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ICYMI: Trees rest their branches at night
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: There's no doubt you'll be well-acquainted with everything that happened with LinkedIn, Apple and XBox, so today's show will look just a little different. I focused the show on just one story to get a little more into the details on a study out of Europe that tracked how trees relax their branches at nighttime. We also threw in the video of the first child-sized exoskeleton suit, just because. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
The Road to Mordor: The Age of Men
There's a movie poster tagline that I've seen copied numerous times. It goes along the lines of, "No matter who wins, they lose (or we lose)." This implies that the best-case scenario in the film -- the heroes emerging triumphant -- will still result in a bittersweet moment of defeat, despair, or doom. This is how I've always thought of the Lord of the Rings in regard to the Free Peoples. Even through this enormous struggle against the Enemy, we know that winning still means losing something precious. In this case, it's the ascension of Men during the Fourth Age and the fading of the other races: the Ents, the Hobbits, the Dwarves, and the Elves. This grand fight for Middle-earth ultimately will preserve and strengthen just one of the races, and the most boring one at that. For Tolkien, this is because LotR is a mythological past history of our world, and we just don't see a lot of Elves walking around today except at Starbucks. In a way, I feel as if we're starting to get into the Age of Men a bit prematurely in Lord of the Rings Online. The time for Hobbits, Elves, and Dwarves is past; the time for Men is just beginning.
The Road to Mordor: An Update 6 play date with Turbine
This past week, Turbine called my parents and asked if I could come over to play Lord of the Rings Online. "Sure he can," my mother replied. "As long as he wears his galoshes. What? It's wet outside!" And thus I ended up hanging out with the Turbine crew -- Aaron Campbell, Jared Pruett, and Jeff Libby -- as they walked me through Update 6 with the optional developer commentary mode set to "on." I highly recommend you rent a developer for the same experience, as it helps to have someone giving you a Cliff's Notes version of the game's complicated lore. Pruett first caught me up on the major PvMP changes of this coming Monday's update. The team wanted to increase rewards and turn progression into a seasonal mechanic to keep players coming to the Ettenmoors. As such, PvMP now has a universal currency -- that's account-wide, by the way -- that will allow players to purchase top-end gear. The team also tweaked down what the devs saw as a DPS race in order to give players time to deliberate and make strategic choices during fights. Beyond PvMP, the devs marched me right into the next epic storyline book that whisked us away to a strange new land: The Great River. What did I find waiting for me there?
Through Turbine's palantír: Developers outline LotRO's future
In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, characters would use magical orbs known as palantírs to see and communicate with far away places. While Massively's own palantír is at the shop, we had access to the next best thing -- a one-on-two chat about Lord of the Rings Online's future with Turbine's Aaron Campbell and Adam Mersky. A lot's been happening since LotRO's free-to-play version went online last fall -- the closest thing to a relaunch that this game is likely to ever see -- and both Campbell and Mersky have one important message for fans: We're just getting started. Even as the Turbine team gears up for LotRO's third expansion, Rise of Isengard, the devs want you to know that they're also dedicated to bringing a good amount of content between now and then. Everything was on the table during this discussion, from this weekend's anniversary celebration to next month's update to the new expansion. Join us after the jump for a look through the palantír to see what information we can pry from the future!
The Road to Mordor: What if?
By the time you read this, I'll be scurrying around PAX East in Boston, feeling much like a Hobbit: unable to see over the crowd, far out of my element, and deeply wishing I purchased shoes. I'll of course be talking with the folks at Turbine to see what information I can wheedle out of them about the future of this terrific game, so if you don't hear from me again, I'm most likely languishing in a PR dungeon somewhere for being too nosy. It's a good week, therefore, to be thinking about the future. My mind never stops thinking about future possibilities for any franchise, and even if they never come to be, these speculations are a great pastime of any fan. I'm always wondering "What if?" as I play Lord of the Rings Online -- what if I could mug Frodo and become the Ring-bearer? What if those lazy bums finally finished the repairs to the tavern in Frogmorton? What if Elves could kill innocent woodland creatures and go to the dark side? Playing "What if?" with LotRO is tougher than with other games because of the limitations imposed by the IP. Despite what some say, Turbine's struggled hard to stay within the boundaries of lore and setting, and while that's helped the company to be creative in ways that it might not have otherwise, it does present some unique obstacles that aren't present in competing MMOs. So to celebrate PAX, LotRO, and the future, here's a column of "What ifs?" for your consumption!
Ents march again in latest LotRO lorebook article
Everybody likes trees. They give us shade on a hot summer's day, they provide the raw materials that help us build homes and shelter, and they provide all kinds of fruits and nuts that help add a special flavor to our everyday diets. In a similar way, everybody loves Ents. They are the shepherds of the forest, they regale us with tales long-forgotten by even the most erstwhile elf, and perhaps best of all, they smash in the heads of any orcs or wood-trolls who would do us harm. In their latest lorebook article, Turbine gives the low-down on the Eavespire, the first (and presumably only) location that players can get a glimpse of the mighty Ents in Lord of the Rings Online. Perhaps more interesting than the lorebook itself is the player reaction on the official forums; there is some disagreement as to whether the Eavespire's remoteness lends itself to the lore, or whether it just means most players will never experience the content due to a lack of travel options. An interesting debate if ever there was one.
