Moria Book 7, coming soon

Fri

Feb '09

I read through the LOTRO dev chat log posted on MMeOw (also on the official site), plus Tony's followup notes.

Some highlights for me:

Pet Pathing fixes - Yay, I'm pleased to see Turbine is working on this. As a new player, I have no idea how long it's been a problem, but I've gone through the same thing with pet classes over and over through multiple MMORPGs. Hopefully this means mob pathing will improve as well.
3man Instances - This is the feature from the expansion that caught my eye in the first place and got me trying the game. I haven't actually reached those 3man instances yet, but I'd love to see them make as many as possible. Glad to hear they're popular.
Raiding - I'm glad with the raiding that they have, they're currently concentrating on 12man. I'm really not interested in larger raids anymore, I don't feel that the content improves by throwing more players at it. 12 is plenty.
No Housing changes - I'd like to see housing improve. It's pretty good, but it doesn't have the same high attention to detail as the rest of the game. A shame it's not much of a priority. An address book for neighbourhood locations is a good idea though, I hope they implement that suggestion.
Fellowship Maneuvers - I'm not super fond of the 'Conjunction' system, mostly because it doesn't flow with the combat, it's more of an interruption. It must be a nightmare for their designers to balance encounters around. So less emphasis on it is actually something I welcome.

I hope they have an ETA for this soon. I was really hoping we'd get a release date. It's the first Book patch for me, so what can I say, I'm curious and eager to see it.

(1:16 pm)

4 Comments » »

Comment by Tony (not verified)
Feb 6, 2009 2:20pm

Conjunctions are definitely an oddity in some ways. They can be a huge lifesaver though. They've saved my butt a few times when our group hasn't had a healer around.

Comment by Keen (not verified)
Feb 6, 2009 2:35pm

Conjunctions are awesome, but I agree they need to flow better. If they could go on in the background of combat so that the party can continue fighting and just have the maneuvers come up on screen then that would be great.

3-man dungeons have me excited as well.

I'm currently back in LOTRO for the 10-day trial (wishing I could play my level 50's without resubbing). I'm on the Landroval server as well! Name's Morkeen.

Comment by Tony (not verified)
Feb 7, 2009 1:48pm

How is Landroval? I'm on Gladden now, but it seems like every other person I follow in this game is on Landroval and I'm starting to feel like I'm missing out lol.

Comment by Rog
Feb 7, 2009 2:05pm

@Tony: There's a strong RP presence on Landroval, which generally seems like a good thing. Players that take their time, polite, etc. although sometimes the emote spam is excessive, lol.

A few weeks back we had a bit of rubberbanding when crossing zone boundaries, they were experiencing that on Brandywine too, so I kinda chalked it up as a high server pop. problem. Seems all fixed now though.

The population did seem to explode shortly after I joined. Mostly new players migrating from WAR and WoW (especially with the mess WoW had with their last big patch), which meant a bit of crowding in the lower areas, but that seems to be spreading out more now.

I've also noticed a good deal of the game population plays in primetime and on weekends, moreso than I'm used to from other MMOs. That could be Landroval-specific or might just be how it is for LOTRO overall.