Hello everyone!
I hope you all have been enjoying the new Book 3 content and changes! We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on the new Instance Cluster for Eriador and Enedwaith, as well as on the changes to Evendim and the new additions to the LOTRO Store. I’ve been particularly enjoying the Northcotton Farm instance (who doesn’t love saving hobbits from poison pies?) and the Gorthoron Raid (thank goodness the wings stay unlocked once finished – I just can’t quite hack those all night raids anymore). The improved Morale potions and Battle potions of Restoration have also found permanent places on my hot bar, as have my new milestones.
Of course, along with the good things that we introduce with an update, we inevitably manage to release a few issues as well. Thanks to all who have been troubled by those issues for your patience and understanding – we’ll be doing a bug-fix patch in a week or so to get most of those resolved. As a reminder – if you ever run across something you think is a bug, please use the reporting tool in-game to let us know what happened so we can be sure to look into and get it resolved.
So you all know about Isengard coming in the fall, but a bunch of folks have been asking “what else is coming up?” The Spring festival is underway right now, so if you haven’t headed over to Breeland to check it out, you should make sure to! Lovely flower patches have sprung up, and it is clear that spring is in the air!
Once spring has been properly welcomed once again, we’ll be introducing a new Anniversary Festival, for players to enjoy as we celebrate our 4th birthday in April! I’ll be talking more with you then about what to expect in the Rise of Isengard release this fall. To answer one question about Isengard: some of you have been asking about the other raid we have in development – it’s going to be an amazing experience, as it has a monstrous dragon boss with custom voice-over and lip-syncing animation, but it’s also been challenging to get all those pieces intertwined so we’re going to keep working on it and it will now be a part of the Isengard release this fall.
We’re also working on Update 3, currently scheduled for late May, with 2 new mid-level instances and 2 new Skirmishes, all of which support scaling to level 65. We’ll also be introducing a new item to the LOTRO store that allows characters to reset the Skirmish Marks spent on Skirmish Traits. After that, we’ll be introducing a new festival-like event where players will get a chance to spend a few days frantically searching for buried treasure. It’ll have some cool in-game rewards, and will likely be open for play periodically over the year.
It’s been great to see so many new faces in Breeland and Ered Luin, and wonderful to see so many old friends throughout Eriador playing the new cluster! As always, please let us know how you are enjoying the new content and systems changes that have come in Book 3, and let us know what you’d like to see more of in the coming months and years ahead. Talk to you again soon!
Kate Paiz
Executive Producer, The Lord of the Rings Online
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