grey-company
Latest
The Daily Grind: What NPC factions are a total joke?
That picture right up there is a perfect summation of the Orochi Group in The Secret World. Pretty much whenever you encounter them, they will have crashed, been blown up, been cut in half, been fried, or otherwise have decorated the landscape with their corpses. It's kind of hard to take the Orochi as anything other than the game's ongoing butt monkeys. But they're not alone, are they? I'm quite fond of mocking the death-prone and general ineffectual nature of Lord of the Rings Online's Grey Company, and I'm sure that there are more. Today, let's poke a bit of fun at NPC factions that are a total joke. Which ones do you like to mock, if only in your head? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Road to Mordor: A prisoner of Isengard
With Update 5 on the horizon, there's certainly plenty to look forward to in Lord of the Rings Online, especially if you've exhausted all of Rise of Isengard's content to date. Personally, I'm still trucking along: level 73, in the middle of the Gap of Rohan, picking flowers and pontificating on Hobbit meal schedules. As you can tell, I haven't been in any particular rush to get to the end. However, I realized this past week that somewhere along the line I had abandoned my pursuit of Volume III, Book 4, so I went to pick it back up. It turned out that I was on the verge of some of the most interesting and gripping quests in the game, and for the first time since forever, I stayed up really late to see how the questing would pan out. Obviously, there's going to be some serious spoilers in this here column, so if you haven't finished Book 4 of Rise of Isengard, you may wish to just bookmark this for later reading. I'm not typically eager to spoil story points, but this quest line got me so worked up that I simply had to talk about it this week.
Rings and words of power: Going inside LotRO's Update 5
It's been a couple of days since the news broke that Lord of the Rings Online's Update 5 is going to be bigger than previously thought, with not only a new instance cluster but an additional book in the epic storyline and an Instance Finder system. As Update 5 goes up on the test server for the remainder of the week, we got in touch with Turbine to talk about the details of this mountain of content heading our way, including an epic confrontation with Rise of Isengard's big baddie himself, Saruman. It wouldn't be a conference call without a few notable surprises as well, and Adam Merskey, Aaron Campbell, Jeff Libby, and Joe Barry were eager to share what the team has been working on for the first update after the expansion. It's time to wave goodbye to the Rangers, stop putting off instance runs, and take the fight to the bearded dude himself. It's time for Update 5. Get all the skinny after the jump!
LotRO's devs have some real estate in Enedwaith to sell you
All eyes in Lord of the Rings Online are set on the expanding frontier of the game, as both the Fellowship and players alike begin to head south this fall. This means a brand-new zone, Enedwaith, and all of the secrets and discoveries that it holds. We previously got a glimpse of this new area through a sneak-peek tour, but it's still great to read a nine-page dev tour of Enedwaith by Turbine's Jonathan Rudder. It's interesting to note that Enedwaith is comprised of several "biomes" or self-contained ecosystems that range from rolling prairie to winter tundra to jagged bluffs. Each area has its own theme and unique critters, including the terrifying shadow wolves. And before you ask, yes, Turbine threw in a few demonic goats free of charge. As players progress through Enedwaith, they'll encounter the united Grey Company of Rangers and assist in their quest to help Aragorn. Turbine's proud of the amount of content in this region, claiming that it has more quests and deeds than North Downs (which was the previous non-Moria record-holder for a zone), and it has more new and unique art per square meter than Moria. Read through this hefty dev diary for the complete skinny on Enedwaith!
