[EXTENTION] payante automne (1ER dec 2009)

http://www.lotro.com/news/pressreleases/459-the-lord-of-the-rings-online-siege-of-mirkwood

voila bonne lecture

khepri

le Nazgûl on arrive et on va tout te faire!!!!

Résumé des détails :

* Le siège de Mirkwood aura un prix de 19,99$. Comme avec la Moria l'année dernière, nous allons avoir un ensemble de pré-offres de mise à niveau qui sont très intéressantes. Nous ne sommes pas tout à fait prêts à dévoiler ces détails encore, mais nous vous garderons informés.
* L'histoire épique se poursuit dans le Volume 3 en tant que mise à jour de contenu régulière au début de l'année prochaine. A priori comme mise à jour de livre gratuit standard, mais ca n'a pas été confirmé.
* Certaines des améliorations au jeu venant avec Mirkwood profiteront à chacun, mais les éléments clé exigeront la mise à niveau de Mirkwood.
* Les escarmouches sont PvE et ne devraient pas être directement en concurrence avec PvMP.
* Le nouveau raid est un raid multi-boss.
* 100+ d'heures de nouveau contenu
* La cap de niveau a augmenté au niveau 65 avec l'accès à de nouveaux traits, des vertus, des connaissances et des quêtes de classe
* Les articles légendaires seront maintenant max au niveau 60 -aucun mot sur si cela inclut les existantes ou seulement les nouveaux.
* Les articles légendaires gagneront un 4ème emplacement runique, des nouveaux legs et des nouveaux titres.
* L'artisanat pourra crafter et personnaliser les armes Légendaires 3ème et 2ème Âge. Nous pouvons déjà les crafter, donc seule la partie "personnaliser" est intéressante - aucun mot sur ce que cela signifie , mais il y aura un Journal de Dev bientôt.
* Les escarmouches récompensent en points d'expérience dédiés et peuvent être jouées dès le niveau 30.



Que sont les Escarmouches, et comment fonctionnent-elles ?

Le système d'Escarmouche permettra à tous les joueurs - HL, casual, level moyen ou de haut niveau - l'accès au même contenu.

Douze nouveaux instances d'Escarmouches seront disponibles en plus d'une paire d'instances conçues pour présenter le système aux joueurs. Chacune de ces instances est évolutive à partir du nombre de joueurs; elles acceptent toutes un, trois, six, ou douze joueurs à la fois, avec le déficit compensé par des soldats NPC créés par le joueur - pour faire un grand total de 24. En outre, beaucoup d'instances sont évolutives par le niveau: par exemple, une escarmouche qui présente un assaut sur et une défense du Mont Venteux acceptera des joueurs de niveau 30 à 65. Chaque instance a neuf défis optionnels, dont chacun décerne des points d'escarmouche. Ces défis sont aléatoires, comme le sont les ennemis à l'intérieur de l'instance (dans de certaines limites logiques, évidemment), donc vous n'aurez pas probablement la même expérience deux fois de suite.

Par exemple, Jeffrey Steefel a montré l'ouverture d'une de ces Escarmouches dans laquelle un certain nombre de NPC ont été enfermés dans le Poney fringant et les hommes de Sharkey menacent de l'incendier. Votre travail à vous est de défendre la Ville de Bree. Le Poney lui-même donne des points pendant cette Escarmouche, basés sur la manière dont vous défendrez le bâtiment. Si ces points de succès tombent à zéro, vous ratez votre objectif primaire.

Maintenant, les points d'Escarmouche : ceux-ci sont vos récompenses pour accomplir vos défis - primaire et optionnel - dans chaque instance. Ils peuvent être utilisés pour personnaliser et avancer vos soldats. Les soldats sont tout à fait customizable : vous pouvez leur assigner des traits, comme avec un joueur et vous pouvez changer leur apparence cosmétique.

Vous pouvez entrer dans une Escarmouche de n'importe où dans le jeu. Quand l'Escarmouche sera terminée - chacune d'entre elle est conçue pour durer trente à quarante minutes - vous serez transportés en arrière là où vous étiez dans le monde.

Chaque joueur a 1 Soldat. Un groupe de 12 dans une instance aurait donc un total de 12 Soldats. Donc le groupe mènerait l'équivalent d'un deuxième groupe de raid de 12. Bien que chaque joueur ait seulement le contrôle de son propre soldat. Vous pouvez utiliser en plus n'importe quels pet/bannières que vous auriez, en plus de votre soldat.

Les escarmouches récompensent en points d'expérience, faisant monter le niveau normal et peuvent être jouées dès le niveau 30.

Les escarmouches sont PvE et ne devraient pas être directement en concurrence avec PvMP.

Les escarmouches ne sont pas du session play.




Qu'est-ce que signifie "Améliorer la mécanique de Combat" ?

Voici une explication rapide de Floon :

Les autoattaques ne retarderont plus l'usage d'un skill. Ce que cela signifie vraiment, c'est que l'animation a une chance de passer avant l'anim de l'autoattaque.




Qu'est-ce que signifie "World Join" ?

Columbus donne quelques détails :

Le "World Join" relève en fait un peu de la fausse appellation. Le nom de cette partie du système d'Escarmouche sera probablement changé en "Rejoindre l'escarmouche", ce qui est plus proche de la réalité.

Ok, mais qu'est-ce que cela veut dire réellement ? Il y aura un journal dev sur cela (j'y travaille maintenant) mais pour faire court: c'est une fenêtre UI qui permettra aux joueurs de choisir la taille de groupe, le niveau et la difficulté d'une Escarmouche, et ensuite d'y être immédiatement transportés. J'insiste sur "l'Escarmouche": le système n'a rien à voir, jusqu'à maintenant, avec les instances, le PvMP, les Champs de Bataille ou n'importe quoi d'autre.



Le Livre 9 Épique et au-delà :

Sur l'ordre de Celeborn et Galadriel, les joueurs lutteront contre les vastes armées des Orcques le long des rives Elfiques de la Lórien, dans une bataille qui les emmènera à la forteresse de Dol Guldur. Cette mise à jour inclut le Livre 9, qui aura des chapitres comme des livres à ce jour, ainsi que l'Épilogue de l'histoire épique entamée avec les Mines de la Moria. Aucun mot à ce jour sur le nombre de chapitres, ou sur le nombre de "livres" que "l'épilogue" contiendrait.

L'histoire épique se poursuivra dans le Volume 3 via des mises à jour de contenu régulières au début de l'année prochaine. (Sans doute via des mises à jour gratuites standard, le contraire serait difficile, mais ca n'a pas été officiellement confirmé)

Le Livre 9 Épique et une grande partie de son Épilogue ptendront place dans Mirkwood, donc vous aurez besoin 'du Siège de Mirkwood'

Le Livre 9 Épique pourra être commencé sans avoir accompli le Livre 8 (ou vraisemblablement n'importe quel autre livre en excluant le Livre II.1 dont vous avez besoin pour la Moria).

Le Livre 9 est très dense : des instances, des escarmouches, des monstres et quelques surprises.




Objets Légendaires :

Les objets légendaires seront maintenant niveau 60 maximum -aucun mot sur si cela inclut les objets existant ou seulement nouveaux.

Les articles légendaires gagneront un 4ème emplacement runique, des nouveaux legs et des nouveaux titres.

L'artisanat pourra crafter et personnaliser les armes Légendaires 3ème et 2ème Âge. Nous pouvons déjà les crafter, donc seule la partie "personnaliser" est intéressante - aucun mot sur ce que cela signifie , mais il y aura un Journal de Dev bientôt.



Montures et nouvelles montures :

Les montures deviennent des compétences, pas des objets. Cela signifie que vous ne serez plus tenus d'avoir votre monture dans votre inventaire. Dans votre fenêtre de compétences, il y aura une rubrique "monture", qui listera vos montures disponibles : votre cheval, votre autre cheval, votre chèvre,... Et, bien sûr, puisque les montures deviennent des compétences, un certain nombre de limites avec les montures cesseront simplement d'être : vous serez capables maintenant de passer les portes, entrer dans une nouvelle zone pendant que vous êtes à cheval; vous pourrez communiquer maintenant avec les NPC (vendeurs inclus). De plus, vous pourrez utiliser maintenant des emotes sur votre monture. Enfin, en ce qui concerne les montures, il y aura une nouvelle chèvre, la Chèvre Sauvage.

Vous pouvez avoir des chevaux multiples. Chacun est une compétence distincte, mais il n'y a à priori aucune limite sur le nombre que vous pouvez en posséder. Il y aura un Journal de Dev sur le nouveau système qui devrait donner une tonne d'informations.



Espace de stockage du Compte de tout

Dans la longue liste de changements, il y a également l'adjonction d'espace de stockage partagé pour tous les persos du compte. Actuellement, l'espace de stockage partagé a l'air d'être limité à 50 objets, bien que cela augmentera probablement au fil des années de la même manière que l'achat de coffres de stockage sur le personnage principal.

Pas d'infos si cela implique l'arrivée d'objets "liés au compte".

Et comme pour la banque, ce qui est déposé dans un des nouveaux NPC de stockage compte peut être sorti à un autre. Aussi longtemps que les personnages sont tous sur le même compte.




Nouveau Raid : Dol Guldur :

La question brûlante pour tout le monde -la radiance- n'a pas été abordée : aucun mot quant à savoir si elle sera nécessaire, sous sa forme actuelle ou sous un autre, ni à quel hauteur. Le raid sera dans Dol Guldur et proposera une instance multiboss culminant avec un combat contre à la fois une "Bête Déchue" et finalement, le Lieutenant de Dol Guldur, le sous-chef des Nazgul.

Dol Guldur contiendra aussi un groupe de plus petites instances tant pour trois que pour six personnes.

argh, je viens d'apprendre ça... je ne reviendrais pas tout de suite, j'attendrais encore un peu ^^

J'ai peur que cette extension soit torchée en un ou 2 mois... sinon la dernière instance 12 joueurs , vous en etes où? c'est fini?

Pas entamée, la confrérie veut absolument tomber le guetteur avant.

ah? et le guetteur ca avance?

J'ai failli entrapercevoir une lueur d'espoir chez les confreres , qui s'éteint d'ailleurs rapidement quand je fais " youhou les copains j'arrive ! "
en bref ça pietinne mais pas completement sur place . enfin je vois ça comme ça .. mais le jour où les menestrels s'y mettront vraiment yo !!

interview + video de l'expansion :
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/74019

Cette map prenait en compte la règle des dix semaines, dont on sait aujourd'hui qu'elle n'est plus valable. Mais bel effort quand même^^

aller meme si c'est doublon je met au cas ou j'ai oublié des choses récédement :

Mirkwood, une forêt bien sombre


Comme l'indique le titre, cette extension prend place au coeur-même de la Forêt Noire. Elle nous propose de nous balader entre les arbres formant le Sud de Mirkwood, formant une zone fort étendue, comprenant Dol Guldur, la Forteresse du Nécromancien, n'étant autre que Sauron, et qui appartient maintenant aux Nazgûls. Ce lieu plein de noirceur glacera le sang des aventuriers voulant tenter son exploration, ce qui se traduira par un effroi conséquent.

Cette nouvelle région sera accessible en bateau depuis la Lorien, et comprend des centaines de quêtes et de nouvelles créatures. Le nord de Mirkwood en revanche n'est pas exploité, les développeurs préférant garder cette région pour la sortie du film de Bilbo le Hobbit, dans deux ans.




Le Livre IX, ou la fin du Volume II

C'est dans cette extension que prend place le Livre IX, dernier livre du Volume II ayant trait aux Mines de la Moria, ainsi que l'épilogue du Volume II. Il sera bien sûr nécessaire pour terminer le Volume II d'acheter l'extension. En revanche, le Livre IX ne nécessite pas d'avoir complété les livres précédents. Nous pouvons également espérer voir arriver le début du Volume III via des mises à jour régulières au début de l'année 2010.

De plus, le Livre IX comportera un grand nombre de chapitres et nous emmènera dans plusieurs escarmouches, tandis que l'épilogue nous fera revoir toute une série de personnages que nous avons rencontré au cours du Volume II.




Les innovations du gameplay

Plusieurs changements concernant le gameplay sont ajoutés dans cette extension. Tout d'abord, les chevaux seront gérés comme des compétences et non comme des objets, ce qui permettra de passer les portes et d'interagir avec les PNJ à cheval, ou encore de faire certaines emotes à cheval, alors que c'était impossible auparavant. Il ne sera donc plus nécessaire d'en descendre pour prendre une quête ou pour revendre ses objets récoltés pendant l'aventure.

Ensuite, le système de combat a été revu sur un point d'apparence simple, mais avec des conséquences majeures dans le dynamisme du combat. Jusqu'à présent, les joueurs devaient attendre à chaque fois que l'attaque automatique qu'ils menaient soit terminée avant que la compétence ne se lance. Ainsi, un enchaînement de compétences étaient souvent coupé par des attaques automatiques, ce qui constitue un handicap non négligeable par exemple pour une sentinelle, classe se basant uniquement sur les enchaînements de compétence et leur rapidité. Dorénavant, l'attaque automatique sera coupée par la compétence, ce qui rendra les enchaînements plus rapides et permettra de lancer beaucoup plus facilement des compétences dans l'urgence.

Un autre point développé est l'ajout de coffres commun au compte chez le gardien des coffres, avec certaines restrictions. Ainsi, plus besoin de passer par la boîte aux lettres ou la maison pour transférer des objets d'un personnage à un autre. On parle actuellement de deux coffres communs.

A tout cela s'ajoute des améliorations dans le système d'armes légendaires, ainsi que les Escarmouches, qui seront détaillés plus loin dans l'article.





Mon personnage, ce héros

Tout d'abord, nous pouvons noter l'augmentation du niveau maximal de 5 niveaux, pour arriver au niveau 65. La progression de niveau se déroulera dans la région de Mirkwood, grâce aux nombreuses quêtes prévues. La progression jusqu'au niveau 65 et non le niveau 70 laisse penser qu'il y aura une autre mise à jour prévue pour monter du niveau 65 jusqu'au niveau 70 dans un avenir pas très lointain, même si ce n'est que pure spéculation.

Cette montée de niveau s'accompagne de son lot de traits de vertus supplémentaires, ainsi que de traits et quêtes de classe. Rien n'a cependant été annoncé pour un nouveau palier d'artisanat.



A l'aventure, compagnons !

Le système d'instances a également été revu, pour mieux coller à l'envie des joueurs. Désormais, les instances de Lotro donneront des Médaillons en récompense. Ces médaillons peuvent être obtenus sur les boss d'instance, ainsi qu'en remplissant des défis liés aux instances. Il y a trois médaillons différents : les médaillons de la Moria (obtenus aux 6 instances à 6 joueurs de base de la Moria et permettant d'obtenir les pièces +10 de radiance), les médaillons de la Lothlorien (obtenus dans les 2 instances à 3 joueurs et les Galeries d'artisanat, et donnant accès aux pièces +15 de radiance) et enfin les médaillons de Dol Guldur, obtenus dans les instances ajoutées dans cette extension. Les médaillons sont des objets personnels, et non liés au groupe, et il vous en faudra un certain nombre pour obtenir une pièce d'armure. Notez que les pièces obtenues en raid sont toujours obtenues de la même manière.

Parlons-en, justement, de ces instances. Trois instances à 3 joueurs sont rajoutées (Les Geôles Sombres, L'Arène Mortelle et Les Écuries Sauvages), ainsi qu'une instance à 6 joueurs (La Chambre des Sorciers), et un raid multi-boss prévu pour 12 joueurs, dans lequel on combat le Seigneur de Dol Guldur, qui n'est autre qu'un Seigneur Nazgûl.

Notez aussi la refonte d'instances du plus bas niveau, comme Garth Agarwen, qui est maintenant composée de 4 instances, trois pour 3 joueurs et la dernière pour 6 joueurs.





Les Escarmouches, ou la guerre près de chez vous

Les développeurs nous proposent ici un système complètement novateur, avec les Escarmouches qui sont au nombre de douze, sans compter celles prévues pour introduire le système. Ces Escarmouches offrent de nombreuses possibilités aux joueurs, et sont accessibles à partir du niveau 30.

Pour rejoindre une escarmouche, un nouveau panneau est prévu, permettant de les rejoindre depuis n'importe quel endroit et d'y retourner ensuite. Une fois l'Escarmouche voulue sélectionnée (pensez par exemple à la défense du Mont Venteux, du Poney Fringant ou encore des combats à Bourg de Touque), une multitude d'options s'offrent à vous. Vous pouvez sélectionner le niveau du groupe (3 niveaux possibles, par exemple niveau 30, 40 ou 50), le nombre de joueurs (chaque Escarmouche peut être fait seul, ou par groupe de 3, 6 ou 12 joueurs), ou encore le degré de difficulté (facile, moyen, difficile). Une fois ces paramètres réglés, l'instance est créée.

Celle-ci est prévue pour durer 30 à 40 minutes. Les monstres sont aléatoires, en respectant toutefois une certaine logique, et leur puissance dépend des différents facteurs sélectionnés. Il y a également plusieurs défis activés aléatoirement, sur un total de 9 défis possibles pour chaque Escarmouche. La réalisation d'Escarmouche et des défis lié donne des points d'Escarmouche, utilisés pour les soldats.

A noter qu'il y aura des limites, sans doute des cool down, à l'utilisation des Escarmouches, pour ne pas les utiliser comme seul moyen de progression. De plus, les récompenses autres que l'amélioration du soldat ne pourront pas remplacer le loot des zones ouvertes et récompenses de quête, mais sera en revanche complémentaire.



Les soldats

Chaque héros peut entraîner un et un seul soldat, via une compétence, qui sert pour les Escarmouches. Ce soldat accompagne le personnage durant l'Escarmouche, portant le nombre véritable de personnages gérés par le joueur à 2, 6, 12 ou 24 dans les Escarmouches. Les soldats sont entièrement personnalisables par le joueur, grâce aux points d'Escarmouche. Ainsi, on peut changer leur équipement, leurs traits, leurs compétences, et même leur orientation (on peut très bien avoir un archer comme un tank). Ils peuvent également gagner des rangs.





Et qu'en est-il de mon précieux, LarkàBélé ?

Des améliorations sont également prévues pour les objets légendaires. La toute première concerne l'augmentation du niveau maximal de ceux-ci, qui peuvent être montés jusqu'au niveau 60. Ils ont également droit à de nouveaux titres et legs. Les autres améliorations sont liées à l'artisanat.

Les artisans peuvent maintenant créer des runes pour les objets légendaires, pouvant être insérées dans un nouvel emplacement runique spécialement prévu à cet effet. Les artisans de la Terre du Milieu pourront également créer des objets légendaires du Troisième et Deuxième Âge, comme c'était déjà le cas avant, mais aussi les personnaliser. En revanche, aucune information n'a été donnée sur la manière de les personnaliser.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=293476

pour les armes légendaires, à chaque reforge on saura les legs qui seront abandonnés et que l'arme ne pourra plus avoir aux reforges suivants

l'interview complet :

MMORPGFocus.com is back again with another exclusive interview with the Executive Producer of Lord of the Rings Online, Jeffrey Steefel, who was also accompanied by Turbine Communications Director, Adam Mersky.


MMORPGFocus Team: We’re sitting down with Mr. Steefel at Turbine Entertainment with Lord of the Rings Online. Maybe you sir could take a second to introduce yourself to our listeners and readers and tell us a little bit about your role with the game and at Turbine.


Jeffery Steefel: Sure. So I’m Jeffrey Steefel. I’m the Executive Producer of Lord of the Rings Online franchise which means basically that I’m responsible for all of the development operations related to building the game and I work with all the teams that are building the live game and the expansions and any other extensions to the franchise that we are working on. I’ve been with the game since we started working on it pretty much about… wow, five and a half years ago.


MMORPGFocus Team: That’s a long time. Feeding into that question, talking about the game and working on it five and a half years ago – A lot of people who play the game and see screenshots of the game often comment that it looks great. It’s scenic, it’s really attractive graphically. You guys integrate DX10 very well where other games have struggled. Why do you think that is? Why does your game look fresh five and a half years later and can even be compared to Aion or something that is just being released today?


Jeffery Steefel: Fortunately that’s a really easy question to answer. One of the benefits of Turbine as a company is that we have been doing this for a very long time. In fact, our company has been building these kinds of games for fifteen years now. We also are a company that was originally started, although we’ve grown into a full-fledged publisher now, as a technology company so that the basis of everything we do is our game platform. We have a centralized technology team outside of my game technology team that is focused on solely how to make sure that our engine and platform continues to evolve and be competitive. We do merges of that engine code into all of our games on a relatively frequent basis so it means that – and you’re right, it is unusual for these kinds of games – it means that our game can continue to evolve both technically and graphically in addition to how the game itself actually plays. If we have a new technology coming out on the market place, our core technology team can take that, integrate it into the engine and give us all kinds of new capabilities that we have in the game which we then take advantage of. So DX10 was a great example - in addition to that, just continuously working on improving the technologies that already exist. Moria was a great example of that. When we launched the game we would never have been able to build an interior space as open and contiguous as Moria without significantly degrading performance in the game. It was set as a very important design goal for Moria and fortunately we have this technology team here who was able to create essentially new extensions to our engine to allow us to have some tools to be able to do that. The answer is that we are designed as a company to be able to do that.


MMORPGFocus Team: That’s great. Maybe I can get you to give me a hint. Your Vice Present from your company was at the game developer’s conference in Austin and we’re a Texas company so it was easy for us to get there. He talked about you guys shifting the focus a little bit to consoles. Will we see a Lord of The Rings MMORPG on the console and would you be willing to give us any hints about your plans for the console?


Jeffery Steefel: Actually, I’m not familiar with the person you’re talking about. *Laughs* I’m kidding. You don’t know me yet, but I’m a kidder. Craig Alexander. Craig reinforced some of the things we’ve been talking about for at least a year now which is that as a leading MMO online developer and leading publisher in this space and certainly a leading technology company as we just talked about. We want to make sure that our technology and our capabilities of the company extend to all platforms that are important to people who want to participate in these kinds of experiences. So obviously the console platforms are an important part of that so as a growing business it’s important to us to reach out to that market. We’ve been spending a lot of time and energy – and this is nothing that we haven’t talked about before and I’m not likely probably talking about anything we haven’t talked about before just yet or Adam will slap me *Laughs*.


MMORPGFocus Team: *Laughs* Okay. I was just hoping you might drop a hint that it’d be Tolkien branded or something like that but you’re not ready to say. Let’s dive into some specifics then on Lord of the Rings Online. I know some players have had some concern about the end game – talking about Tier 1 and Tier 2 Radiance armor - and maybe felt a little restricted that they had to acquire that armor to progress their character. Are there any plans in the coming digital expansion or otherwise to address that perception? Where do you guys fall in the ongoing MMO casual versus hardcore debate? Would you comment at all on that?


Jeffery Steefel: Yeah, there’s a couple questions in there. Specifically to Radiance – and I said this to a couple of folks over the last couple of weeks – we’re going to have some development diaries coming out in the not too distant future that will give a lot more details about how we’re thinking of Radiance and Gloom and Dread and all those things and how they work in the game. The reason why I don’t like to comment on them in great detail is that I’m likely to miss a few pieces of important information so I’d prefer actually to have the senior designers who are working on it clearly layout exactly what our thinking is. But I will say that we are extremely cognizant of the fact that there’s a lot of concern around the Radiance system, the Radiance gear in general, how that relates to Gloom and Dread in the game and that players feel constrained by the way the system currently works or by the perception of the way that it’s being utilized and that we do have some things that we want to do to make it more effective and to make the player experience better - some things that may come into play and work with and some beyond. But again, I’m not being intentionally evasive. I just want to make sure the players are getting the right information. When those dev diaries are available, I think there will be a lot more in there that really outlines exactly what we’re thinking, what we agree/disagree with in terms of what players concerns are and what we’re trying to do to address it.
The second piece of it, I think you question was about the casual market and casual audience in general. The way we look at it is that we have the privilege and also don’t have the privilege of assuming that we have the one audience in our game and in our world and that we’ve got different types of players. We’re spending a lot of time in development and marketing working together to segment out the audience and try to understand. We have some players who really want to enjoy an exploratory experience in the game and enjoy Middle Earth and take their time. We have players who want to invest less time into the game but still have really compelling experiences that are both Tolkien-ie and good RPG experiences - hence the skirmish system in Mirkwood. Then we have hardcore players who are more traditionally focused on the MMO who really do find advancement a means towards an end game that they can enjoy over and over again – hence skirmishes, legendary items, some of the other things that we’re starting to put into the game to give those players more ways to exercise their sort of advancement muscle. So that’s really the way we look at it and it’s a tricky thing. It’s like saying ‘How do I create one game this is going to satisfy everybody?’ The truth – I’m not. But there are definitely a few subgroups of players who we think are critical for the game and we can’t forget the fact that on the one hand we’ve got the Elder players and a lot of our expansion content in general – Moria, certainly Mirkwood – is focused on the Elder players and the end game and giving them more things to do. We also have to be conscience of the fact that as the game continues to grow as an audience – and we’ve got lots and lots of new players in the game all the time – so we’ve actually spent just as much time on the early part of the game making sure that it is more friendly to some of the newer players coming in. It’s quite a balancing act to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to keep fundamental groups of players in the game happy. End game is an interesting concept in general. My Creative Director and I talked about it a lot over the years that end game in some respects is a misnomer because it presumes that this persistent, evolving experience somehow is just a preamble to the game that happens at the end that you just play over and over and over again. What we’d rather see is an evolution for all the various different types of players in their terms of play experience which is a complicated thing.


MMORPGFocus Team: Sure and I guess especially with the Tolkien IP you would have more of the players that are interested in lore and are fans of the novels and maybe aren’t even the traditional video game player that come to the game because of their interest in Tolkien and play a little more casually versus the players - well I guess with my personal background, the college guy staying up late raiding ‘til twelve o’clock every night. *Laughs* But those days are past for me.
Well I appreciate that. And to kind of follow along to that with Siege of Mirkwood, it sounds like a pretty exciting digital expansion. You’re going to raise the level cap to 65 is my understanding. What is going to be the model for future expansions for Lord of the Rings Online? You’ve got Mines of Moria successfully under your belt; are future expansions going to be done as digital downloads only or are we going to see a mix of boxed SKUs at the local video game store as well?


Jeffery Steefel: The answer is you are going to see a mix; there’s really two separate issues. One is, we said quite some time ago, what we really want to do is get an indicants of continuing to provide content, both in terms of free updates to players on a regular basis and also an annual expansion of some type to players. So Moria and Mirkwood are sort of the first two steps on that path. Players can definitely expect that we’re going to expect to try and do that and then as far as the way we distribute it to players, combination of retail brick and mortar and digital distribution is really just dependant on what we think is going on in the market at the time, what the nature of the particular expansion is. So it’s going to be mixed; I think sometimes it’s going to be one. Sometimes it’s going to be the other but it’ll really depend each time on what the environment is each time in the market place with the particular needs of our players who we think are the people that are actually going to be adopting it when it comes out. We had a lot of people acquire Moria digitally. It’s a matter of how much of it is for existing players who want to expand their experience in the game and how much of it is for new players that we’re trying to attract and retail is always a good place for that. And also for players that want to have the retail experience, get a new box, get perhaps a collector’s edition, all those kinds of things. So it’s one of the other balancing acts that we have but I don’t think players should expect that their not going to see retail again.


MMORPGFocus Team: Okay, well I’ve got another question for you and this one is a little bit about a couple specific systems in the game. A few players have talked about the mail system and the auction house system as not being treated with many updates since the original launch and the interface could maybe use some streamlining. Are there any plans to streamline, or at least look at the auction house and mail systems in the game again?


Jeffery Steefel: We have all kinds of plans for all kinds of things. It’s just a matter of when we’re actually going to be able do what we want with it. What I will say is for the auction system, the first big thing we did was, with Moria and the introduction of the legendary item system, we made some significant changes to the auction systems to accommodate the legendary item system into auctions – to allow you to search for legacies and runics that you’re actually looking for so there was a pretty big change. I think my designers would very much like to streamline and spend more time on the auction UI system and that’s something that’s a desire and it’s a matter of what that’s competing with. We made some pretty important changes to the UI for Mirkwood in terms of just cleaning it up - cleaning up overall navigation, adding a start menu so that a lot of the buttons that were starting to populate your HUD can actually be accessed in a more efficient manner. That felt like a very important thing to do as well as providing some UI support for skirmishes. It’s all about what’s going on at the time and what’s competing with what.
In terms of mail, I’d actually be interested to know what things players are interested in seeing next with mail. We’re spending a lot of time right now on the integration of the game databases and our web databases so that we have free flowing information back and forth in both directions between the two of them. Mail is another interesting place that can come into play with that integration so that’s something that we’re talking about looking at - I’d be very excited to be able to, for example…


MMORPGFocus Team: I think that players would, kind of following along with what you suggested there, I think players would probably get a kick out of pulling out their cell phone and being able to login to a Turbine website and see what’s waiting for them in the mail when they get off work or out of school, if the case may be.


Jeffery Steefel: There’s no question that those kind of conversations are happening here – quite often and quite frenetically. We talk about expanding into other platforms. Console is a platform, mobile is a platform, the web is a platform and we think all of this needs to be part of the experience. It’s interesting – we’ve been working with some iPhone developers to experiment with what kind of things would be really interesting. Right now, we’re really focused on more informational; pushing data out to the players. In fact, there’s a new app that just showed up that’s free, if people want to check it out, called LOTRO Herald for the iPhone in the iTunes store. It’s actually very, very cool. It’s a combination of server status, character information, and equipment information. It’s the beginning of ‘How do we actually get my LOTRO , Lore Book, Game Data, all of that, sort of interconnected in one network that’s pretty much independent of device or platform’. So it’s just kind of a cool little thing to look at to see a little taste of what we’re trying to figure out.


MMORPGFocus Team: It is exciting to see the technologies converge and the MMO space grow. I’m right there with you. I’ve got another question for you – I know there’s a chat channel because I’ve experienced it called the ‘Global Looking for Fellowships’ channel. Do you think that perhaps it should be a default that new players are dropped into that channel? The reason I ask is that we, just in doing surveys in preparation for this interview, found that a lot of new players reported that they felt that they had a hard time at first, when entering the game, find other new players to talk to and sometimes finding help with different things.


Jeffery Steefel: I think that is an interesting idea. I can certainly discuss this with some of the folks here as part of the new player experience work that we’ve been doing and some of the other changes to UI like the quest guide and things like that. We are trying to make their early experience for players much more facile and accessible. That’s interesting. I have no opinion for or against, just thinking about it right this second, but I think it’s an interesting idea. I’m sure the designers will come up with some reason why it will be distracting players from some other thing that they want them to be focused on but I could be wrong. So, what I’ll say is “Thank you”.


MMORPGFocus Team: Sure. And talking about Turbine’s … gosh, you guys are on the forefront of utilizing technology and really having the first smoothly working DX10 in a MMO and talking about cell phones and all these other platforms. As we look back at the PC we see Intel bringing six cores to the desktop – I think it’s called ‘Gulftown’ is their codename for the new processor. There’s a move in graphical processing units as well towards multi-core versus single core. Are you guys moving towards utilizing more cores in future patches?


Jeffery Steefel: That’s definitely what our engineers would like to do - certainly, the core platform engineers , that’s something they’re focused on and they’re well aware of what’s going on. I mean, it’s ridiculous. You can’t possibly keep up with what’s going on. But I think to your point, which is very scoot, moving into the console realm, we’ve already moved into a multi-core environment. So certainly the way we think about things has changed. There are advantages that the engine already takes in terms of certain threading that exists in the new technologies but in terms of actually building our executables, our actual engine/client to take advantage of multiple cores, that’s just something that we want to do. It’s in discussion, but as you can imagine, that’s no small feat. And what’s very interesting with an existing game, as opposed to a new game, is that everything we do has to be very, very carefully figured out to make sure that we’re not introducing instability/problems/issues for our preexisting player base, who may or may not have multiple cores. But we have new operating systems coming out. We already have 64-bit operating systems coming out. There’s clearly an evolution happening in terms of computing on desktop and we’re definitely going to need to support that. But I guarantee you that way smarter people than I here are thinking about that.


MMORPGFocus Team: That’s exciting and that sounds like keeping with the philosophy of Turbine. A few more specific questions – are you guys going to put any incentives in the game, when Siege of Mirkwood is released, to go back and do some of the old raids that maybe newer players otherwise would see?


Jeffery Steefel: Interesting. One of the things that we’re doing with skirmishes is to encourage people to go back into other parts of the world. What you’re mentioning, I think, is related to a theme I hear quite frequently which we’re well aware of and it’s not an easy problem to solve which is: I’ve leveled my way up past certain parts of content, epic content or whatever, that I suddenly decided that I want to partake in and it’s very hard even to find people who are where I am or my level who are even interested in going back and doing that. It’s a challenge and there’s no easy solution to it and that’s definitely something we’re trying to figure out. We already have in the quest system, in the UI, the ability to look for someone – who’s online who’s looking for the same content you are. But the problem is, you go in there as a level 60 looking for someone who’s trying to finish of a level 45 raid, because there’s a particular piece of gear they never got, you’re not going to find a lot of people. So I guess that goes into a category of one of the things that while we’re aware of the problem, we don’t have a perfect solution yet. But we’re working on it and just vectoring people back to those areas doesn’t necessarily solve the problem because it’s still the area that it was, right? It’s still a level 45 area with level 45 challenges, etcetera. Part of the skirmish system is to give you the ability to get some rewards and gear and things that will help your advancement that are exciting by going back to some areas in the world that you’ve been before that’s complimentary to the game. So in other words, if you feel like you’ve run all the raids that you can run at your level and you’ve done everything that you can to get the rewards that you need to advance, there’s now a new opportunity to get new stuff that you didn’t have access to before. Hopefully that will help it to some degree. But no question; if there’s that piece of raid gear that you really want that someone else has and the only way to get it is to go back and run a raid that you just kind of bypassed – that’s a challenge right now.


MMORPGFocus Team: Right, absolutely. It sounds like you guys are well aware of it. Talking about nostalgia for old content, a lot of people have become very attached to the legendary item innovation that you guys introduced with the last boxed expansion and with this attachment, [people] have become concerned about the future of their legendary items. Maybe you guys could talk a little bit about the future of legendary items and any changes that will be coming or new things that you’d like players to hear that maybe they’re not aware of yet.
Jeffery Steefel: There’s a couple of things that we’ve been talking about. We’ve definitely paid some close attention to the legendary items for Mirkwood expansion - first of all, just overall balancing and normalization of all the items and some of the components that make those items. As with all new systems, we do the best we can to strike the balance right in a kind of vacuum. We beta tested to find out a little bit before we launched, but really once it’s in front of players is when we find out how well-balanced it is. We’ve gone through and normalized a lot of the items and the components that make up these items that we think makes you feel more balanced and we’ll address some of the issues that players have been telling us about. Another big thing we did is – and again, wait for the dev diary to go into all the details – but another big challenge for players is the idea that because we wanted this to be a very random system, which we still think is incredibly important for this kind of system. You can very easily go identify an item at the forge and spend an awful amount of time grinding that item to get it all the way to the end of its advancement path and deconstruct it only to find that it really doesn’t have any of the stuff that you actually wanted. And that can be less than fun for players. So what we’ve done is we’ve given you a lot more information at the onset when you identify the item and then each time you reforge, you get a little bit more information. There’s still that sense of [that] we really want you to have that randomized sense of slot mechanic: “I don’t know what I’m going to get.” That builds some of the excitement and drives some of the behavior. If you always knew what you were going to get, it’s not as fun. What we’re doing instead is saying along the way, if there’s a particular runic or legacy that is no longer going to be available to you, like it’s off the table, then we let you know so that you can bail without going all the way to the end and only to find out that the thing that you were going after – “Sorry, you’re not going to get it.”


MMORPGFocus Team: It’s not going to be in the randomized table at all.


Jeffery Steefel: “Sorry, this is now off the table. You’re not going to get that.” “I want to stop here and try something new” and I think that leaves enough of the excitement mechanic and takes out some of the frustration for players. So I’m pretty excited about seeing how that affects people.
And in terms of your initial question; 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.


MMORPGFocus Team: That’s going to make a lot of players happy I think. Touching on that, do you have any other comments or revelations you’d like to share regarding the crafting system and what do you guys have in store for crafters in the coming months?


Jeffery Steefel: Obviously with the raise in the level cap, we’ve added more things for crafters to do. They can craft higher level items. I think the big win for the crafting system, and for crafters in general, is the further integration/much deeper integration between the legendary item system and the crafting system which has always been our intention. So now, by intricately tying master crafters with a fourth runic slot which is very, very valuable to people in the legendary item system; now we’ve really involved crafters in a way I think will make it much more compelling for them and a lot more dimension to the legendary item system as well. So that’s been our major focus for crafting and we know that our crafters will never have lots of things that they want us to do for the crafting system.


MMORPGFocus Team: That’s good and I think, you guys would probably agree, it makes crafters that much more important. It creates another pathway to be important in the game.


Jeffery Steefel: Absolutely. Again, as in the lore and the story and just the whole mythology of Middle Earth, at the very core of it is that everyone counts. Something too Hallmark-ie: “The smallest Hobbit can save the universe.”


MMORPGFocus Team: Sure, absolutely and I’ve got so many questions for you guys. I’m sure we’re going to run out of time before I can ask them all but do you guys have any comments on player and kinship housing and any new features coming in that direction? Any new powers going to be added to housing or benefits or abilities to level that up or expand that aspect of the game?


Jeffery Steefel: We talked about a lot of the systems that we focused on for Mirkwood. Clearly, housing is not one of them. We know that there are housing players out there and our kinships have a lot of things that they’d like to have. We have a vision that we’ve had since before launch for what we would like housing neighborhoods to become and all the potential there. We haven’t realized all of it yet just simply because there’s been a lot of other things that for a large group of people in the game have also been very, very important. So it’s always just kind of a balance between. We try to get better and better about understanding statistically who our audiences are, how big they are, how many people, for example, are crafters and really would benefit best by work on crafting? How many people are Elder players who benefit best from skirmishes and a new raid and new instances? How many people spend a lot of their time in houses and utilize housing? That helps us figure out how to prioritize what we’re really going to work on. Usually we can’t do everything all at once - as much as my bosses would like me to. I really should define my bosses as the players *Laughs*.


MMORPGFocus Team: They’ll be happy to hear that. That’ll be a favorite quote, I’m sure.


Jeffery Steefel: Well they ought to know it’s the truth, right? That’s why we’re here - for so many reasons. When you’re past the first six to eight months of this kind of game being launched, 50% of the value of what anyone coming to play the game comes from is not from the stuff we build, it’s from the players being in the game and what they do and how they behave and the community it creates. People are coming to experience that as much as they are [with] any quest we wrote or any building we built.


MMORPGFocus Team: Sure, absolutely. Another way that Turbine interacts with your player base is through… you know, you guys create something of great value that requires investment and a huge team of people and naturally that can’t be offered totally for free. And there are a lot of different thoughts out there now about monetizing MMORPGs. Your sister game, Dungeons and Dragons Online, just made the switch to having kind of a free to play mode. Do you think there will be any changes to the monthly fee structure for Lord of the Rings Online or is Turbine changing its monetization philosophy? Or even with the change to consoles, do you think there’s going to be something different? Could you address that at all?


Jeffery Steefel: I think it’s the same discussion as we had with technology and with the market and everything. It’s not about changing; it’s about expanding. So rather than saying, “Oh this whole subscription thing – yeah, we’re never doing that anymore; that’s going away. We need to disuse it. Something different. ” It’s about - we have a different audience/an expanding audience. We have people that are perfectly happy with paying a monthly subscription. They feel like that’s convenient for them. We continue to provide them with ongoing content so that they feel like the values there. Then there’s other people who, and I’m talking generally now, not even specific about Lord of the Rings but just in terms of the industry and sort of what Turbine’s thinking and Adam could talk about this because he’s been spending a lot of time actually with DDO and their launch. LOTRO’s no exception. We have lots of different types of players playing LOTRO and there’s really three things that they have to invest in a game – passion, time and money. Everybody’s ability or willingness to invest different proportions of those things are different. So we’re trying to figure out, both in terms of access - what kind of platform I’m playing on? Billing model, business model , how do I actually pay for the content that I’m getting and also just providing different types of experiences for people that have different passions about what they’re doing . DDO, for us, was a great first step as a company in understanding how those different business models interact. We still have players in DDO who have opted to stay with a subscription program which entitles them to some of the currency that they can spend in DDO. In fact, you can talk about that for a second.


Adam Mersky: Jeffrey hit on everything that I would say, but just to go back to your point about our philosophy. At the essence, it’s about any business. If you can give your players a choice in how they engage with the product, then everyone wins. And without detracting from your Lord of the Rings standards as much, DDO has been out for less than three weeks. It’s clearly a big win for us. We have unprecedented numbers and to prove that it’s not an either/or situation, Jeffrey just said that we have a lot of people that elected to subscribe, we’ve had a 25% increase in subscribers, since going free-2-play.


MMORPGFocus Team: I can confirm just from our forums that, anecdotally, having people saying, “Hey, I started this because it was free, so, why not? I wanted to check it out and now I find I really like it.”
Adam Mersky: You’ve just got to open things up. I think the one key we’ve always – you know I’ve been doing a lot of press work and talking about the DDO model - is that it is just that: the DDO model. I mean, every game is going to have its own unique model and how [its] based on who it’s reaching, based on how it’s built. DDO is a very different type of game from Lord of the Rings Online. It’s not an open world, traditional MMO in a sense that a lot of it is instanced, which from a technical standpoint, means we can gate it. We could distribute the content or provide access to the content differently. That ‘s not to mean there aren’t things that you couldn’t do in a game like LOTRO. The only thing I could say with all certainty is that it wouldn’t be the same exact thing.


MMORPGFocus Team: Will there be any changes ever to Turbine’s policy on real money transactions as far as for in game items for LOTRO? Do you ever envision maybe one server set aside that would allow that and would Turbine ever support something like that? Because it’s pretty common in free-2-play games, but usually it’s very taboo in monthly subscription modeled games and I was just wondering what your feelings were today and have they evolved any?


Jeffery Steefel: We’ve talked about this a lot, Adam and I, and sure Turbine in general. It’s sort of a huge topic of discussion in the industry. It has been for at least five or six years and I think it will continue to be. I don’t think anybody is really sure yet. Regardless of what kind of game it is, what the relationship between real world dollars as a currency and in game dollars, it can most successfully be. It’s a very complicated sort of danger ridden area that we have to explore very careful. And a lot of companies are trying a lot of different things. Sony actually did what you’re describing with Station exchange and had a couple – I believe it was two - EQ2 servers that were R&P based and they ended up passing that along to Live Gamer, a company that focuses on that. I don’t think we have an answer yet and there’s a lot of things that Turbine wants to be the leader in and sort of innovate in and drive. This is one of those areas we feel we want to be really careful and really understand. Right now, we don’t have any intention of supporting what you would call R&P where I can basically take goods in game and sell them for real world cash. What we’re doing now is we’re giving you the ability, much like [what] you can do on Xbox Live, for example, of giving us real world cash and exchanging it for currency that then can be spent in game on multiple experiences, but it’s all in game. There’s still a pretty strong wall between virtual money and real money. The only transition is converting that real money into ability to experience the game. We have no plans to change that right now. But that doesn’t mean that we’re not paying very close attention to what’s going on in the business and in the market and seeing wherever that’s going, but I don’t think anybody really has the answers to that yet.


MMORPGFocus Team: Right. It’s definitely a complicated thing and it’s something that players tend to feel really strongly about so I can certainly understand your caution in making any changes regarding real money transactions. Something else you guys have done, you have been implementing things first, so many times – just talking about titles and deeds. You guys have had titles and deeds for a long time and then we see who might be the market leader today just kind of getting around to something similar to titles and deeds, years after you guys had something just like that and has been in the game forever. Do you guys have anything that you would like to share with us about the title and deed system? Is there a future model or innovation that we’ll see?


Jeffery Steefel: I think it’s a continuous evolution. Even looking at the legendary items and skirmish systems and things like that, it’s really all about how do I give you a diverse/as personalized as possible advancement path where my uniqueness in the world is defined as much by the way I’m passing through it as it is by what clothes I’m wearing or how many XP points I have or what rank or level I happen to be or what class I’m playing. So deeds and traits and titles were a fundamental part of our advancement path when we launched. We felt like that was something that we were doing that was very new and that provided some of the alternate advancement that some other games had provided in a more structured manner, in a way that allows you to personalize it a lot more and be much more flexible with it. Even by the same token with the skirmish system - we’re using something that’s very analogous to the trait system to allow you to customize the soldier that you bring with you into battle. So instead of just basically saying, “There’s all different types of soldiers that you can purchase, but you’re stuck with them,” instead, again, we’re focusing on the flexibility of “No, I have all different types of class roles and skills and skill types and skill levels that I can advance for my soldier and then those become my toolkit that I can continually slot and reslot and restack so that my experience can change from encounter to encounter.” It’s really all part of the same design philosophy which is: We want to give you a lot of predictability so you’re not lost, but we also want to give you a lot of flexibility so you feel like you’re having your own personal experience as much as possible.


MMORPGFocus Team: Well I want to thank you gentlemen again for sitting down with MMORPGFocus.com and before we run out of time – which we may have already done – I’d just like to give you guys a stage to talk about Siege of Mirkwood and to reach out to current players and players who might play another game who might be interested in trying Lord of the Rings Online. Is there anything you’d like to share or say about the coming expansion or the game in general? Any reveals or anything that you’d like to get in before we finish up?


Jeffery Steefel: I think we’ve been pretty transparent about what’s coming in Mirkwood. It’s something at Turbine we try to do in general – really just try to be clear about what we’re building/what’s coming. Hopefully we’ve created a relationship with the players and perspective players that they believe we deliver on those things when we talk about them. What I will say is, if anyone is listening out there, it’s just another opportunity for people to come see what LOTRO is all about. We’ve had a huge amount of growth this year. We have a lot more people playing LOTRO than we did at the beginning of this year and that continues to happen. This is, as you said, a continually evolving live/very vibrant community and world and game. If people have never checked it out but always kind of wondered, it’s a good time to do it. There’s a lot of exciting things going on and for players that may have taken a break, this is a perfect time for them to come back. In fact, we hope soon, probably in a week or so to be able to talk more specifically about some things that we think will make it even more appealing for people to come back, related to the Mirkwood launch and preorder and things like that. It will be a very vibrant time for LOTRO and it’s a good time for people to come check it out if they haven’t in a while.


MMORPGFocus Team: Right, that’s all very exciting. One last question – will there be any kind of digital collector’s edition or something? Will there be two tiers of it offered online?


Adam Mersky: Yeah, we haven’t announced it yet but we hope to very soon in the next week or two. But there will be lots of deals – I wouldn’t phrase it as the digital collector’s edition. There’s definitely some opportunities though with some of the prelaunch promotions though to pick up some cool in game items and some deals based on what level subscription you have and things like that. We’ll basically make that announcement in the next week or two and I think it’ll certainly be the last bit of information about Siege of Mirkwood that we haven’t shared which is just the promotions and the date we’re going live.

Merci Brume d'avoir pu nous dénicher ça.


***


Aucune nouvelle info. Pas un mot sur le PVMP.

Ha si une! Il nous annonce qu'il ont rien prévu pour le housing. Et le mec a le culot de dire qu'ils alternent les choses qu'il développe pour satisfaire tous les joueurs. N'importe nawak.

encore quelques news : journal des dev 1ere partie

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/feature-articles/485-feature-article-qask-the-dev-teamq

Citation :

Q: Can we look forward to a new PvMP zone soon?
A: Currently, we have no plans for a new PvMP zone.

http://www.lotro.com/news/pressreleases/488-siege-of-mirkwood-launch-offers

Citation :

Siege of Mirkwood Launch Date and Pre-Launch Offers!
THE LORD OF THE RINGS ONLINE: SIEGE OF MIRKWOOD TO LAUNCH ON DECEMBER 1st
Turbine Unveils Special Pre-Launch Offers Including the New LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack

WESTWOOD, MA – September 29, 2009-- Turbine, Inc. announced today that The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood, the new digital expansion to the 2008 MMO of the Year will launch on December 1st in North America. Turbine also unveiled The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) Adventurer’s Pack which contains what every player needs to survive in the chaos of Mirkwood! Siege of Mirkwood and the LOTRO Adventurer’s Pack are scheduled to launch on December 1, 2009.

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!

voila sortie le 1er decembre

1er décembre.

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/467-siege-of-mirkwood-features

Developer Diary: Mounts 2.0




You Can Lead a Horse to Water…


…But you cannot make it drink. Until Volume II Book 9: Siege of Mirkwood, that old proverb applied very well to the mounts of Middle-earth. Every rider knew it was all fun and games until you wanted to interact with your environment; every door in Middle-earth was closed to you, every NPC uninterested in your business, and every skill you learned completely blocked while riding. It didn’t take long after buying your first mount to feel just how unforgiving and restrictive the system could be.
To understand why the system was so restrictive, you have to look at the technology behind it; the channeling system. It’s the same system originally developed to deliver pies across the Shire and pour buckets of water on fiery blazes, and it was later leveraged to saddle players onto mounts. The channeling system was an adequate solution during a time when developing a new system was out of the question, as development was coming to a close for the launch of Shadows of Angmar.


No More Horsing Around

Following the launch of Mines of Moria, we started discussing the prospect of giving mounts their own system and embarked on some basic investigation to understand the scope of what it might take. There was really no safe method of tacking on more features or special conditions to the channeling system to get everything we wanted from mounts. In fact, doing so would likely contradict the original intent of the channeling system and still not guarantee a satisfactory outcome. The decision we made was to give mounts a system of their own with two main goals to guide its development:


Restrictive, then Flexible

One of the first things we decided to do when developing the system was to maintain all of the restrictions of the original system. The day we flipped the switch there was literally no difference between the two. Little by little, we eased the restrictions to test usability, file bugs, and polish the experience. This worked out fairly well as we were able to separate the design into components and concentrate work on one feature at a time. If we ran out of time then we could simply keep some restrictions in place and polish the features we had completed in time to ship.
Lastly, to save development time, we wanted to re-use as many of the previous assets and scripts as possible without having to reinvent the wheel. We were able to re-use items, icons, animations, sounds, content, and underlying scripts, again allowing us to focus almost entirely on usability. In the end we were able to provide a system that allows you to live life fairly comfortably while saddled to your favorite mount.


Extendable

One never knows what the future will bring, so the system should support incremental changes without risking stability or the original design intent (as we undoubtedly risked if we augmented the channeling system further).


A Horse of a Different Colour


Getting down to the brass tacks, here is the list of new features and improvements thanks to the new mount system:


Mounts as Skills

Mounts are now toggle skills! They can be quick-slotted like other skills or executed directly from the new Mount panel (Character Journal -> Skills -> Mount). A new keyboard shortcut can be set to promptly access your mounts panel (using Key Mapping Options). Since mounts are now skills, you can feel free to collect all of the available varieties without having your packs fill up – no more having to choose between festival horses or exchanging them at a vendor!


One Less Item

Even though we still rely on a mount-item in your pack, it’s a temporary item used to grant the appropriate mount skill to you. Once used, the item will grant a skill to you and be deleted. If the item is quick-slotted, it will be replaced by the new skill. Regardless of what mount item you purchase you will receive the correct mount type for your race. Gone are the days of mistakenly purchasing the wrong mount for your race (“But I wanted a pony!).


Item Usage

Some items can be used while riding, such as food, potions, and other miscellaneous items. Even your Map Home item can be used while mounted and you will appear at your destination still riding your mount.


NPC Interaction

Almost every NPC can be interacted with while you are mounted. There are two exceptions to this:
Stable-masters will still require you to dismount before purchasing a ride. You can still talk to stable-masters while mounted to view the list of destinations. Bards will automatically dismount you when managing your traits.


Door Usage

Every door can be opened and passed through while mounted. If the door leads to a place that does not allow riding, you will appear inside dismounted from your horse. Some special types of ”doors” may not be usable while mounted, such as ladders.

Skill Usage

Depending on your class and level, you may have skills that can be used while riding. Hunters and other classes that enjoy swift travelling can use these skills while mounted. In fact, almost every class has at least one skill that can be used on a mount. No combat skills can be executed while mounted, as that would constitute mounted combat and that’s a horse of a different colour!
Crafters will be particularly happy to hear that tracking skills can be toggled on/off while riding (although gathering resources while riding is not allowed).
As a side-note, some skills may become unusable while mounted in the Ettenmoors to help preserve a level playing field. Currently, only the Hunter’s tracking skills have this restriction. Hunters can still enjoy tracking on horseback while riding outside of the Ettenmoors.


Player Emotes

Several popular emotes will now animate you while mounted, and even more, while not animated, are now allowed while mounted. The following emotes have animations for when you are mounted*: Bother, Bye, Calm, Cheer, Drink, Eat, Munch, Fidget, Followme, Hail, Look, Lookaround, Salute, Think, Wave, Cry, Roar, laugh (lol), SwordSalute, Shakefist *Some of the animations are reused with the hope that unique animations can be made over time.
A majority of the other emotes do not animate, but are allowed while mounted. In these cases the player does not animate but the emoted text is broadcast to those nearby.


Horse Emotes

While sitting idle you can make your horse/pony/goat randomly play one of three different animations. Simply hit the spacebar.


Mount Health

Your mount’s health will now regenerate over time. Just as in the old system, getting hit will reduce your mount’s health and critical hits will knock you off your mount. Unlike the old system, you can stay mounted as long as you don’t get knocked off, or fall into a deep body of water.


Mount Display Panel

A new mount display panel will now appear after summoning your mount. The panel displays the mount’s name and health.


Renaming Your Mount

Every mount arrives with a personal name that can be changed by right-clicking the Mount Display Panel and selecting the “Rename” option. Unlike pets, your mount’s name is not visible to those around you.


Mount Discount

Along with your first level 35 mount comes a new trait granting you a discount on all other common mounts. The trait is granted to you even if your first mount happens to be a reputation mount or pre-existing festival mount (new festival mounts will not grant this trait). The discount itself only applies to the common mounts sold by Eogar, Son of Hadorgar.


My Little Pony (or horse)

Players can now gain access to their first horse or pony at level 20. This is a slower version of a normal mount and has less health, but gets you saddled up sooner in the game. The cost of this mount is 220 silver and looks the same as the Founder’s Bree-horse. As a result of this change, Founders can start riding their mounts at level 15!


Grey Horse/Pony

If you deleted your Grey Horse/Pony to make space in your pack you can purchase a replacement from Eogar.


Mustering & Summoning While Mounted

Tired of telling your fellowship to dismount before mustering them? Never fear, they can now accept your request without dismounting.


If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride

This update focused on making mounts more enjoyable to use rather than adding all new functionality. Before you ask if you can lop off orc heads from atop your favorite ride, remember that was never a goal of this update. File this one under “Quality of Life” improvements.
Enjoy the new mount system!




Developer Diary: Shared Storage


Shared Storage is a new storage system designed to enable sharing between all characters on a given account!.Until now, your only options to share items between characters were to mail them individually, deposit them into a personal chest at your home, or have a friend hold them while you switched characters.

Shared Storage can be accessed by visiting any Vault-keeper and opening the standard Vault interface you are already familiar with. A new button, “Open Shared Storage”, will be available on the Vault interface:





Any items currently in your standard Vault can be easily transferred to Shared Storage and vice-versa, simplifying the process of sharing items with your other characters.

Shared Storage Interface

The Shared Storage interface has new features to help you manage your shared items. You can sort items alphabetically by name (A-Z, Z-A) and filter by item type. The list is populated dynamically from the items in your shared storage space.





Filtering items is as easy as selecting the Filter drop-down menu and picking the item-type to display:





For your convenience, bound items can be stored in Shared Storage -- but only the character they belong to can retrieve them. The Filter Bound Items option will hide items that don’t belong to your current character. Unique items cannot be stored in the Shared Storage.

This new feature should make managing items across multiple characters much easier!


Developer Diary: SoM Skirmishes: Overview


Hi there! Zombie Columbus here. In the past, I've tried to give insight into how the design and implementation process works, and I hope these diaries about Skirmishes are no exception. The Skirmish system represents a significant addition to LOTRO; it’s a big feature, so this dev diary will be broken into smaller components over the next few weeks. This first installment will focus on what our high level goals are, the initial design of the system and the process of re-design it went through to get there.

To cut right to the chase: Skirmishes are short, accessible, randomized, scalable, story instances with incremental rewards. Why Skirmishes became this can best be explained by discussing what the designer’s goals for the system are. Everything we added to Skirmishes was done with a high level “vision” in mind. By sharing this vision with you, I hope that you will see why we made the choices we did, and how we ended up where we are now. Our goals were to:

* Create finely crafted instance content that can be played by different group sizes and levels.
* Keep play-time short, allowing Skirmishes to fit into other activity cycles. Internally we've called them- "Pop-corn" experiences. If one is short and good, why not try another?
* Add randomized elements into Skirmishes to keep replays interesting.
* Encourage a rotational play of Skirmishes, to keep them fresh and prevent them from overshadowing existing playstyles. Skirmishes should complement the game, not alter it!
* Set up an incremental reward structure, like the instance barter systems.
* Allow players to feel that any amount of play time was a step closer to a desired reward.
* Give players a feeling of participating in epic struggles, and of being leaders of small armies.





Lofty goals to say the least; we aren’t the first to try randomized, scaling gameplay. The benefit to players can be great, though, which is why it is attempted as often as it is. We've been working on Skirmishes for nearly a year now, doing significant amounts of iteration, re-design, testing, and feedback collection from both developers and our Isengard players. Each sub-system was designed to work toward the above high-level goals.

The initial design that eventually became Skirmishes began during a walk I went on with fellow designer Rhidden, not long after Moria's release. We mused about how we could put a fun sub-game inside LOTRO, using mostly existing tools, tech and art. I was playing a lot of Tower Defense inspired games at the time and Rhidden was interested in riffing on the popular Battle Instances. Mixing those and other inspirations together, we came up with the idea for LOTRO instances where the player would set up soldiers and siege weapons and use them against waves of incoming enemies. Some clunky ways to upgrade the soldiers and siege weapons were discussed, and we decided that putting the ideas together in a formal pitch might get them into the game. We put together a design document, circled it around the team a bit, got some feedback, and waited.

As I mentioned, Turbine had just launched Moria, so there was still some room in the next expansion for original ideas like ours. It was our hope that our pet project could get into the mix and become a small addition to the game. Other designers put forward ideas for the extra room in the expansion, extending existing systems, or creating other new ones. All of these ideas were about to enter a Battle Royale. What followed was a text-book example of the saying: "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." I think it's safe to add game design to that list...

Our lives for the next few weeks consisted of many meetings, discussions, proposals, counter-proposals, committees, sub-committees, e-mails and hallway discussions. Our little pet project expanded and changed in many ways, integrating ideas from all around the company, and eventually took shape as a marquee feature of the next expansion. Two of the bigger changes were Rhidden cycling off onto other projects, and jwbarry joining the team. He brought in some fresh perspective, a knack for making things work, and an emphasis on more story-oriented content. As the project gained momentum, we were allocated additional resources and people from inside the company, and soon the newly named Skirmish system was on track to be a significant addition to LOTRO’s next expansion.

So, with all that out of the way, we’re ready to discuss the real nitty-gritty guts of the Skirmish system. We can say we want to keep Skirmishes from overshadowing other gameplay styles, but how can we work to that goal? As we publish more installments to this diary, various aspects of the Skirmish system will be elaborated on. As with all MMO development, we expect to change the systems and content we have in place based on player feedback – systems that work perfectly on one scale can behave very differently once released onto the live servers, with many players bringing their unique playstyles to the mix. We may even decide some of our high level goals are no longer valid. To me, this is a large amount of the fun and challenge of working on MMO’s -- change is just part of the game. We hope that you enjoy the change that Skirmishes represent!

Alors, résumé rapide en français :

Monte de cheval :

Le cheval nagera ... ça c'est mega cool. Par contre, si on saute dans l'eau d'assez haut, on quittera le cheval.

Pas mal de discussion sur l'avenir du jeu avec le cheval, ils mettent en place ce système pour de futures évolutions, sur lesquelles ils réflechissent beaucoup ...

Possibilité d'utiliser certains Item à cheval : nourriture, potions, et d'autres divers trucs dont la carte de retour, le TP se fera sans quitter le cheval.

La plupart des PNJ seront accessible à cheval (arg ! c'est pas très poli), sauf les palfreniers et les bardes.

Les portes pourront êtres ouvertes et passées à cheval. Si on accède à une zone où le cheval est interdit, on apparaitra à pied ... perso, je ne me vois pas parler à cheval à ce bon vieux Prosper.

Certaines compétences seront utilisables à cheval : les TP du chasseurs notamment. Les compétences de traque des ressources, etc ... pas de skill de combat bien sur. Et le ramassage des ressources ne se fera pas à cheval. Certaines compétences activable à cheval en PvE ne le sera plus en PvMP. On pourra être appelé par un capi en étant à cheval.

Certaines emotes seront possibles à cheval. Avec la barre d'espace, le cheval aura 3 emotes aléatoires .... il me semble qu'on en a une actuellement avec l'espace.

Tiens, ça c'est cool : La barre de monte se regénèrera au fil du temps. Il y aura un nouvel affichage de monte avec notamment cette barre de monte. On pourra renommer son cheval, mais ça ne sera pas visible par les autres, seulement par nous.

Il y aura un trait de monte qui permettra d'avoir des réductions sur les montures apparament, mais uniquement les montures standard, pas les montures de réput.

Un cheval lent sera accessible à partir du lvl 20 pour 220PA.





Le stockage partagé :

Un nouveau bouton "ouvrir le stokage partagé" sera accessible des banques.

Chaque Item pourra être transféré facilement de la banque à ce stockage partagé.

L'interface pour le stockage partagé est une nouvelle interface, ça ressemble plus aux listes des PNJ vendeur en fait, avec un système de tri et de filtre. Par exemple on choisira la bouffe, les potions. On en pourra apparament pas ranger les affaires comme dans un coffre, ça sera du transfert vers cet espace ou de cet espace.

Ca c'est cool aussi : Les Items liés pourront être stocké dans cet espace, mais seul le perso a qui c'est lié pourra prendre l'item.

Apparament, cet espace est assez grand. Du genre 50 emplacements comme annoncé. Presque le double du coffre principal d'une banque.

Et comme l'interface n'est pas dépendante de la contenance (au contraire des coffres), je pense qu'ils pourront agrandir facilement cet espace.






Ensuite, un peu de blabla sur les escarmouches ....

concernant le prix (version US) :
http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=293911

à noter que ceux possédant l'abonnement à vie auront l'adventurer's pack + SoM ensemble pour le même prix

Merci à tous pour ces news

Non, le cheval ne nagera pas, tu t'es gouré khepri

Mais merci de relayer les infos.

avec un nain sur le dos.... je me disait bien que c'était de la propagande ^^

enfin quelques infos sur les objets légendaires :
http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/495-developer-diary-legendary-item-system-updates