lotro-update-6
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See the shores of the Anduin in LotRO's Update 6
Lord of the Rings Online has a lot of ground to cover in its quest to follow the fellowship across the wilds and deep into Mordor. And like the mighty river Anduin, the game is slowly but inexorably snaking its way across the world that Tolkien created. Update 6: Shores of the Great River adds seven new explorable areas to Turbine's digital Middle-earth, and the company has taken the wraps off some new screenshots and videos to whet players' appetites. The patch brings us to Thinglad, Parth Celebrant, Eorlsmead, Wailing Hills, Limlight Gorge, the Brown Lands, and the Rushgore. Take a look at each of these areas in our Update 6 gallery below, then click past the cut for video tours of Limlight Gorge and Eorlsmead. [Source: Turbine press release] %Gallery-149032%
What a tangled web Lord of the Rings Online weaves, especially for Weavers
If your idea of a good time in Lord of the Rings Online is to be a scuttling eight-legged monstrosity in PvMP, you've no doubt spent plenty of time with the Weaver. The developers aren't entirely happy with the Weaver; they feel that as players have grown more powerful, the finesse of a Weaver has less of a place on the battlefield. Rather than reworking the class from the ground up, however, the team is pushing through some big new upgrades for Weavers to keep them as terrifying in a mechanical sense as they are in a physical sense. The two biggest changes are the addition of Venom pips and the Ensnared debuff. Venom pips will increase a Weaver's poison damage and can be consumed via two new skills. Ensnared, on the other hand, stacks on players whom a Weaver has slowed and can be converted into Venom pips and damage. The control elements of the class are also seeing some upgrades and enhancements aimed at keeping spiders dangerous in the battlefield, ensuring that the first reaction of "smash that spider!" is in fact the correct one.
Lord of the Rings Online offering PvMP players some Commendation
Lord of the Rings Online has always had an interesting system of PvP, with players facing off against a specially designated group of players in the guise of monsters. It's also a system that's historically had some problems, ones that the developers are hoping to alleviate the new Commendation system coming with Update 6. While it won't fix everything, the new system outlined in today's developer diary should ensure that players will be able to focus their PvMP efforts toward PvMP rewards, making rewards more straightforward without forcing players into PvE to advance. The diary explains how Destiny, the previously intended PvMP currency, wound up being bloated and failed to serve its proper purpose. Commendations will be hard-capped at 100,000, and spending this currency will allow players to advance Creeps and acquire new equipment. The preliminary numbers are also included with the diary, with the understanding that there will be some tweaking after the system goes live. While players might be a bit miffed at having to use their Destiny quickly before it goes away, the new reward system will hopefully make advancing via PvMP far more viable.
