Rohan
Latest
The Road to Mordor: Rise of Isengard is coming!
Tweet [Update: Made a clarification that there is no indication of "open-world" PvMP in the expansion.] Times are tough in Middle-earth, even after the inexplicable appearance of several hundred thousand new adventurers this fall. The Fellowship of the Ring is broken, Sauron is rising in power, and the White Hand of Saruman is marching across the lands. Even the bravest and hardiest soldier of the Free Peoples cannot be blamed for feeling disheartened, especially in the face of the monumental struggle to come. Welcome to the beginning of The Two Towers in Lord of the Rings Online. Welcome to Isengard. The rumors are true: Next year we will be venturing into LotRO's third expansion, titled Rise of Isengard, to confront evil in its own backyard. While this may not be the Rohan or Gondor expansion that we've anticipated, Turbine is fairly confident that it will be well-received by players and will represent an ambitious step forward on (wait for it) the road to Mordor. Turbine's Adam Mersky and Aaron Campbell were on hand to outline for us the company's near- and far-future plans with Massively, starting with the imminent November update and cruising all the way through 2011. Hit the jump as we look at interactive theater, busy bees, Monster Play improvements and, of course, Isengard.
Notion Ink Adam a week ahead of schedule, adds comic book store and replaceable battery 'concept'
If you ask us, the whole Adam tablet is a concept until Notion Ink delivers something other than promises, but things are looking up for the less jaded among you. Rohan Shravan has updated the world on the Adam's latest condition, disclosing a new replaceable battery 'concept' and the addition of a comic book store. We're not sure whether that means the final retail unit will or won't have a user-swappable cell, but at least we now know that both the Pixel Qi- and LCD-equipped variants of the Adam will share one body design. The switch that turns off the Pixel Qi backlight will do the same for the LCD model, saving battery power when you're either downloading or listening to the Engadget podcast. We're also told things are moving faster than originally scheduled and the FCC should get a look at this long-awaited tablet a week early. As to the rest of us? Who knows, but maybe there is a tablet god.
Rohan: Blood Feud adds new dungeon
High-level fans of R.O.H.A.N.: Blood Feud who are looking for some new challenges should be pretty happy with YNK Interactive these days. Their latest patch, rolled out on the 19th, introduced a new dungeon for players level 75+. The dungeon, dubbed "Ronelia", will feature three areas -- the exterior, interior, and underground cell -- and offers dozens of new quests, including some that are repeatable. Players can expect new mobs, bosses, and items in Ronelia as well. This new area will take players back in time to battle for the right to take over Ronelia Castle alongside Ohn, or play for the other side and stand with Bezemut and the Imperial Guard to defend against Ohn's invading army. Derrick Lee, Game Lead for YNK Interactive, says that players should expect even more to come this year: "This is only the beginning of what we have coming in 2010 for R.O.H.A.N.: Blood Feud."
The Digital Continuum: LotRO's feature future, part 2
Something offered by the setting of Rohan is its expansive lands. Certainly LotRO has some massive zones but within a country dedicated to the art of horse riding, it seems only reasonable that it should have some of the widest, longest zones in the game. What's important about the addition of a wide, expansive land in LotRO is that it appeals to a wholly under served type of MMO player: the explorer.
LotRO's spellbinding 'Lieutenant of Dol Guldur' trailer
Turbine is stepping it up with their newest Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood trailer, Lieutenant of Dol Guldur. The voice acting, editing, music, creatures and setting are all enthralling to a degree that goes beyond our standard expectations. We've no doubt this one will get people's blood pumping, and in a good way. Seriously, this is the kind of stuff you expect when a company adopts an important IP -- especially where the voice acting is concerned. We can't wait to see what the future holds for Turbine trailers, especially considering the locales of Middle-earth the game has yet to expand into its world. Rohan? Helm's Deep? Minas Tirith? Osgiliath? Thinking of trailers for all these places makes us tingle with anticipation. Check out the trailer after the cut.
Ijji.com boasts over 9 million registered accounts
Ijji.com has hit a major milestone recently, revealing that their systems have tallied over 9 million accounts in their database. That's a pretty big number, and while they may not all be active accounts, it's still a very impressive amount of sign ups for anyone to have. This comes as good news to players of Rohan, Soul of the Ultimate Nation, Luminary, HolyBeast Online, and Atlantica Online, as ijji.com funnels players into all of those games. More people means more players, and more players ultimately means more of, well, everything. Ijji.com is still working on the upcoming MMOFPS, Huxley: The Dystopia, so those 9 million members will certainly come in handy in the future, as we'd all like more targets to shoot at for easy experience. Keep on signin' up, newbies! Fresh experience for all!
ROHAN: Blood Feud celebrating Million Member Mania
What's a R.O.H.A.N., you might ask? Apparently it stands for "Renaissance of Human and Nature" from what we're told. It would seem that since they've brought trade-skills in for players to enjoy in July, this F2P game appears to be going through its own renaissance. For example, word has come down that they've crossed the 1 million account mark - considered by some to be one of the first real landmarks for a F2P game. YNK Interactive's CEO, Jun Lee commented, "We are thrilled to see the R.O.H.A.N. community increase with R.O.H.A.N.'s continuous growth throughout the past year, and we will continue to bring our players the adventures R.O.H.A.N. has to offer in the future." To celebrate, the team behind R.O.H.A.N.: Blood Feud are going to be holding a series of Million Member Mania events from now until September 21st. Players who win the various games (hide-and-seek, fishing derby, "Gauis Del Lagos", and more) will be awarded with one million Crones (in-game currency). So, if you've ever been curious to check out this particular F2P game, now sounds like a good time to pop in and enjoy the festivities - and possibly some free cash if you're any good at hide-and-seek or the like.
PAX 2009: Turbine tells us all about Siege of Mirkwood part 2
Basically, Turbine is doing everything they can to make these just as fun on the hundredth time as they are on the first. There are limitations to how often you can do some of them, because Turbine doesn't want them to become too grindy. The first time you summon your horse after getting Siege of Mirkwood, the game will prompt you to turn it into a skill.
How often should we do repeatable content?
Blessing of Kings asks an excellent question: how often should we be running repeatable content? Certainly Blizzard has considered this issue before -- they've gone with daily quests in the first expansion, and recently they've been rethinking just how often we'll be rerunning dungeons, too. But both of those time periods are fairly arbitrary to us: is it possible that we should start running things twice a week (once during and once on the weekend), or maybe do weekly quests instead of daily?BoK says: possibly. Rohan suggests a weekly quest that rewarded 70g instead of the daily 10g reward we usually get (not including the XP bonus which kicks it up to 13g). Players who don't have time to run every day, but do have the weekly availability (like me -- I play mostly on the weekends), would be able to still pick up the reward. I'll go one step further, in fact: what if we had an option? What if we could choose to run a quest daily (and get a bigger reward overall), or run it once per week, using up all of our daily chances for that week, and getting a smaller total reward? That seems to be the best way -- those who could log in every day would get a larger reward, while those who couldn't could still get more than just the single daily.Rohan also says that Heroic and BG quests should remain daily, and on that we agree: those quests are perfect for creating variety every day, and getting people to run those instances. In fact, those would be fun to see expanded -- maybe Blizzard could create weekly series of daily quests that followed a small storyline across dungeons or BGs. Blizzard has done a pretty good job balancing out repeatable content periods, but it's always nicer to have more options.
Rohan unveils new crafting system
Rohan: Blood Feud players can rejoice in the streets of Einhoren as the new crafting system has now been unveiled! For many players, this has always been a major gap in the game mechanics of this free-to-play MMO, but for others, it simply adds more to keep them in the game.If you're interested in learning more about Rohan's crafting system, you can check out some extensive guides put together by the devs at YNK Interactive. There's one on Gathering, one on Producing, one on Upgrading and one on Extracting. From what we've been able to gather (see what we did there) since the announcement, these guides are extremely in-depth and explain just about everything you'd want to know to get started. From there you can check out the forums to see what players are saying about the advantages of crafted vs. dropped items, and how the new system will affect the economy. If you haven't played Rohan in awhile, this might also be a good time to take a look at our previous coverage and jump on in.
E3 2009: Massively's day 4 roundup
Wait a minute, day 4 of E3 2009? Remedial math skills? E3 was only a three-day event, but our own coverage of Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009 is going to last a bit longer. We've still got a number of interviews and previews lined up for you in the coming days, today included, so we hope you'll keep reading this weekend. In the meantime, here are a few highlights of Massively's coverage of E3 2009 from yesterday: Champions Online interview with Bill Roper on character customization Torchlight, from creators of Mythos, to morph from single player to MMO Rohan: Blood Feud to get crafting system in June Massively's Dragonica Online Impressions If you'd like to see more, we've got some eye candy after the jump, with galleries for Champions Online, Torchlight, Rohan: Blood Feud, and Dragonica Online.
E3 2009: Launch date announced for Rohan: Blood Feud's crafting system
YNK Interactive has revealed at E3 that their free-to-play MMO Rohan: Blood Feud will be getting a crafting system later this month. Andy Tubbs, the head of YNK Interactive's Rohan Division, helped make the announcement: "We are excited on soon releasing the Crafting System that will coincide greatly with our other game features like the Exchange Market, a place where players will have the ability to sell and/or buy crafted items from other players." The Exchange Market Tubbs referred to allows players to sell their items for Rohan Points, which is the currency needed to purchase things from the Item Mall -- in other words, crafting and selling the results could potentially become a good alternative to spending your own real cash.The crafting system will involve three steps: the first is collecting resources, then comes the extraction of crafting materials from those raw goods, and finally, the actual crafting can take place with the refined materials. Various enhancements can be applied to crafted items once the creator is skilled enough. Look out for the new system to debut on the 16th of June. Massively is on the ground in Los Angeles this week and covering all the latest E3 MMO news coming from the convention. Check out our breaking coverage (or all the Joystiq network E3 reporting) and keep your eye on Massively's front page for the latest developments.
Has LotRO's next expansion been named?
Kill Ten Rats has uncovered a rather interesting website, called Riders of Rohan. Curiously, this website doesn't actually go to any place new -- it simply redirects to the official Lord of the Rings Online site. So this of course begs the question, will the next expansion (presumably this year's) be centered on Rohan and its lands? Will Lord of the Rings Online players be tromping around the Riddermark within the next twelve months?It seems rather plausible given the Volume 2, Book 7 update's location, but of course there's no official word just yet. Still, that won't stop us from imagining up mounted combat as Horse Lords and massive armies marching onto the steps of Helm's Deep as we valiantly defend her gates from dark forces.
Rohan: Blood Feud gets new dungeon and more in latest patch
It's been a couple of months since we last checked in on Rohan: Blood Feud, and it was doing pretty well back then. The latest big news from YNK Interactive's free-to-play MMO is a decent-sized patch that was released last week, which featured a brand new dungeon called the Fire Temple Garden, among other things. The Fire Temple Garden is intended to be a pretty dangerous area for level 80s, and has four separate sections within: Kasa's Tower, The Blazing Temple, The Ring of Flames, and the Lamp of Flames. Starting to pick the common theme here? The selection of screenshots that came with the dungeon's announcement confirm that there will be some firey foes to contend with.16 new quests were added to the game in the patch, and all of these are found in the new dungeon. A system to fuse Option Stones was also introduced, allowing players to fuse multiple stones of the same grade to form a better one. The other main update is a new sidekick called Molly that can be purchased from the Item Mall. Molly can be used to heal your character every two minutes, and she can be leveled up a bit to increase her healing powers. If you haven't tried Rohan yet, you can do so by downloading the client and making an account at the official site.
Turbine: Horsemanship to become "important" when LotRO reaches Rohan
Alright, it's time for that gaming industry tradition of speculation based on vague quotes from developers! In an interview with Ten Ton Hammer, The Lord of the Rings Online executive producer Jeffrey Steefel spoke about future updates to the game, saying that the best is yet to come because now that Turbine has moved into Moria, the really interesting and fully-fleshed-out stuff from Tolkien's source material is only a few steps away.Among those interesting things is the land of Rohan, which fans of the books and movies will remember is a kingdom that prides itself on breeding and grooming the finest horses in Middle-earth. Steefel went on to say: "When we get to Rohan, does horsemanship become important? Yeah! Us and our horses would be strung up if we got to Rohan someday and didn't pay attention to horses. And it's just a matter of when."Mounts in LotRO have admittedly always been a bit basic (but in a good way!), so this could mean any number of things, but perhaps the most exciting possibility would be Age of Conan-esque mounted combat. Go ahead and meditate on that for a bit, and read the interview for a few more vague quotes about the future of LotRO and the company's console plans if you feel compelled.
Rohan: Blood Feud reaches 500k beta players
Korean-owned developer YNK Interactive has just announced that their free-to-play MMO Rohan: Blood Feud has just reached 500,000 registered players in the game's open beta. We first reported on Rohan earlier this year when the beta had begun, and we got some extensive hands-on time with the game."I'm thrilled to have hit the half million mark, and still counting", said Jun Lee, CEO of YNK Interactive. "As we continue to expand the game, so are we expanding our community base. We look forward to continuing to announce milestones like this in the months and years ahead." You can find out more information on the game and register for open beta on the Rohan: Blood Feud main site.%Gallery-24375%
Rohan Online's Trading Center now open
All of the most popular and successful MMOs have an auction house of some sort, but Rohan Online's recent addition of their Trading Center introduces players to some interesting features. Despite the fact that their basic in-game economy is based on the RMT purchase of Rohan Points, there are many options available.The three main parts of the Trading Center are the Item Mall, the Exchange Market and Special Services. In the Item Mall, you can purchase in-game items from the company itself, but with the Exchange Market, you buy, sell and trade with other players. This is a great way to make your own Rohan Points instead of buying them yourself. In the Special Services section, you can buy changes to your characters from a new name to a new gender. All item purchases are conducted through a safe and secure environment and will be immediately added to your account.
Squeaky monsters slain in Rohan: Blood Feud video
Rohan: Blood Feud is currently in open beta, and Ten Ton Hammer has visited the land of Rohan to get some video footage of the combat system in action. Our protagonist appears to be a ranged specialist character, with abilities that focus on firing arrows and slowing enemies from a distance.In the second half of the video where commentary ceases, we hear the in-game sounds. As people lay into the NPCs, they give off sickeningly cute (and very quickly, annoying) rapid-fire squeaking noises. As hard as you try to focus on the combat being shown, you WILL be distracted by the little monsters squeaking their way into your nightmares. Check out the video and see for yourself -- if you dare.
Rohan: Blood Feud enters open beta
In a genre that is exploding with popularity, the Korean free-to-play MMO market seems to get more and more competitive with their subscription-based western cousins. A perfect example of this is YNK Interactive's Rohan Online: Blood Feud, which has just entered open beta.With a boom in this genre's popularity comes the need for developers to create something unique, that stands out in the crowd. With Rohan, you get much of the same controls, features and gameplay mechanics as other Korean-based MMOs, yet they do introduce their own element of uniqueness. For instance, they have a revolutionary revenge system set up where you can actually teleport straight back to the location of someone who killed you in a PvP duel. These players will automatically be added to your personal "hit list", where you can hunt them down yourself or bring along some friends to help bring the pain!Follow us through the Rohan Online: Blood Feud gallery for more information!%Gallery-24375%
Are you on the path?
One factor that keeps MMORPGs running is the desire for progression. Every player who sets foot in any subscription-based game can eventually see the will of the developers creating systems that will make you dedicated time and energy to their game.Yet, the one thing that no one seems to take notice of is the way we get sucked into keep playing. Sometimes isn't not about the difficulty of the challenge itself, but the path it takes to get to there. Everyone sees the physical difficulty of doing a raid, and everyone knows that the developers make it difficult to complete a raid so you keep playing longer, but very few can see the will of the developers resonating in the path it takes to get to the challenge.Rohan at Blessing of Kings, however, locked onto that path in his latest post, entitled "Being on the Path".
