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Howard University and Amazon want to diversify the entertainment industry
Howard University and Amazon Studios are working together to diversify the entertainment industry. Today, they announced Howard Entertainment, a program that will give African American, Latinx and Native American students a chance to study and train alongside entertainment executives.
LotRO begins testing fellowship version of Pelargir epic battle
The newest epic battle added to Lord of the Rings Online in Update 15 is about to get even bigger. Retaking Pelargir, the offensive-focused battle, was initially released in a solo/duo version, but testing has begun on a fellowship version. This change will come with Update 15.1, according to the preliminary patch notes: "A fellowship version of Retaking Pelargir is now ready for limited release on Bullroarer, where we'll be taking important balance feedback from preview players. The timing of its release will depend on the feedback we get about this new version." Update 15.1 will also contain plenty of tweaks and bug fixes for the Beorning class as well as allow players to track nearby quests inside of structures.
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?
The Road to Mordor: A look back at Volume 2
Last year, I spent a column giving my reflections, thoughts, and observations on the entirety of Volume 1 of Lord of the Rings Online's epic storyline, and today I'd like to do the same for Volume 2. Since these stories are at the center of LotRO's player experience, it's important to see how they function and hold up in today's increasingly story-centric MMO environment. I've gone through Volume 2 twice, once before the "solofication" of the recent update and once after. The second journey was, by far, much more enjoyable since I didn't have to sit there for weeks hoping to find enough players on the same part of the Fellowship portions to continue the tale. Being able to go through it at my own pace was vastly more enjoyable, especially when I could dedicate huge chunks of time to knock out several chapters in one go. And this is a good thing, as this volume of the epic story not only gives you one of your legendary traits but greatly helps you build reputation toward a faction that will give you another one (the Iron Garrison Guards). As such, Volume 2 will continue to be an important part of any character's journey. So let's dig into this puppy (not... a literal puppy, you understand) and see what Volume 2 has to offer. If you haven't yet gone through this part of the epic story, beware: Here be spoilers!
The Road to Mordor: Re-evaluating Moria
When I first left Lord of the Rings Online, it was early in 2008 and we were constrained to Eriador and Eriador alone. Angmar was the most dangerous spot on the map, level 50 was the cap, and getting your legendary traits was an almost inhuman feat. When I returned in 2010, I discovered I had missed out on the release of not one but two expansions and a huge amount of new content in the world. As a previous player, I felt as though everything I had known was completely different, and there was nothing as unknown or intriguing as the Mines of Moria. Expansions have a funny way of making or breaking MMOs, you see. They can exemplify some of the best qualities of the genre: they represent the persistent growing world; they give our characters new challenges to overcome; and they can introduce new features that significantly change how the game is played. Of course, they can damage the game's reputation by creating a worse endgame than before, by screwing up the good aspects of the game, or simply by being unpopular. So how does Mines of Moria fare two-plus years after its release? Today, I want to take a look back at what will probably be the single largest expansion that LotRO will ever see and examine how its purpose has changed from 2008 to 2011. Also, we'll probably make fun of Dwarves.
The Road to Mordor: Finding the Fellowship
It's not uncommon for new players to come to Lord of the Rings Online with the full expectation that they'll be treated to a front-row seat of the Fellowship's adventures. The movies, the books and even other Lord of the Rings video games certainly feature Aragorn, Legolas and Gandalf practically non-stop, which is why LotRO's approach to showing these famous characters takes some getting used to. Instead of bending the lore so hard it breaks by shoehorning players into the Fellowship itself, Turbine decided to have the players go on their own epic quests that sometimes parallel the main story of the books. In effect, we the players are on the periphery of the Fellowship, and the Fellowship is on the periphery of us. Sometimes we cross paths, sometimes our actions influence each other, and sometimes we simply go our separate ways. Still, players may get frustrated when they spend a lot of time in the game without seeing any of these major characters, wondering whether some of them even exist at all. This is complicated by the fact that these characters appear in different places relative to the player's own journey through the story. So if you've ever been curious where your favorite character is and how you can go on adventures with him or her, hit the jump and I'll hook you up!
Breakfast Topic: The feral bond
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. There's obviously a certain understanding based on shared experience among the various WoW races, classes and specs, no matter what your faction. When you meet, even if you can't understand each other in chat, you might tip your hat, wave or do some other emote that signifies your recognition of a fellow traveler who is just like you were, are or will be. True, sometimes it's more of a rivalry, with the occasional threat, challenge or insult. But just as often (if not more so), there is flirting, cheers and exchanging of baby spice and hugs. I think this is even more true for druids and particularly feral druids. My main is an Alliance bear/cat, and often when I bump into another druid while going about my business, we start dancing or roaring at each other, or some other emote/interaction occurs that doesn't normally happen with every passing stranger (if it did, we'd never get anything done, I guess). The resulting hijinks are often quite comical, but even more so if we are both in an animal form. This seems to happen just as much when I meet Hordies as anyone else. Maybe not in a battleground (probably a good thing), but when I see another feral in passing, it seems like we become alert to each other's presence and make a quick little event out of it, then go on our way. The other races and classes are there, sure, and they certainly command my awareness and interaction as the case may be. But first and foremost, I'm checking out the other ferals. It seems there's something about ferals that makes us want to interact, be it a playful romp, chase or even the occasional threatening/rude gesture to show who's boss or who doesn't want to be messed with. It makes me wonder if this is how a dog feels in the park.
The Daily Grind: How did you find your guild?
Guilds, fellowships, corporations, group of rum-soaked adventurers; whatever your core gaming group decides to call itself, many of us have people that we tend to play with in our different MMOs. For example, I joined an EVE Online Corp last night that an old RL friend of mine is a director in. In my last game, a few friends started a loose group, we merged into a guild of like-minded folks we met in game which split, so then we reformed again. Before that I was in supergroups based on themes (TaxiBots, for example) with a small core group of MMO and RL friends in another, primary group. And so on, and so on, and so on. Most of the team here has had wide experiences from blind invites to guilds they'd never heard of, to joining up with other bloggers, to getting local RL friends to game with them.This morning we thought it would be fun to ask where you picked up your core group of people you play with? Did you happen to meet them in game? Was it several games ago and you've been together ever since? Did you meet via blogs? IRC? A particular website or forum? Or were they meatspace friends first, then you started running around in MMOs together?
LotRO Dev Diary: Moving the Fellowship
As we reported last week from our Lord of the Rings Online Book 14 tour, the time has arrived for the Fellowship to finally leave Rivendell. For the players who enjoy the game's connection to Tolkien's work, this is truly an exciting time. For the game developers, it's a fairly unique challenge.In a recent dev diary entitled Moving the Fellowship, Jeff "MadeOfLions" Libby discusses the problems faced by the development team in regards to this challenge, and how they solved them. For example, throughout the game as it stands today, the nine Fellowship members are not all together waiting for their big move. Some are in various locations throughout Rivendell, while Gimli is in the Misty Mountains. Each member is simultaneously involved in dozens of quests throughout the game, which poses its own set of challenges. Check out the complete dev diary to find out how they overcame these obstacles, and how they will continue to implement these ideas in the future of the game.
New LotRO Book 13 developer diary video is released
If you feel you've missed out on some of the features from the recently-released Book 13: Doom of the Last-king for Lord of the Rings Online, where the heck have you been? Well, not to fret because we have a new developer diary in video form starring LotRO's Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel. In it, he talks about their fifth major update since launch, and some of the new features that have been introduced.The details of their newest region is discussed a bit, including the new environmental effects and creatures you'll encounter there. Plus, now you'll know the proper way to pronounce Forochel without embarrassing yourself on voice chat! Fishing is also discussed, as is the new fellowship enhancements to the quest log and the mustering horn which is used to summon group members quickly. Be sure to check out this new video below for all the exciting information.
Fellowships versus soloing in LotRO epic storylines
Many of you will have completed Lord of the Rings Online's latest epic storyline from Book 11 by now, and you may have found that you could accomplish this task all on your lonesome. This topic was raised on LotRO's official forums, and whilst the initial poster was against the idea of a solo-able epic quest, the overwhelming response of the thread was that of people who had finished soloing it and loved it, or those that didn't realize it could be done alone and were keen to log in and get started.To date, most of the Books have been composed of a mix of solo and fellowship portions, and this was reinforced for future books later in the thread by a member of Turbine's LotRO team, MadeOfLions (fantastic name by the way), who said, "we're letting the needs of the story dictate the group sizes, rather than the other way around", and also that Book 12 should be a return to a more fellowship-oriented quest line.It's nice to have a mix between the two formats, solo and grouped, because let's face it -- a fellowship isn't always available -- and with Book 11 giving my class of choice, the Minstrel, a little more solo-power, I enjoy having only one life bar to watch over for a change.
