LOTRO - Siege Of Mirkwood

[Snoochems]

A couple of days old. New xpac for LOTRO. Sounds good. http://www.lotro.com/mirkwood/

TURBINE UNVEILS THE LORD OF THE RINGS ONLINE™: SIEGE OF MIRKWOOD™

New Digital Expansion to the 2008 MMO of the Year Launching this Fall

WESTWOOD, MA – September 4, 2009 - Turbine, Inc. today unveiled The Lord of the Rings Online™: Siege of Mirkwood™, the digital expansion to the award-winning massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG). Siege of Mirkwood will expand the online world of Middle-earth where players will join forces to press further eastward into the dark, foreboding and treacherous forest of Mirkwood and take part in the epic conclusion to Volume II of The Lord of the Rings Online. Siege of Mirkwood will be available as a digital download this Fall with an increased level cap, a new region including the legendary evil fortress of Dol Goldur, major enhancements to combat and Legendary Items and the introduction of Skirmishes, a new system where players will train customizable soldiers and take them into battle as part of the War of the Ring.

“2009 has been a year of unprecedented growth for The Lord of the Rings Online and the launch of Siege of Mirkwood will end the year with a bang,” said Jeffrey Steefel, Executive Producer of The Lord of the Rings Online. “As the game expands east of the Misty Mountains, players will face the raging war and shadow that has spread across Middle-earth and the new Skirmish system will thrust players and their soldiers into the War of the Ring.”

NEW FEATURES:

* The Epic Conclusion to Volume II: Mines of Moria™ – Under the command of Celeborn and Galadriel, players will fight through vast armies of Orcs alongside the Elves of Lórien in a battle that will take them to Dol Guldur, the fortress of the Ringwraiths. This update includes Book 9 and the Epilogue to the sweeping epic tale begun with the award-winning Mines of Moria expansion.
* Increased Level Cap — Players will be able advance their characters up to level 65, gaining access to new traits, virtues, skills and class quests.
* Answer the Call of War! – Jump into the heat of battle with the new Skirmishes feature. Skirmishes offer endless action in repeatable, randomized instances where players can create and lead customizable soldiers into battle, training them to greater skill as they earn victories against the forces of shadow. Answer the call of war wherever violence erupts with the new “World Join” function that lets players and their fellowships band together to fight in various locations throughout Middle-earth.
* Take up Arms! – Infiltrate the dark jails, deadly arenas and savage stables of Dol Guldur, the fortress of the Ringwraiths, and strike a blow against Sauron’s forces in new 3 and 6-player instances. Call upon your fellows to adventure into the most deadly 12-player raid yet and face the ultimate challenge – the Nazgûl Lord!
* Major Gameplay Enhancements – Turbine continues to improve the award-winning experience of LOTRO with major improvements to the combat and Legendary Items systems. Players will experience improved responsiveness when in the heat of battle. Players will also be able to create and craft their own customized Second and Third Age Legendary Items from raw materials and grow their weapons’ power to level 60. Achieve new Legacies, new titles, and a fourth Runic slot that will make Legendary Items even more unique and powerful.


The Lord of the Rings Online is an award-winning MMORPG that delivers an interactive experience brimming with life and filled with the familiar people, places and monsters from the most beloved fantasy adventure of all time. From the picturesque surroundings of the Shire to Moria, the great underground realm to the menace of Mirkwood, players will experience the world of Middle-earth as never before. The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood will be available as a digital download this Fall. Details regarding Siege of Mirkwood’s pricing and availability will be unveiled soon. For more information or to download a free trial, visit www.lotro.com/mirkwood.


About Turbine
Turbine, Inc. is the premier creator and operator of massive, persistent online worlds that foster powerful social gaming communities. Turbine has grown to become one of the largest privately-held online gaming studios in North America. Turbine has created some of the world’s most popular and award-winning online games, including The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™, Dungeons & Dragons Online® and Asheron's Call®. For more information on Turbine, its products and services please visit www.turbine.com.

About Tolkien Enterprises
The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Tolkien Enterprises is the holder of worldwide motion picture, legitimate stage, merchandising, and other rights in J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary works The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Tolkien Enterprises has been producing and licensing films, stage productions and merchandise based on Tolkien’s works for more than 30 years. Its headquarters are in Berkeley, California, and its website may be found at www.tolkien-ent.com.

[GarethB]

* Major Gameplay Enhancements – Turbine continues to improve the award-winning experience of LOTRO with major improvements to the combat and Legendary Items systems. Players will experience improved responsiveness when in the heat of battle. Players will also be able to create and craft their own customized Second and Third Age Legendary Items from raw materials and grow their weapons’ power to level 60. Achieve new Legacies, new titles, and a fourth Runic slot that will make Legendary Items even more unique and powerful.

Players can make 3rd and 2nd age LI's now, I've done it myself multiple times and it's a complete lottery (the severe randomness of LI legacies is my #1 frustration with the game). I'm not going to bother trying to make any more until the new expansion goes live.

The "fourth runic slot" is an extra relic slot on LI's, and one preview of the expansion said that there will be craftable relics, but no details beyond that.

The trainable NPC sidekicks is interesting. Not for general gameplay is my assumption, instances only is my guess.

[the-enigma]

I'm still half hearted on this. From the sounds of it, they're applying band aids to the LI system, I'm still thinking it'll be a lottery. The sidekick/herald idea seems awesome, but I want more details. The LI system seemed awesome at first too, but their implementation was freaking annoying.

[GarethB]

I think Turbine shot themselves in the foot multiple times with the LI system. I like the general idea, I dislike the implementation, both as an LI user and as a Supreme level weaponsmith.

I tried making some 3rd age LI's when that was all that could be made, and gave it up as a bad joke. I tried again when 2nd age LI's became craftable, and it's STILL a bad joke. My main toon is a Guardian and I did get a reasonable 2nd age 2-hand weapon for soloing through crafting but I'm still using a 3rd age 1-hand weapon from tablet turn in for tanking, and I expect to be using it for quite a while.

The system is the way it is because Turbine wanted a time-sink to keep players busy with while they develop new content. I don't have a problem with the idea of time-sinks (they're annoying but understandable), but the LI lottery time-sink is very very frustrating.

There was a really good thread on the official forums that LI legacies should be earned and ranked up through deeds/quests, like virtues and traits are. IMO that would have been a much better way to do it. Sure, they could stretch out how long it takes to develop an LI as a time-sink, but you could at least see definate progress and have definate goals rather than the current random chance with eleventy billion retries. It's not as if people are changing the way they play to suit a particular LI, they just keep churning through LI's until they get one that suits the way they already play.

[Snoochems]

I dont know... i'm a big fan of the LI system. Then again, i'm not that cut from knowing that there are better weapons out there then mine.

Without the LI, you would just be grinding instances over and over to get that one great weapon that only drops 1/50 tries. I think i prefer the 'lottery' LI system.

[the-enigma]

Originally Posted by Snoochems

I dont know... i'm a big fan of the LI system. Then again, i'm not that cut from knowing that there are better weapons out there then mine.

Without the LI, you would just be grinding instances over and over to get that one great weapon that only drops 1/50 tries. I think i prefer the 'lottery' LI system.

Yes, so instead of grinding instances for that one weapon drop, I get to grind 2nd age or 1st age drops from ... either crafting or instances. Crafting gives me one book per week, anything else I need to grind instances from.

The part that kills me is that, for a minstrel, there are 2 must have legacies for it to be a good healing book. I have one of them on my current levelling 1st age. It's now level 46, and is still worse than my level 40 3rd age. If I get T5/T6 H+M on the level 50 reforge, it'll be better. If I don't, I'll get back around 1 mill IXP, and some runes. In other words, I'll be throwing out ~1.7 mill IXP, or about 2 hours of bounty quests. This is something I do at least once a week, too, in that seemingly endless chase for a better weapon than the one I got from a random mob.

I wouldn't mind "as much" if we could even see what legacies the reforges would give us, beforehand. But currently, I feel like I'm wasting so much time on items which seem to mainly turn out to be not even worth equipping.

[GarethB]

Each class has a "core role" when grouping, and there are certain legacies that buff that core role. If you look at discussions on which legacies are "must have", the "must have" legacies for each class are the ones most closely tied to that class's core role. Every class has two or three of those legacies for each type of LI. After that are legacies which buff specific skills, and the desirability of those legacies depends a lot on the individual play styles of each person. That's where the real frustration with the LI system is for me. Getting an LI with the core role legacies is time consuming but possible. Getting the more specific skill legacies that suit my individual play style on top of the core role legacies is beyond any control and entirely up to random chance.

I can craft 3rd and 2nd age LI weapons, but I don't any more because it's a serious waste of mithril flakes creating items that are entirely at the mercy of random chance as far as their usefulness is concerned. I don't expect or ask for perfection straight away, and even a very mediocre LI can become much better with just one good reforge (either to pick up a desirable legacy it doesn't have or improve the tier of a useful legacy it does have that is very low), but a player's control over the development of an LI is so minimal and so dependent on random number generation that it's genuinely frustrating.

[GarethB]

The game director has been doing interviews about the Mirkwood expansion with some game magazines and review sites. Exact details aren't public yet but some new information about LI's in the Mirkwood expansion have been discussed in the interviews.

When a player identifies an LI, not only will they be shown the legacies it already has (same as now) but some kind of probability prediction on what legacies it is likely to get in the future will also be shown to the player during the identification. Exactly how this will work is still not public and there will still be a randomising element to new legacies during reforges, but the idea is that a player will have some idea if an LI has much chance of picking up specific legacies, so rather than level up an LI and blindly hope you get certain legacies in the future, you can have some idea what the chances are of getting those legacies with each LI you identify, and be more selective of which LI's you level up for reforging as a result.

Another detail is that there will be a way to continue to level up an LI in new content releases. (quote copied from LOTRO forums, but was made by Jeffery Steefel, the game director, during an interview).

one of the things we talked about at Moria when we launched legendary items is that, that is one of the biggest issues with gear and equipment in these games is that I get something, I fight really hard to get and before I know it, it’s trash. And that’s really frustrating. Legendary item system is designed to help with that. At launch, with Moria, we never really found an effective way to retroactively go back and say, “All the items that you already have an upgrade path.” It was just too complicated to figure out how to do that without breaking things. But what we did say, and this is true, that things that went into the system from Moria forward would have an upgrade path. So the items that you have that you’ve gotten along the way, worked on since Moria and some of the new items that you’ll be getting in Mirkwood can be upgraded - you don’t ever have to trash it. You’ll just have to acquire some more components to upgrade it and make it appropriate to the level that you’re at. That’s huge. In addition, we’ve added a forth runic slot to the system so now there’s a crafting slot. Crafters can actually create runes to go into that forth slot.

A way to upgrade an LI you already have so it stays on-level with new content is interesting news. Whether or not Moria LI's will do this or it will only start with new Mirkwood LI's is still not answered yet. The fourth craftable relic for LI's was already known, no details on which crafting professions or what the attributes the craftable relics will have yet.

[the-enigma]

Didn't Jefferey Steefel say that LIs would be actual quest hubs, giving out quests, before MoM was released? I dunno, there seems to be some real doubt amongst a lot of players with regards to Steefel, apparently he's good at "announcing" as definites things that don't actually make it into live.

[GarethB]

Release date for Mirkwood has been announced. Dec 1st. You can pre-order it now. Mirkwood is not being offered on disk, it is a download only expansion.

If you already have a lifetime membership or are already on a multi-month payment plan (or sign up for a multi-month payment plan before Oct 31), Mirkwood is free.

There is a seperate "Adventurers Pack" that offers some extra items and perks for $20, and you have to pay for it no matter what payment plan you are already on or upgrade to,

SIEGE OF MIRKWOOD PRE-LAUNCH OFFERS
Starting today, players can take can take advantage of several special pre-launch offers to celebrate the release of the second expansion to LOTRO:

The LOTRO Lifetime Membership is now available for $199.
Any current or former player who renews or upgrades their subscription to any multi-month plan by October 31st gets the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion for FREE!
All players can pre-order the new LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack which contains 2 character slots and one shared storage slot that allows players to share items with all of their characters on the same server for $19.99 and get the Harbinger’s Cloak which provides 8% speed boost and the Dusky Nimblefoot Goat mount for FREE!
Starting today, existing Lifetime Members who pre-order the LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack get the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion plus two in-game items (Harbinger’s Cloak which provides an 8% speed boost and a new mount) for FREE!

The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood will be available as a digital download for $19.99 or as a bundle with the LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack plus a new mount for $39.99 on December 1, 2009.

[Borgod]

Spewing I missed out on a free key last week I actually did get one, but by the time I was asked to put in my credit card details etc it was gone and I missed out

Is a retail key of LOTRO + SoM going to me $US39.95 ?

[Manbag]

Originally Posted by Borgod

Spewing I missed out on a free key last week I actually did get one, but by the time I was asked to put in my credit card details etc it was gone and I missed out

Is a retail key of LOTRO + SoM going to me $US39.95 ?

Nope! http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/50...on-Gets-A-Date

Any current or former player who renews or upgrades their subscription to any multi-month plan by October 31st gets the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion for FREE!




Turbine has announced that The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood, the new digital expansion for LotRO, will launch on December 1st in North America. Accompanying the Mirkwood expansion is the LOTRO Adventurer's Pack. Starting today there are some pre-launch offers up for grabs.

The LOTRO Lifetime Membership is now available for $199.
Any current or former player who renews or upgrades their subscription to any multi-month plan by October 31st gets the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion for FREE!
All players can pre-order the new LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack which contains 2 character slots and one shared storage slot that allows players to share items with all of their characters on the same server for $19.99 and get the Harbinger’s Cloak which provides 8% speed boost and the Dusky Nimblefoot Goat mount for FREE!
Starting today, existing Lifetime Members who pre-order the LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack get the Siege of Mirkwood digital expansion plus two in-game items (Harbinger’s Cloak which provides an 8% speed boost and a new mount) for FREE!

[GarethB]

There are two seperate deals in this.

Deal 1 is the new Mirkwood content. If you already have a lifetime or multi-month subscription, or if you buy a lifetime/mult-month subscription before Oct 31, you will be able to download and play the new Mirkwood content at no extra charge. The Mirkwood content will be available for download starting on Dec 1st. If you are on a one month (you pay every month) subscription and stay on that plan, Mirkwood will cost you US$20 to download and play.

Deal 2 is an "Adventurer's Pack" which adds a few perks. Two extra character slots per server, a rideable goat, a cloak to wear that increases your run speed and a shared storage space that all your characters on the same server have access to. This costs US$20 for EVERYONE in the game, no matter what subscription plan you are on. You do not need the Adventurer's Pack to play Mirkwood, it is 100% optional.

[the-enigma]

Originally Posted by GarethB

There are two seperate deals in this.

Deal 1 is the new Mirkwood content. If you already have a lifetime or multi-month subscription, or if you buy a lifetime/mult-month subscription before Oct 31, you will be able to download and play the new Mirkwood content at no extra charge. The Mirkwood content will be available for download starting on Dec 1st. If you are on a one month (you pay every month) subscription and stay on that plan, Mirkwood will cost you US$20 to download and play.

Unless something changed overnight, this is wrong. Only multi month subscribers get SoM free. Lifetimers _must_ pay $20, however they can choose to either pay $20 for just SoM, or pay $20 for SoM+AP.

[fnkychkn]

lost interest in pve after moria came out (like has been said above, the constant lotto LI system didn't appeal to me).

just wondering if pvp will require you to upgrade? i have a lifetime sub, but do not plan on buying this update.