LOTRO Reporter Episode 014 Show Notes

Another late show notes. Sorry!

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Our big feature this week was our interview with Sapience AKA Rick Heaton. Thanks again Rick! Turbine, give this man a raise!

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1) UI Dev Diary – New Main Menu!

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/531-developer-diary-new-main-menu

2) Great Mirkwood Preview

http://www.lordoftheringsonline.net/news.php?readmore=191

3) Combat Changes Dev Diary

http://www.lordoftheringsonline.net/news.php?readmore=191

4) Character Panel Dev Diary

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/536-developer-diary-character-panel-update

5) New Skill Upgrades at level 62

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/539-developer-diary-som-skill-upgrades

6) Email

Hi Bill and Chris,

Some comments regarding the Warden discussion (I’m at 49 warden):

I’ll throw a bouquet to Bill for advocating a Warden-isc UI to enhance gameplay and funness factor. I like the idea of a spoked wheel concept, a la http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/lotro/chart/0.53/warden.pdf Chris, yes patterns emerge with some gambit lines, HOTs and threat generation, but it can quickly get complicated. I guess i like to the idea of a visual representation of where your current choices may take you. As a workaround, I prebuild my gambits using most of my quickslots… this might help Bill play his warden more. Attached is a screen shot of my UI setup with Master of the Spear slotted…Moving from left to right, it’s:

single mob threat, multiple mob threat, threat leech, morale leech, HOT, Defense buffs, Direct damage, DOT, DOT + Threat increase

This set up morphs as i get new skills or need to quickly swap weapons or gear. As I play, i’m usually sitting next to my wife and having a conversation, watching a tv show, chatting with kin, petting the family dog, etc….and i’m not wired to multi-task very well, lol, so this set up allows me to easily flow down different gambit lines or quickly change…start down the DOT line but then switch to interrupt. I think the warden-isc UI flows with the character role of being able to quickly move along different gambit lines to address a changing environment.

Be that as it may, I think i’ll give Bill a brick for his comments on a tanking warden. Chris, you get a bouquet for your retort. Here’s my 2 cents: IMHO, I’ve found that I can tank as effectively as a Guardian (not better or worse) in a group that knows how to use their character in a group setting (don’t play like their solo) AND knows something about how a warden generates aggro (over time, not instant). The character is not the problem, it’s the person behind the character. For example….using target forwarding…allows you to take mobs down faster and makes the mini and tanks job easier. Some people never bother to learn about what other characters bring to the table. I was guilty of that with my burglar. I didn’t see what they did until i started playing one. And i’ve come across groups that just want to get thru the mobs fast and are not concerned with managing their aggro. Oh, bring back the wives, that episode was great!

ok, i’ve gone on long enuff, enjoyed the show and dev talk summary, happy thanksgiving / jour de grace!

couillon (coo-yon)

brandywine

6) iTunes 5 Star Review

Couillon

LOTRO Reporter Episode 013 Show Notes

Woops. Looks like I missed a couple of episode’s worth of show notes! My apologies.

This week, on our extra special Friday the 13th edition of the show, we discussed:

1)  Dev chat on warcry

http://lotro.warcry.com/news/view/96062-LOtRO-Dev-Chat-Transcript-11-11-2009

• inspired by greatness - allows people to do solo versions of epic quests - increase dmg, regen

See – Problems and Solutions #1 by Orion http://my.lotro.com/orion/2009/11/04/problems-and-solutions-1/

• Skirmish marks tiers

- small and large tokens + skirmish marks
- large tokens can be downgraded at no cost
- small tokens require tokens + marks to upgrade to large
- all items will be available
- Small Token come from Solo and 3 man?

• Crafted Radiance gear? - nope.

• Skirmishes in epic quest lines? - Nope.

- “Different strain of treatment” no more details.  Interested to see

• Class quests in Mirkwood

- mention of skirmish traits
- not sure what ot make of that

• Warden threat regen after rez – no tool

- LOVE Graal’s response.  Shouldn’t have died in the first place.  Working as intended.

• Attention past Dec 1

- introducing new content and bugs.
- orion specifically requested not to be quoted after that.  understandable.

2) Welcome back week Nov 12 – Nov 18

http://www.lotro.com/news/377-welcomeback

3) Skirmish Dev Diary: Accessibility

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/522-developer-diary-som-skirmishes-accessibility

4) Multi-month Mirkwood offer is extended to Nov 18th

5) Emails

Hi guys,

I’m just now listening to podcast 7 where you’re talking about how much fun running through a zone 15 levels higher than your character is.  I get a rush out of doing that too!  (Sorry I’m a little behind.)

Did you know that there’s a series of quests that requires you to run through high-level zones as a level 1 chicken… without a map?

The chicken quest chain starts at Sandson’s Farm, just outside of Waymeet in The Shire.  Here’s a link to a guide.  http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/60668  The chicken quests are really a fun thing to do with your guild.  Everyone’s equal as a level 1 chicken, so you don’t have to worry about having people of the right level to do the quest.  If you want to make it easier you can talk someone into running monster interference, but even that’s pretty challenging because chickens pull aggro from everywhere.  Be warned that you’re disconnected from chat (including voice chat) in chicken form.  You really have to pay attention to stick together as a group of chickens.  It’s easy to lose each other in the underbrush, and you can’t stop running because you’re on a timer and horrible things are trying to eat you.

These are probably some of the hardest non-combat quests in the game, so you probably don’t want to bring along anyone who’s easily frustrated by defeat.  I LOVED doing them with my guild.  It was a great change of pace to be concentrating on running away and sneaking around monsters instead of fighting them.  Also, running through zones without a map made me really pay attention to the zone in ways I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t had to learn my way by landmarks.  The reward is a cosmetic cloak that lets you turn into a chicken.

I liked the interview you did with your wives.  You should have them on the show as regulars.  I’ve found a lot more women in LotRO than in WoW.  I think that has a lot to do with the LotRO community being much easier to get along with.

I once got kicked out of an Onyxia raid in WoW for being a girl.  It was my first raid with that particular guild and the first time I’d been on voice chat with them.  The raid leader heard me on voice chat and assumed from the timbre of my voice that I must be a 13-year-old boy.  He simply refused to believe that I was a 25-year-old woman who had killed Ragnaros and had the pants to prove it.  Although it was frustrating at the time, in retrospect it was pretty hilarious.

I totally identified with your wives when they were talking about how they were wary about playing with groups of strangers.  I’m wary about that too, especially with some of the tougher end-game instances.  I do run in groups of strangers because, well, I like meeting new people and that’s a good way to do it, but I’m tense when I do it.  I’m afraid that if I screw up in front of a group of guys I don’t know, they’ll figure it’s because I’m a girl.  I guess I sort of feel like I’m representing my gender when I’m playing.  I realize I’m probably doing the guys a disservice by thinking they’d be that harsh, but it’s hard to get it out of my brain.

Thanks for the great podcasts!

Pleo Sweetbriar, hobbit minstrel

Brandywine

6) iTunes 5 Star Reviews

Agree with Gewurtz

 

More on Skirmishes

With the announcement that Bullroarer was going to be left on after a patch on Friday morning, I eagerly loaded up the test client, loaded up Almazar, and tried to complete the tutorial that had been bugged on Tuesday night.

Success! I was able to complete the tutorial and skirmishes where now open to me. I equipped my soldier’s trait and opened the Skirmish Join panel. Ooooo, three choices. Where did I want to go? The Shire? Bree? No, it was Weathertop for me!

The skirmish loaded, and what a blast it was. I fought of wave after wave of evil creature, and with my herbalist’s and an NPC’s help, we drove them back.

The skirmish was fun, quick and exactly was I hoped for. I quickly checked to see if I had enough skirmish marks for a gear upgrade (nope) and opened the Skirmish Join panel again.

And then it happened.

All of the skirmishes where greyed out. I couldn’t create a new one. When I selected one and clicked on the “Create” button, I would get the following message; “Exceeded number of skirmishes per week”. Grrrr. Not again.

So I tried it with another character that I had transferred. Accidentally create a Tier III skirmish, died very quickly, exited the skirmish, and tried to create a new one.

Same problem. Grrrr.

After some chatting with some people in the global LFF channel, I still couldn’t figure out the problem, or a work around. Very frustrating.

So far, all I can tell you is that from what I can tell, I’ll be playing a lot of Skirmishes. I’m also very happy that these problem are occurring now, instead of on launch day! Keep up the good work Zombie Columbus and Jwbarry!

I’ll see you in game.

EDIT: I found an explanation about this in the forums. Working as intented. Oh well, I understand that Turbine is giving us the opportunity to try it out now, not to play the whole game early. It was fun. Can’t wait for launch. http://forums.lotro.com/showpost.php?p=4195921&postcount=28

Skirmish Weekend!

With the bug that players faced during Tuesday night’s Skirmish preview, where most players where not able to try skirmishes, Turbine has decided to open up Bullroarer for the entire weekend (Nov 20-22) for players to log on and try them out!

This was confirmed during LOTRO Reporter’s interview with Sapience, a.k.a. Rick Heaton, Turbine’s Online Community Specialist. Bullroarer will be taken down Friday, Nov 20th, for maintenance, and when it comes back up, your should be good to go for skirmishes.

So there you have it. Transfer your characters, patch up Bullroarer install, and get ready to have some fun!

See you in game!

Skirmish Preview

With the Skirmish stress test coming up on the 17th, I thought that I’d take the time to write an overview of the skirmish system so far as we know. I’m going to run through it in an informal way, and I’ll try to include links when I can to site my sources.

Before the Skirmish

When you first decide to join a Skirmish, you’ll look at the new Main Menu and select Skirmish.

You’ll be able to bind the Skirmish menu to one of the buttons now (Link) or, of course, use the shortcut (Looks like CTRL+K now, but that may change before release).

Once you open the Skirmish Join panel, many options will be available to your. First off, you’ll be able to see which Skirmishes have daily quests available (the Ring next to the skirmish name).

You’ll also be able to see the level range of the Skirmishes, and pick a specific level difficulty that you want this instance of the Skirmish to be. for example, the Defense of the Prancing Pony Skirmish has a level range of 50-65. That means that you can pick any level between 50 and 65 for the Skirmish. This will affect the difficulty, as well as the rewards that you receive at the end, but more on rewards later.

Next you’ll be able to select a difficulty for that particular level, from Tier I to Tier III, with Tier I being the easiest, and Tier III the hardest. This will affect the difficulty of the instance, as well as the rewards. So, if you’ve got a group of level 53 players, and they are experienced and capable at instances, you might want to pick Tier III to give themselves more of a challenge.

And Finally, you’ll see the size of the instance. The size available will be Solo, Small Fellowship (3 members), Full Fellowship (6 Members) and Raid (12 members). This will also affect the rewards.

Once you have made all of these choices, you will see that there is a Skirmish Marks percentage listed. This will take all of the variables stated above and the more difficult the instance will be, the more Skirmish Marks you will receive. Link

Once you click Create, you will launch the Skirmish, and the other members of your Fellowship (if it’s not a Solo Skirmish), will see this window, which will give them all of the information they need to decide if they are going to join you in the Skirmish.

If they choose Travel Now, they will, well, travel now. If they choose Travel Later, a small icon will be place in the UI that the player can click on (until it expires) to be transported to the Skirmish.

During the Skirmish

First of all, most of the skirmishes will be based around Control Points. You will either have to defend, or capture these points. There has not been much elaboration on what the other types of Skirmishes will be, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Perhaps we’ll be able to give you more details following the Skirmish stress test on Tuesday, November 17th.

As far as the enemies that you will be facing, there will be a theme throughout each Skirmish. For example, in the Tuckborough Troubles, brigands, wolves and Orcs will be the monsters that you face. Each time you enter the Skirmish, however, there will be an element of randomization. This will take place in the form of how many monsters there are and exactly where they spawn. There will also be 2 Encounters, optional objectives for the Skirmish, that will be picked from a list of an unknown amount. These may be shown at the beginning of the Skirmish, or they may be triggered at some point during your time in the Skirmish. Turbine is being somewhat vague when it comes to specific Encounters, as they see discovering what these encounters are as part of the fun.

During the Skirmish, you will also fight Lieutenants. Lieutenants are mini-bosses that make regular fights more interesting. Each Lieutenant is unique, and many of them will have specific strategies that you need to employ to defeat them, and they have a chance of spawning with any of the groups of monsters in the Skirmish. They will again gain new abilities and/or “twists” to them with larger group sizes.

One of the coolest features that you will notice during the instance is your soldiers. Soldiers will be semi-pet/semi-npc addition to your group, but only during Skirmishes. These are the people that are left behind after all of the heroes and trained soldier go off to war, and therefore, they don’t have much training. This explain some of their limitations.  These are several different aspects to soldiers:

1) Customization

You will be able, with Skirmish points, to purchase new traits for your soldiers and “level” them. You will then use these traits to give your Soldier a specific role. You will also be able to have some cosmetic changes that will make your soldier unique. Link

2) Direct Control

You won’t have direct control over your soldier, but you will have a skill, on a fairly long cooldown, that will allow you to direct them in a limited way. There isn’t much information about this yet, but here is a screenshot with the new skill. Link

What really exciting for me is that when there are Skirmishes with 12 players in them, there will also be 12 soldiers, AND any pets that Captains or Lore-Masters. Very epic!

When you fight the regular monsters during the skirmish, there will be no loot. This will keep this moving swiftly, without players having to stop and loot every single corpse. A nice addition. The only monsters that will have loot will be the Lieutenants, Bosses and optional encounter monsters. Bosses will drop a significant amount of coins, to make up for the rest of the monsters not dropping any. The loot will exclusively be Skirmish Marks, with some drop of Tokens. More on these later. Link

After the Skirmish

Skirmishes will introduce a new form of currency to the game: Skirmish Marks and Token. Skirmish marks are the general currency, and Tokens will be required for some special purchases and the Skirmish Vendors. Skirmish marks and Tokens will be awarded in a few different ways:

1) Lieutenants, Bosses and optional Encounter monsters will all drop Skirmish marks, and there will be chance that they also drop Tokens.

2) You will get Tokens from optional encounters that have been grouped together in a campaign. For example, there may be 3 Skirmishes that are grouped together as campaign X. During the optional Encounters in all of the Skirmishes in campaign X, you will have a chance to receive some Campaign X tokens. These can be redeemed at the Skirmish Vendor for loot.

3) Completing Skirmishes will reward you with Skirmish Marks.

Starting to get worried about all of these taking up inventory space? They will go into your inventory, however they stack into the millions, so no worries about taking up much space.

Once you’ve completed the Skirmish, and received your Marks and Tokens, you will be able to go to Skirmish Camps, where there will be many Skirmish Vendors, who will gladly sell you everything from weapons and armour and other equipment, to cosmetic items for you and your house, to traits for you Soldiers. There will be LOTS of stuff for you to spend your Skirmish Marks on.

Overall, I’m very excited about Skirmishes, and I can’t wait to see them in game!

Warcry Dev Chat

I managed to convince Sallenia to watch the kids for a while this afternoon and I got to participate in the Dev Chat over at Warcry. It was a great experience, with quite a few people in the chat room. They spent an hour going through many questions that had been submitted (including 2 of mine!) and where fairly forthcoming with information. I don’t think anything new was announced during the chat, but we did some clarification on some changes that where coming with Mirkwood.

Some highlight:

• The changes to the combat system will remove the Minstrel post-heal root issues.
• Only 1 skill upgrade (at level 62)
• Warden Axes to appear as crafted recipes.
• New Faction/reputation info

A full transcript of the chats can be found here.

Overall, a good chat. I was disapointed that some of the answers where “we can’t tell you yet”, as we are only 3 weeks from release, but oh well. I guess we’ll just have to wait. Thanks for taking the time Sapience, Jalessa, Orion, jwbarry, and Graal.

See you in game!

Did you know…

There are lots of little keyboard tricks that make the game a bit more streamlined to play.  I often see people asking about them in the /advice channel, so I thought I’d share with you the ones that I’ve learned about so far.

• Alt-F4 quits the game
• To link an item in chat, make sure your cursor is in the dialogue box, then Ctrl+Right click the item
• The Printscreen (Prt Sc) button takes a screen shot
• F12 removes all UI from view
• Ctrl + \ allows you to move the UI elements (such as the mini-map or Fellowship Maneouvres pop-up) around the screen
• ‘N‘ toggles names/labels on and off
• Ctrl Enter allows you to minimize the game

The Books and The Game – What one brings to the other

After not having read The Lord of the Rings in over 10 years, I decided to sit down and re-read the series. The impetus was listening to A Casual Stroll to Mordor, and hearing how Merric has never read the books, although I hear that he has begun (yeah!).

I started with The Hobbit, as that is where the story truly begins, and have now begun to read the fellowship books. I noticed, almost right away, that is was a very different experience than the last time that I had read this same story. In the past, I would have been what you might call a “skim” reader. My goal as a reader was to get to the end of the book as quickly as possible. I would often skip entire paragraphs if I didn’t feel that they directly affected the plot. Therefore, I don’t believe that my previous reads of J.R.R. Tolkiens’ works where very thorough. More than that however, I believe that playing Lord of the Rings Online also affected how I approached the books. That whole maturity thing might have change my experience too.

LOTRO Reporter Episode 012 Show Notes

This week, we discuss

1) Dev Diary – Skirmish Rewards

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/514-developer-diary-som-skirmishes-rewards

2) Did you know?

http://lotroreporter.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/did-you-know-9/

3) Chris’ Cool Loot

Steak Tenderizer – Gotten by Almazar in Evendim

Bind on Acquire One-handed Hammer 30 – 47 Westernesse Damage 16.8 DPS 2.3 Speed Cooldown: 30m Target: You have a small chance of lowering your target’s ability to Evade. +4 Might +29 Maximum Morale On Use: +29 Maximum Morale Duration: 10m

4) New Trailer ( Mirkwood Trailer 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsRWLtt2KuM

5) Monster Type Guide

dookie12323

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=300787

6) Class Specific Loteries

http://my.lotro.com/turbinecommunity/2009/11/03/introducing-lotro-class-lotteries/

7) iTunes 5 Star Reviews

Goldenstar Lhim

Twitter – twitter.com/weax ; twitter.com/almazar

Facebook – Search for LOTRO Reporter on facebook and become a fan to add us to your news feed.

Email lotro.reporter@gmail.com

Blog – www.lotroreporter.wordpress.com

Did you know….

Okay, our fellowship of 5 has been notoriously bad at using Fellowship Maneouvers (aka FMs or conjunctions) effectively, so I thought I’d find out some random useful facts about them.  And don’t forget to check out the great Fellowship Maneouvers Guide that is posted at the top of the blog.

1)  Only characters at level 12 or above may contribute to an FM.

2)  Burglars have the possibility of starting FMs using the following skills:

-At level 12:  Exploit Opening

-At level 28:  Trip (while in Stealth)

-At level 30:  Using a Bag of Marbles along with the passive skill Clever Devices

-At level 39:  Exposed Throat (a legendary trait, from the Expert’s Guide to Dirty Fighting)

3)  Guardians have the possibility of starting FMs using the following skills:

-At level 36:  Turn the Tables (must be used after the guardian is knocked down)

-At level 40:  Fray the Edge

-At level 45:  To the King (after the enemy has suffered from Overwhelm or Thrust)

4)  Captains have a 10% chance of starting FMs using the skill Kick at level 44 or higher, if they have 4 traits in the Leader of Men trait set

5)  Hunters have the possibility of starting FMs using Trip Wire traps at level 35 or higher

6)  Once an FM has been started against an enemy, whether it was successful or not, the enemy is immune to FMs for one minute.

7)  When you pick a coloured button to use in the Fellowship Maneouver, but want to change it, you simply click again on the colour you first picked and your contribution will disappear, allowing you to choose a different colour.

8)  The fellowship leader can display which FM he/she wants the group to complete.  This will be from a list of any FMs that he/she has completed while in any fellowship.  Go to the Character panel, select Skills, then click the Fellowship tab at the bottom, and select the preferred FM.  Next time an FM is triggered, that sequence will appear on everyone’s screen, which makes it easier to know who needs to contribute what when!

9)  You should not move when a Fellowship Maneouver is underway, or your contribution will be cancelled.  The targeted enemy also cannot move, but, unfortunately, other enemies can still hit you.  Ouch!

I hope this information has been useful.  Now get out there and kick some butt using your new and improved Fellowship Maneouver skills!