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Lord of the Rings Online accepting applications for its second player council
Turbine has opened up the doors for fans to apply to be part of Lord of the Rings Online's second Player Council. The studio will take the best of the applications along with its own picks from the community to be part of this influential board that meets with the devs and discusses current issues and upcoming content. Applicants for the Player Council have to be 18 or older, have played LotRO for six or more months, and be able to converse in English, among other requirements. Members will actively serve for an entire year and be under an NDA during that time period. Turbine will announce the members of the second Player Council on April 24th.
Joystiq Streams: Infiltrating Infinite Crisis with Turbine, Inc. [Relive the stream!]
Up to now, options have been limited for those that want nothing more than to control lanes while also making Superman punch people in the face. With Infinite Crisis, Turbine Inc. and Warner Bros. Interactive have finally created an ideal way to satiate those particularly hungry fans of MOBAs and DC Comics. Infinite Crisis won't officially open for business until later this year, but Turbine has opened the doors on a beta version of the game this month and it's joining Joystiq Streams to show it off. Ryan Bendar, lead game designer on Infinite Crisis, will square off against Joystiq's Sam Prell in the beta on Joystiq Streams today at 4PM EST on the Joystiq Twitch channel. Our champions will be testing the balance of heroes like Aquaman against villains like Harley Quinn in maps based on famous DC locales like Gotham and Coast City. Anthony John Agnello will be feeding your questions to the players alongside Adam Mersky, Turbine's Executive Director of Digital Communications. Again, you can catch all the Infinite Crisis beta action on the Joystiq Twitch channel at 4PM EST, the very same time Joystiq Streams broadcasts every Tuesday and Thursday. [Images: Turbine Inc. / Warner Bros. Interactive]
The Road to Mordor: What could LotRO's new class be?
Wow. A new class was at the very top of my wish list for 2014, but to be honest I never thought it would happen. However, last Friday Aaron Campbell confirmed on a livestream that the team is working on a 10th class to put into the game sometime this year. Instantly, speculation exploded among the Lord of the Rings Online community as to what the class could be and how it will fit into the game. Campbell gave us a few clues to guide our speculation: The new class would be in accordance with the lore (Turbine talked to Tolkien Enterprises about it), it has been mentioned in the trilogy several times, and it will be a freep (PvE) class and not a creep class. He also thinks it's a "great fit" for the game. I'm absolutely overjoyed that the game will finally be expanding its hero roster and giving us vets a good reason to go back through the entire journey, but I'll admit that I don't see a clear winner among the possible candidates. Let's hunker down together and look at the possibilities for this LotRO's newest class and see if we can sort out a lead candidate.
One Shots: Granny Freedom
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a super-powered senior citizen with slight incontinence and a grappling hook! Well, there's something you don't see every day. Reader Dynatos brings this gripping image from Champions Online to our attention: "A superhero that has come back out of retirement, Granny Freedom grapples across Millennium City's skies on the lookout for both evil-doers and heroes who need a little help with their moral compass!" She's also never late for Denny's early bird specials. So what other visual treats do we have in store for you whippersnappers this week? Oh, wouldn't you like to know!
Lord of the Rings Online is getting a new class in 2014
The character selection screen in Lord of the Rings Online will see a major shake-up in 2014, as a new class is reportedly on the way for the game. LOTRO Players announced the news on Twitter: "LotRO is getting a new class later in the year. [Executive Producer] Aaron Campbell just said it on livestream. No other info is known at this time." Speculation is wide open, although Campbell did drop a few clues according to livestream listeners: "He did state that he had a conversation with Tolkien Enterprises and it's within the lore of the trilogy. He said that it was mentioned in the books several times."
New vids detail Entwood, Isengard, inventory changes from LotRO's Update 13
Fan site LotRO Players has sussed out a few details on Turbine's upcoming Update 13. Lord of the Rings Online will be heading to Entwood and a flooded version of Isengard, both of which are detailed in lengthy new videos captured on the Bullroarer test server. Update 13 will also introduce significant changes to LotRO's inventory system, including the ability to purchase additional slots. You can watch all three videos after the break, but be aware that the first two contain spoilers relating to LotRO's epic story quest. [Thanks everyone who tipped us!]
Hitting the Mark: Turbine's sublime Rohan recreation in Lord of the Rings Online
I've written before about my on-again-off-again love affair with Lord of the Rings Online, and after finally getting my launch-day character to Rohan a few weeks ago, I think it's most definitely on again. Yeah, I'm still a sandbox fan first and foremost, and yeah, LotRO is still a dyed-in-the-wool nod to the World of Warcraft school of linear MMO development. But it's got a pleasing topcoat of Tolkien paint that often masks the pedestrian mechanics, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Riders of Rohan and Helm's Deep expansions.
Here's how the NSA can collect data from millions of PCs
We know that the NSA has been ramping up its efforts to collect data from computers, but it's now clear that the intelligence agency has the tools to compromise those computers on a grand scale. Information leaked by Edward Snowden to The Intercept has revealed that the NSA has spent recent years automating the way it plants surveillance software. The key is Turbine, a system launched in 2010 that automatically sets up implants and simplifies fetching data; agents only have to know what information they want, rather than file locations or other app-specific details. A grid of sensors, nicknamed Turmoil, automatically spots extracted info and relays it to NSA staff. The combined platform lets the organization scrape content from "potentially millions" of PCs, instead of focusing only on the highest-priority targets.
Massively Exclusive: Turbine on the future of Asheron's Call and the studio
When has putting an MMO into maintenance mode ever signaled a bright future for a game? Even so, that's what seems to have happened for Asheron's Call, which is preparing to not only transition into a maintenance mode phase but drop subscription fees and allow for player-run servers by the end of the year. The announcement was so unusual in the industry that we had to reach out to Turbine to get more perspective on this move. Asheron's Call Executive Producer Rob Ciccolini took the time to answer a few questions about the change for the game, Turbine's recent layoffs, and how the studio is adjusting going forward.
The Road to Mordor: LotRO's big battles are a big bust
Recently my journey through Helm's Deep came to a close as I finished all of the quests plus advanced the epic story as far as it could go. Overall, I loved the expansion: It had great pacing, beautiful scenery, memorable quests, and an obvious dedication to doing The Two Towers right. But there was one glaring fault that Lord of the Rings Online seemed to save for the last, which I discovered during my foray into the big battle system. Other than visiting them in a couple of press tours, I had been avoiding big battles (even though you can jump in one starting at level 10) because I wanted to experience them organically as part of the storyline. I wasn't necessarily anticipating them, but I wasn't dreading them either. "Mild curiosity" is perhaps the emotion that I identified within my breast, and as it turned out, that was wildly overpreparing for the experience that followed. Big battles are, I'm sorry to say, a big bust in LotRO. Sure, they have their positives and moments, but for a system that Turbine spent over a year to create and shoved aside instances and raids in favor of putting into the expansion, it should have been so much more. So what went wrong?
Lord of the Rings Online fully automates character transfers
It's been long in the process, but now it's finally here: Lord of the Rings Online has switched over to a fully automated character transfer process. "We are pleased to announce that as of today, Monday, March 3rd, automated character transfers are available to all players for both Free People and Monsters," Turbine posted on the forums. "This is something you have been requesting for some time, and we are very excited to have the service ready for you now!" Players can move characters between servers by purchasing transfer tokens through the LotRO Market website. One token is $24.95, three tokens is $69.95, and six tokens is $134.95. Unfortunately the new system will not take Turbine Points, nor will it allow players to transfer between NA and EU servers. Turbine said that players have a "limited time" to request a transfer with Turbine Points by contacting support.
The Game Archaeologist: The care and feeding of older MMOs
When an MMO has reached a certain age and dwindled to a certain player population, what do you do with it? Do you put it out to pasture, nurture it, or put it down? With some of our older graphical MMOs approaching their 20th anniversaries, the question of what studios should do with aging titles is becoming very important. It's not just important for the games in question but as a precedent to the population of games that will one day become just as old. Lately we've seen different studios act on this topic in a wide variety of ways, all of which I find fascinating. Some of these games have seen tragic ends, while others may be entering into the enjoyable golden years. If nothing else, it's shown me that there isn't just one set answer for this and that some devs are hoping to do the right thing by their companies and their players.
DC's Infinite Crisis begins battle in beta this March
Infinite Crisis, developer Turbine's take on the multiplayer online battle arena genre featuring heroes and villains from the DC Universe, will launch its open beta on March 14. Turbine announced the upcoming PC title's open beta start date at an event yesterday, alongside reveals of three new characters: Green Arrow, Aquaman and Mecha Superman. Infinite Crisis is a free-to-play MOBA game, a genre that has exploded in the last few years with titles such as Riot's League of Legends and Valve's Dota 2. In the last ten to eleven months of development, Infinite Crisis content has drastically increased in size, Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel claims. "We now have three maps, three modes, a huge amount of different ways you can play the game. Twenty-seven characters and, in fact, we are adding a new character every three weeks." Steefel also outlined a plan to launch new costumes for existing characters every week.
Infinite Crisis hits open beta on March 14
Turbine has announced that its Infinite Crisis MOBA will launch its open beta on March 14. Former Lord of the Rings Online and current Infinite Crisis executive producer, Jeffrey Steefel, commented on the game's growth since closed beta began: "We now have three maps, three modes, a huge amount of different ways you can play the game. Twenty-seven characters and, in fact, we are adding a new character every three weeks." The game is said to include new costumes for each character, a digital comic, and action figures in the near future.
New Dungeons & Dragons Online video interviews Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood
Earlier this month, Turbine announced that it would be partnering with Ed Greenwood, creator of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for the Dungeons and Dragons pen-and-paper game, to bring his classic module Haunted Halls of the Eveningstar into the world of Dungeons and Dragons Online. Today, Turbine released a new video wherein Community Specialist Jerry Snook sits down with Greenwood himself to discuss the process of bringing his beloved tabletop adventure into the digital realm of DDO. During the interview, Greenwood details the obvious challenges of translating an adventure written for the pen-and-paper game, wherein players have nearly limitless ways of interacting with the world, to its MMORPG incarnation, which is decidedly more limited in its possibilities. Greenwood also speaks a bit about the content that was cut from the original pen-and-paper module, originally written as an entire campaign before being whittled down to a single dungeon, and how the digital remake gave him the opportunity to work in some of that lost material. It's certainly worth a watch, if only to hear a Dungeons and Dragons legend's thoughts on his time in the business and the future of D&D in the digital space.
Turbine outlines the path ahead for LotRO and DDO
Coming hot on the heels of yesterday's revelation about the future of Asheron's Call, Turbine posted a pair of producer's letters this morning to talk about where Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online are heading. Aaron Campbell has moved back to the LotRO team to be its executive producer and said that Update 13 will be coming soon. In Update 13, there will be a revamp of North Downs, additional quests in Fangorn Forest, support for multiple attachments in mail, and a new epic book that allows you to play as an Ent. "We're pressing forward to Gondor," Campbell promised. "We're digging in deep (but not too deep) to continue the journey through Middle-earth." As for DDO, Franchise Director Athena Peters said the team is getting ready to push out Update 21 on March 10th but is also looking beyond that to the second update of 2014. Update 22 will expand Three Barrel Cove into epic levels and add new guild airship amenities.
Asheron's Call limits updates, goes free, and plans player-run servers
Once Turbine applies a March 4th update to Asheron's Call, the studio plans to move the game into maintenance mode -- with benefits. Producer Severlin dropped the news on the forums today: "Once this next update is in the hands of the players, the updates to Asheron's Call will be limited. We intend to fix critical bugs and continue maintenance and support on the game. While there is always a chance we will put out a small update if time permits, players should have the expectation that updates will be limited to maintenance, bug fixes, and perhaps balance iterations of February content such as the new Coliseum." Severlin elaborated that "this change of focus is necessary for the company." Asheron's Call is perhaps best-known for its monthly story updates that have gone out since the game went live in 1999. The good news is that Turbine says there are no plans to close the game and will be working to make both Asheron's Call and Asheron's Call 2 free in the near future: "We are working on a date in the not-to-distant future where all active accounts will be able to play the game for free. Asheron's Call and Asheron's Call 2 will be a gift to our loyal players." Also, Turbine is starting an initiative to allow player-run servers by the end of the year. "Our intent is to help these players build a community so these processes can be created and distributed to people interested in running an Asheron's Call game," Severlin said. [Thanks to Padre for the tip!]
Pando Media Booster 'update' is actually a browser hijack
Remember Pando Media Booster? No? It was bloatware third-party software that some MMO companies -- notably Turbine and NCsoft -- used to force onto their users' machines, ostensibly to speed up peer-to-peer downloading of launchers and game clients. Fortunately PMB died a well-deserved death in August of 2013, but those of you who may have unintentionally left it lurking on your machine should be aware of a security risk masquerading as a Pando update. According to Reddit user object404, if you receive a pop-up message offering you the chance to update PMB, what it's really offering is the Sweet Page browser virus, which you can remove by following these instructions.
The Game Archaeologist: Is Turbine working on Asheron's Call 3?
If you look at the list of major MMO studios, it seems as though many of them have something new in the works or recently launched a title. Sequels and sandboxes are the trendy topics of the time, garnering attention and enthusiasm from the community. And then there's Turbine. As a fan of the "powered by fans" studio and an avid player of Lord of the Rings Online, I have always kept my eye on these Bostonians. While Turbine helped lead the charge on free-to-play adaptations and has kept DDO and LotRO hopping with expansions, its last major MMO launch was 2008. The only known new game that's in the works over there is the Infinite Crisis MOBA. Or is it? What if there's another project that's being kept on the down-low, one that could be a comeback attempt to propel Turbine back into the community spotlight? What if Turbine is working on Asheron's Call 3? I have scant proof that this is so but plenty of suspicion and speculation as to why it may be the case. Plus, the possibility stirs the imagination.
The Road to Mordor: When storm clouds gather...
When I think about the news swirling around Lord of the Rings Online lately, I feel a bit like Sam and Frodo getting their first glimpse of Mordor and Mount Doom. It's hard to think of cheer and happiniess when the view is full of heavy clouds and ash. I have several positive articles that I'd rather be penning this week, but I think it would be a mistake to avoid the questions and feelings that all LotRO players are experiencing right now, including me. It may not be the journey that I'd like to be taking, but it's the one that's needed right now. So let's sit down together, fill our tankards, and mull over just what's going on with our Middle-earth. Maybe in the talking and in the company we will find the solace and comfort that we need.
