skirmishes
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Turbine announces LotRO's next expansion: "Siege of Mirkwood"
The next expansion for Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online has just been revealed (along with the logo above): players will be able to download Siege of Mirkwood this fall and finish the epic storyline of Volume II that began with the Mines of Moria. Specifically, this will include Volume II Book 9 and an Epilogue. The level cap will be raised to 65, and along with the predictable traits, skills and virtues that come from extra levels, there will also be some new class quests. For the raiders, a new 12-man challenge involving the Nazgûl Lord awaits, and additional 3 and 6-man instances will cater to those hungry for small group content. Some enhancements to the Legendary items system and an upgrade to the game's responsiveness will be making it in too.A brand new feature to be introduced to Lord of the Rings Online in Siege of Mirkwood is the Skirmishes system: 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.You can be sure that more information about the expansion is coming up -- as a matter of fact, we'll have an interview to share in the next day or so. Stay tuned!
Pirates of the Burning Sea dumps skirmishes overboard
If you were waiting for skirmishes to be added to Pirates of the Burning Sea, you may be out of luck, at least for awhile. In a recent announcement at SOE's Fan Faire this week, Flying Lab game designer Drew Clowerly stated that it's simply a matter of losing the developer who was working on that aspect of the game. "We had one guy working on them, but he got a great offer and left. It was an opportunity to work on a brand new start-up, and nobody could turn that down," Clowerly said. In light of the recent troubles in MMO developerville, Clowerly was quick to point out that this doesn't mean PotBS is in any kind of trouble. Skirmishes are still planned, and it's something that art director Bruce Sharp says they'd like to bring aboard sooner than later.If you're unaware, skirmishes were planned to allow players to create their own instanced PvP ship battles, with full control over everything from the victory conditions to the number of participants. "Skirmishes are an opportunity to just go in and have fun without risking your ship, as you'll be able to select the consequences for any battle failure, and that could be something like just gambling on doubloons," Sharp says.
Only Arena skirmishes from level 71-79, ratings back in at 80
Just in case you wanted to know what the deal was with Arena ratings as we all headed to level 80, let Bornakk clarify for you -- while level 70 rated fights will still count, levels 71-79 are back to skirmishes, and rated fights can only happen again at level 80. And while Bornakk doesn't mention season timing at all (does Blizzard ever, beforehand?), our guess would be that they'll hold off on announcing any new PvP items until a good number of people have had a chance to level up to 80 and get situated in the brackets -- of course, depending on how fast people level up, that could be pretty quick.But he does say that there will be no more new level 70 rewards, so what's out there right now is what you get. What we still don't know is whether Arena points from level 70 will carry over into the level 80 bracket, or whether there will be a complete reset of all the ratings and totals for the new bracket. There are good arguments for both sides (some players want a fresh start, while others don't want their winnings so far to count for nothing), but so far we haven't heard anything official yet.So there are still a few things for Blizzard to decide with the higher level Arena system, but they've got time -- it's unlikely that they'll make people rush to 80 just to get involved in the Arena. It seems that when these next ten levels of content come out, Blizzard will switch some focus back to PvE and battleground PvP rather than the Arena game.
