this was amusing.

[Soln]

thought this was funnier/depressing

[EWSpider]

1k skirmish marks are not that much really. Especially because you can solo, duo, 3 man, 5 man, or raid most of them (with exceptions). You also gain marks from "classic" dungeons activated threw the new dungeon UI (scale and difficulty settings, can't change group size though). So, skirmish marks kinda flow right now.

the fact that you can *buy* Second Age symbols was really the point.  That they are fall on the floor cheap should surprise no one.

Glad I sold the one I had for 100g instead of using it!

[Cheddar]

Awesome.  Seriously.  Everything loads sooo much smoother.  I love the store; its pretty nifty.

From the opening sequence to in-game they REALLY did a lot of work.  Turbine has completely outdone themselves on this one.  I started the BETA with the original run, haven't bothered much with it in the last month so cannot imagine what other improvements they have introduced.  They will have my dollar for at least another year with this one!

I guess just one word does this justice: POLISH.

[Tarami]

Positive opinions? Unpossible!

[Rasix]

Dude, consider the source. 

[Zetor]

Hm, I'm cautiously optimistic now, especially since the captain changes are on the right track (3 trees viable instead of just 1? yes plz).

How about LOTRO's version of the Dungeon Finder? Is it automated or just a pug-for-instance-x interface?

[Cheddar]

Dude, consider the source. 

Ouch.

[Modern Angel]

I didn't get to do too much with it. I love Enedwaith, though. Love it. Landscapes are gorgeous. And hillbilly hobbits.

[Soln]

Hm, I'm cautiously optimistic now, especially since the captain changes are on the right track (3 trees viable instead of just 1? yes plz).

How about LOTRO's version of the Dungeon Finder? Is it automated or just a pug-for-instance-x interface?

pretty sure there is no Dungeon Finder -- you still have to LFG, but you can then summon via skirmish/instance screen.  So GLFF.

[Modern Angel]

Right, no looking for dungeon a la WoW. Nor will there be, thank god. WoW has that market sewn up and I'm fine with it.

[caladein]

LotRO already has a way to flag yourself as LFF for a Quest ala Burning Crusade-era WoW so I don't see how adding in LFF flagging for Skirmish/Dungeon is such a bad thing.

The automation of the Dungeon Finder is kind of inconsequential because LotRO's level distribution seems (at least) a bit flatter than WoW's and so getting a group for Great Barrows just through LFF, at least on Brandywine, is worlds easier than getting a group set up for Scarlet Monastery through WoW's old mechanisms.

[Modern Angel]

I was completely on board with LFD for the first month or so. It was perfect: retired from raiding except as an occasional fill in, new baby so short on time and had to go at a moment's notice. Except as it wore on it ended up being what killed the game for me to the point that I never intend to go back.

It ruined immersion. It ruined the social stuff and I'm as anti-social a fuck as you can find in these games most nights. Suddenly I was doing piss easy dungeons with no concept of where they are in the wider world with people who I didn't know, wouldn't remember and didn't care about since they were completely disposable with no thought except the speed of the run to get the carrot. LFD ruined the only things that an MMO has going for it: scale, scope, socialization. They disappeared in one big poof.

LOTRO's main draw is its scale and scope. God, I can't tell you how badly a WoW style LFD would destroy it for me.

[Ingmar]

I'd take it in a heartbeat. The alternative for me is never getting to see that content at all, more or less.

[Modern Angel]

I hate to be That Guy, because I really and truly do hate the trite argument, but why play an MMO at all? I don't buy that MMOs should not be soloable. I do buy that there is a bare minimum of socialization that has to happen or you're just playing a really shitty single player game. If LFD removes that socialization entirely, relegating your teammates to basically just faceless and interchangeable bots, what's the point? Why have a big IP immersive world if you just teleport in and out every twenty minutes with no context as to where it is or where it's at? Following the thread of thought, why have a dungeon at all when loot tubes with no complex features are easier to make? Why have other people at all? And if you remove all that, why pay and play at all?

All moot because they don't have the tech to do it, regardless.

[Ingmar]

If I was more than a very, very casual player of LotRO I could probably get behind your position, but I'm not. I'd just like to go through the dungeons maybe once each to see what there is to see in them, and the way things are now it just aren't conducive to that. While I'm in the guild on Brandywine, I don't particularly like the idea of asking people I just don't know that well to stop doing whatever it is that they logged in to do just so I can get a guided tour, I'd rather there was an easy way to find other people who are interested in doing the same thing I'm interested in at a given time. Plus I'm not often very inclined to pipe up when *other* people are looking for someone to do X, so it would be sort of silly of me to expect them to turn around and drop what they're doing for me.

FWIW I don't think adding a WoW-style dungeon finder would cause the issues that people perceive in WoW in terms of it becoming a "lobby/instance" game, primarily because it won't have the 'no community' thing that the cross-server element of the dungeon finder has. Also LotRO still has way more stuff going on in the outdoor world in terms of where people's playtime is focused, it seems to me, and the pace of combat and the class mechanics pretty much are going to work against the kind of silent go-go-go sort of groups you see in WoW, especially without the cross-server factor.

As it is I'll just continue to get my gear as I go up from solo skirmishes I'm sure, in between doing all the questy lore stuff I like. I'm honestly mostly there so I can mark out at stuff like Bilbo's trolls or them getting the color of Bag End's door right anyway.

[caladein]

Because making a PUG group and playing in a PUG group are two very different types of socializing.

One is fucking dreadful and should be automated if at all possible.

The other is what I actually log in for.  I like playing in PUGs.  Going through a dungeon with a random assortment of people livens up a place you've done a million times.  One player might be new to the place and occasionally screw up, but that just adds a bit of excitement and a chance to teach someone the ropes.  Another might be someone who's also done the place a million times and can teach you something new.  Some might be witty and entertaining.  You're all working towards the goal of finishing the place and even now most people don't say much that isn't essential or an initial pleasantry, but it is a very different experience from just running around with five bots.  Having made the group through LFF and running down to the place doesn't have a thing to do with it.

[Yegolev]

It ruined immersion. It ruined the social stuff and I'm as anti-social a fuck as you can find in these games most nights. Suddenly I was doing piss easy dungeons with no concept of where they are in the wider world with people who I didn't know, wouldn't remember and didn't care about since they were completely disposable with no thought except the speed of the run to get the carrot. LFD ruined the only things that an MMO has going for it: scale, scope, socialization. They disappeared in one big poof.

LOTRO's main draw is its scale and scope. God, I can't tell you how badly a WoW style LFD would destroy it for me.

I see your point and I agree with it.  I do think, however, that spending all of your time with LFD and nothing else was what ruined it.  Call me out if I'm wrong.  Maybe there isn't much interesting to do in WoW other than run dungeons, I'll find out when I resub after Cataclysm.  Most of the people I know who are in LotRO are there for the scale and scope, as you point out.  It's a neat world and I don't think a LFD would ruin the game as long as people didn't do only that.  Hell, I would have thought the same thing about Skirmishes but those worked out fine.

[Zetor]

I play on a low/mid-populated server (Silverlode), and the only time I've even seen the inside of a larger-than-solo instance/skirmish was when I grouped with guildies (I was also not very impressed with most of the instances, but they're working on that according to the latest devdiaries... f'rex, garth agarwen is probably a decent dungeon now, but there's no way you can get me near fornost again until they do some large-scale revamp on it). GLFF on my server is dead during my playtimes (except for pvmp trashtalk and barrens chat), I have only seen maybe 1 or 2 actual 'lfm <endgame_instance>' calls total, and nothing for leveling dungeons. In lotro you spend a -lot- of time leveling (I'm still not past level 60 on my main despite playing on and off since early 2008), so having quick access to dungeons to break up the quest/skirmish routine would be helpful. I almost said battlegrounds too, but that's just my WOWtard self talking.  

Anyway, for me the WOW Dungeon Finder -- cross-server, even -- would help a lot in actually being able to experience those dungeons; I also don't mind pugging with complete strangers at all. But then I'm not big on those immersion things, and didn't mind the completely-instancedness of Guild Wars either or the hero 'bots' you could get for your party; there was an article on massively a few days ago about people who hated that system too.

Going back to my original question: the last WOW LFG interface iteration before Dungeon Finder (ie. being able to queue for multiple dungeons/raids at a time and set a comment with a built-in lfg channel you joined automatically) was ok. Is something like that coming?

[Modern Angel]

I see your point and I agree with it.  I do think, however, that spending all of your time with LFD and nothing else was what ruined it.  Call me out if I'm wrong.  Maybe there isn't much interesting to do in WoW other than run dungeons, I'll find out when I resub after Cataclysm.  Most of the people I know who are in LotRO are there for the scale and scope, as you point out.  It's a neat world and I don't think a LFD would ruin the game as long as people didn't do only that.  Hell, I would have thought the same thing about Skirmishes but those worked out fine.

The fact that WoW just isn't aging terribly well and has been boiled down to its constituent parts is definitely a chunk of it, yes. I mean, what else are you going to do? Run around and two shot mobs while doing a daily for the hundredth time? Do some five year old battlegrounds? I tried going back and once the needle was out of my arm I discovered that WoW just isn't that good anymore. I'm not talking about not being a good game; none of these MMOs are particularly good games. I mean that the MMO parts aren't especially good.

So going back to the original point, I'm not certain that a *WoW style* LFD is a good idea. I'll concede the point that going LFG is much different than actually playing with the groups. I could possibly get behind something which was not cross server and did not teleport you automatically, for example. But the fully anonymous, context and geography free chain dungeon running was... ugh. Just ugh.