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The Road to Mordor: A soldier to call my very own
So how are you liking Update 6 so far? No, I can't hear you right now -- you're probably going to have to leave a comment or something. Maybe I should do the talking for a while. With its new zone, massive PvP upgrades, class rebalancings, Landscape Soldier ability, updated barter wallet, and the Instance Finder 2.0, there's so much to chew on with Lord of the Rings Online's latest patch that it's going to take most of us some time to figure out what's what. I've heard a lot of praise for the new epic storyline, in particular the dream sequence, and it's definitely good that players who had tapped out Rise of Isengard's content now have more world goodness to explore. I am not in The Great River, not yet; I dug my level 65 Captain out of retirement and am plugging my way back up through RoI quite happily. However, I was incredibly curious about two of the most debated features of the patch -- the barter wallet and the ability to bring skirmish soldiers out into the world -- and I spent some time evaluating each. While I question the way Turbine's handling the cost of these features, I definitely came away impressed with what the wallet and soldiers do for the game.
LotRO's Great River update flows today, patch notes released [Updated]
Strike the tents and put out the campfires, Middle-earth adventurers; it's time to move on... north? That's right, Lord of the Rings Online is taking players on a journey back to an old familiar location -- Lothlorien forest -- as it releases Update 6: Shores of the Great River today. It's an absolutely massive content update for the game meant to span the gap between the Rise of Isengard and Riders of Rohan expansions. While players patch up and wait for the servers to come back online, there are patch notes and then some to be read. If you lack the hour or so it might take to really get into the notes, just know that the update's highlights include a brand-new high-level zone (The Great River), the next book of the epic story, the addition of Landscape Soldiers and a fleshed-out barter wallet, several major class updates (such as the Warden and Rune-keeper), an improved Instance Finder tool, and plenty of PvP improvements. Massively recently sat down with the developers to tour through the new content in Update 6. [Update: Added the trailer for the update after the jump!] %Gallery-149032%
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?
LotRO prepares for imminent Update 6 release
It's one of the bigger content updates that Lord of the Rings Online has seen in quite a while, and if all goes well, Update 6 will be uploaded to fans this coming Monday. As time is running short between now and then, Turbine is rushing to finish up with its dev diary series covering the major features of the patch. Today's dev diary discusses the fleshing out of the Instance Finder, which will now offer players tailored rewards and the ability to pick specific dungeons and skirmishes. The diary goes into detail about how the rewards work, but the basic version is that players get better currency, power, and morale bonuses when they sign up for more skirmishes and instances at a time. This gives players an incentive to look for a wide range of instances while at the same time it facilitates match-ups between interested parties. We've also got several new screencaps from Update 6 for your viewing pleasure, including four exclusive pictures and many more showing off the new "soldiers on landscape" feature. You can scope them out in the gallery below. %Gallery-149032%
The Road to Mordor: Fording the Great River
At 1388 miles, the Anduin is the longest river known in Middle-earth, hence the name The Great River. If I put that into real-world perspective, it would vie for the 52nd longest river on Earth, somewhere between the Colorado River and China's Pearl River. Impressive, if not a record-breaker. The Great River flows from the Misty Mountains down out to the Great Sea (lots of "greats" in Middle-earth, which is great), and it's on this waterway that the Fellowship of the Ring traveled from the solace of Lothlorien to the tragedy at Parth Galen. The river represents transition in many ways: from safety to peril, from unity to dissolution, from north to south, from The Fellowship of the Ring to The Two Towers. For Lord of the Rings Online players, the Anduin will mark another transition: the bridge between Rise of Isengard and Riders of Rohan. Seeing as how we got a major taste of this brand-new zone this week, I thought we should take a gander at what The Great River will add to our journey toward Mordor.
LotRO paddles down The Great River in a canoe fashioned from patch notes and dev diaries
"The Great River not only offers something fresh-feeling and new, but also some fairly epic eye candy," the latest Lord of the Rings Online developer diary begins. The diary is referring to the latest zone being created for the game, which is slated to come with Update 6. We've already gotten a glimpse of the region, but now it's time for the team to go in-depth with its concept and creation. One of the highlights of the new region is that The Great River will be home to the very first Rohirrim settlement: Stangard. Because of this, Standgard will feature unique visuals and architecture not found elsewhere in the game. In addition to providing new vistas to explore, The Great River will help players gear up further through quest rewards, a new reputation faction, and an elite area. For those interested in getting an idea of how Turbine puts together a zone like this, there's a terrific addendum that walks through the process. Preliminary patch notes are also up for Update 6, which is now on the test server. There's a lot to digest here, although it's interesting to note that Virtues will be increased to 14 (from 12) due to player demand. It's good to know that plenty of bugs will be fixed come this patch, including this one: "The sky objects will no longer vanish when you travel to certain instances and then return. Told ya; The sky is not falling. It was just...missing."
The Road to Mordor: Riders of Whoa-han!
This past week we heard from Turbine about its general plans for Lord of the Rings Online in 2012, and while it may not have hit everything on my personal wish list for the year, it was a good start. I was mulling over the question of whether it's better for MMOs to show all of their big cards up front like Turbine or to parcel them out over the course of the year. Both have advantages, of course. Front-loading the year with a broad overview like this gives players long-term reasons to stick with the game, but it also can steal the exciting thunder from these events down the road. On the other hand, measuring the big news out during the year would probably give Turbine more publicity, but it could frustrate players who might feel "in the dark" about the company's plans. In any case, we got what we got, and there's a lot to chew over for this week's column: unbound skirmish soldiers, Riders of Rohan, the Great River, and the fifth anniversary. So let's get started!
