Lord of the Rings Online

Update 17 live:

New Region: Old An?rien
Explore the besieged city of Minas Tirith, ancient seat of the Kingdom of Gondor. Outside the fortress city, the Enemy has broken through the walls of Pelennor Field, and their forces now assemble and prepare for the assault to come. North of those broken walls, in the countryside of Talath Anor, yet more hosts of the Enemy bear down upon Gondor. It is from here that Gondor hopes and watches for the coming of the Rohirrim. And while they wait, a younglordof Caer Andros finds himself beset by fierce bearded Easterlings, known as the Suhalar.

Two New Epic Battles
Experience Sauron's first assault on Minas Tirith through two new Epic Battles. In The Defence of Minas Tirith (solo/duo and three player), the foes make their first foray, marshalling great siege towers and the elements of fear and dread against Minas Tirith's seemingly impenetrable walls. Then, in The Hammer of the Underworld (solo/duo and six player), fight to hold the city gates against the great siege ram Grond-and the Witch-king of Angmar himself!

These Epic Battles feature thirteen exciting secondaries, including Epic Foes, with "soft" failure conditions that end only when the wave ends. Victory boxes for these battles contain roughly 50% more Supreme essences than prior Epic Battles and, for the main quests, grant three times as many Stars of Merit. With this update, Epic Battle Promotions have been raised from 236 to 256.

Epic Volume IV, Book 4: Siege of the White City
The city of Osgiliath has fallen to the enemy, and now you must flee with its defenders across the plain to Minas Tirith. Prepare for the coming siege with Gandalf the White, Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth, and Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, as the armies of Sauron move to destroy Gondor. This thirteen-chapter Epic Book is a new on-ramp to the story, so you can play through it without having played the previous Books. but it is recommended that you play the adventure to this point for maximum context.


General

.Hope Tokens now have a 3-minute cooldown, instead of 15 minutes.
.Fixed a problem which would cause many instances' drama to pause for 5 minutes before restarting again. This should resolve a number of frozen instances throughout the game.
.In the III.3.7 instance, 'Attack on Zudrugund' Corunir began floating. Now he's a little more down-to-earth.
.The III.2.15 instance, 'An Echo of Days Past,' has been added to the Enedwaith Reflecting Pool
.Fixed a long-standing issue with the obelisks in the I.5.8 instance 'Fire and Ice.
.The Dome of Stars, The Ruined City, and The Sunken Labyrinth now all give 1 Morgul Crest upon completion of the tier 2 instance. This is in addition to any Morgul Crests from the tier 2 Challenge chest.
.Epic Battles - fixed merit progress display for some of the secondary quests which used to not show any progress at all.
.The victory boxes for the Defense of Minas Tirith and Hammer of the Underworld Epic Battles have roughly 50% more Supreme Essences, on average, than the victory boxes for other Epic Battles.
.The class item traders in Glan Vraig now trade Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment for Commendations. Check the Legendary Items (Level 100) section on your class trader to find them.
.The cap on Epic Battle promotion points has been raised from 236 to 256.
.The main quest reward boxes for the Minas Tirith Epic Battles give three times as many Stars of Merit as other reward boxes.
.Morgul Crests can now be exchanged for Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment, at a rate of 5 Crests per Scroll.
.The mark and medallion acquisition rates for the Sambrog and Glinghant instances were unintentionally high. The mark and medallion acquisition rates for these instances have been sharply reduced.
.Level-scaled players should no longer lose their scaling buff when teleporting between Ettenmoors and Osgiliath.
.In the Battle for Osgiliath, Creep NPCs have less Morale and Freep NPCs have more.
.Sometimes Bingo was trying to climb the Stocktower and getting stuck inside it. Now he should do a better job staying on the ledge!
.Bingo will no longer float when he's standing on the Brandywine Bridge.
.All 6-man and 12-man Roving Threats now have a chance to drop Morgul Crests.
.Anfalas Scrolls of Empowerment and Star-lit Crystals have been added to the Merit Commitee barter NPCs for 250 and 500 Stars of Merit, respectively.
.Monsters from level 99 and up may now drop tier 9 and tier 10 crafting materials.
.There's a new option that allows you to control the opacity of floating names on the UI Settings options page.
.Added an audio option to disable combat music. When checked, landscape music plays uninterrupted by combat.
.You should more consistently be able to hear in-game music (music will no longer go silent when crossing into a new zone).
.A handful of tweaks have been made to the player music system: Bagpipe notes should no longer clip, the Misty Mountain Harp has had its note lengths slightly shortened, and the Theorbo's seven highest notes should now sound more like a Theorbo.
.The store now has a minimum width of 600px to prevent the scrollbar from disappearing.


Cosmetic Weapons

.You can now turn off your weapons when they are sheathed by clicking the new eye icons in the cosmetic outfit page. In combat, the weapons will reappear.
.Cosmetic weapon visibility rules have been loosened. We have set up a number of categories of items that can be interchanged with each other: all one-handed weapons (including cosmetic-only items), all shields, two-handed clubs/swords/implements, and two-handed hammers/axes/halberds. All other categories (such as Staff, Spear, etc) can only be interchanged with other staffs, spears, etc.You can no longer waste a dye trying to dye shields in the wardrobe.
.Shields and weapons should again appear at their normal size.
.When using a fishing pole, you now can only have another fishing pole cosmetically equipped.


Crafting

.Crafters now have access to a tenth crafting tier: the An?rien crafting tier. Crafters of this tier can use Poplar, An?rien Skarn, Zircon, and Tattered An?rien Parchments to craft items for level 100 characters.
.All crafting nodes can now be harvested while mounted.
.All crafting materials stack to 500.
.There is no longer a distinction between Vegetable, Grain, and Pipe-weed Farmlands. There is now only one kind of Farmland.
.East Gondor craft nodes have been replaced with the tier 10 craft nodes also found in Old An?rien.
.Monsters from level 99 and up may now drop tier 10 crafting materials. This affects the loot drops of landscape monsters in the older regions of Belfalas, Central Gondor, and Eastern Gondor.
.Crafting nodes in the Ettenmoors have been upgraded to tier 10.
.Tier 10 crafting materials now drop from various level 99+ containers and mobs


Imbued Legendary Items

.DPS / Main Item Legacies have been granted 4 more available tiers and can unlock an additional 4.
.Imbued stat Legacies have been granted 6 more available tiers and can unlock an additional 3.
.All other imbued legacies have been granted 3 more available tiers and can unlock an additional 6.
.Imbued Burglar Tools and Champion Runes have significantly more Incoming Healing Rating.


Class changes

Beorning

.Beornings now have access to Bows.


.The Beorning Club-damage trait now applies to axes as well.
.Beornings with more than 100 Wrath should gain +15% Crit Chance from the Wrathful trait, instead of +0%.


Burglar

.Burglar's Gamble Chance Legacy now gives Cash Out Damage after tier 35.


Captain

.Muster Courage Fear Resist now grants Shield/Song/Blade-brother Critical Defence after Tier 35.


Champion

.Champion Horns can no longer miss. They can still be resisted.
.Swift Strike/Swift Blade Power Cost has a maximum tier of 38.


Guardian

.Guardian's Pledge Cooldown now gives Retaliation Damage after Tier 35.
.Guardian's Pledge Magnitude now gives Shield Swipe Damage after tier 35.
.Turn the Tables Cooldown now gives Turn the Tables Damage after tier 35.


Hunter

.Strength Quick Shot Slow now gives more chance to get extra Focus after tier 35.
.Quick Shot Critical Chance now gives more Quick Shot critical damage after tier 35.


Loremaster

.Signs of Power Durations now grants Signs of Power Debuff Rating after Tier 35.


Minstrel

.Call to Ioreth now grants +5% critical magnitude to healing skills, in addition to making the next healing skill automatically a critical hit.
.Cry of the Chorus Cooldown now grants Ballad Critical Magnitude after Tier 35.
.Triumphant Spirit Cooldown now grants Triumphant Spirit Critical Magnitude after Tier 35.
.Rally Cooldown now grants Major Ballad Healing after Tier 35.
.Anthem Duration now grants Melee Skills Critical Rating after Tier 35.
.Still as Death Cooldown now grants Song of Distraction Cooldown after Tier 35.
.Call to Ioreth Cooldown now grants Call to Ioreth Healing Skills Critical Magnitude after Tier 35.


Rune-Keeper

.Healing Attuned Power Cost now grants Revive Morale and Power Restoration after Tier 35.
.Battle Attuned Power Cost now grants Chill of Winter Target Resistance penalty after Tier 35.
.Steady Attuned Power Cost now grants Armour of the Elements Tactical Mitigation after Tier 35.


Warden

.Wardens will now animate properly when using the Taunt skill when unarmed.
.All Warden bleeds can now be cured with Wound or Cry potions, as appropriate.

Being a huge LOTR fan, I had to hop in to check out Minas Tirith, can finally explore the city, so that's very cool.

Unfortunately my characters are level 65, and I have no idea how to play either of them since I've not played in years, so I just decided to start entirely over with a class I'd never played before, Hunter. So far pretty fun - up to level 24, gonna be a while till I see Minas Tirith, don't get to play too much. Quite a lot different game then I recall from years back.

I really want to play to explore all the lands and stuff. Just don't know if I feel like re learning everything as well

http://www.lotro.com/en/game/article...utive-producer

By Frelorn

Hello all!

2015 was a great year for LOTRO, and we hope you agree! We had many large beats to cover this year as we built out more of Gondor including the two great cities of Osgiliath and Minas Tirith. Additionally we took on major service upgrades including building a brand new store and consolidating our servers to a core ten worlds which are buzzing with activity these days.

Unfortunately we also missed a beat this year with our plans to move into a brand new Datacenter. We wanted to have this new center launch by the end of this year, and while all of the hardware is up and ready to go. However, this upgrade in hardware also came with an upgrade in operating system from 32-bit to 64-bit. When we started load testing the new hardware, we learned that our chat system does not function properly on the new OS. As a result we have to architect a new solution for chat which will delay us into 2016. Updates to come as we work through the problem.

Our story continues in 2016 with Riding with the Rohirrim to the Battle of Pelennor Fields and then taking the battle to the enemy as we push towards the Black Gates! It is going to be an exciting year to be sure.
Major 2016 Initiatives:

Level Cap increase to 105: Build on your heroism and power with 5 more levels of character advancement. Your Imbued Legendary Items will not need to be replaced, but will continue to grow and level with you.

New Fellowship Challenges: The Battle of Pelennor Fields will contain a new instance cluster as well as a long awaited 12-man raid!

New Collections: We will be adding UI elements to help you see and catalogue many of the items you can already find in game. Our first collection system will be around emotes. Ever wondered what emotes are available to you, what they look like or where you can get them? Now you will know!

Quality of Life: Much like last year, we will continue to make quarterly patches that focus on bug fixing and general improvements to Quality of Life.

Thank you for your continued commitment to this team and to our game. We look forward to seeing you in Middle-Earth as LOTRO enters its 9th year!



Athena ?Vvyvanne? Peters

Executive Producer-Lordof theRingsOnline

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Ah shit. I am going to need to log back into this to fulfill my vow of taking my character who was made in the first few seconds of the game's existence all the way to Mordor.

Still wondering what is going to happen after the War of the Ring - are they going to stop there, or try to take the story a bit into the 4th Age? Now THAT I would come back full time to see.

Faltigoth_sl said:

Ah shit. I am going to need to log back into this to fulfill my vow of taking my character who was made in the first few seconds of the game's existence all the way to Mordor.

Still wondering what is going to happen after the War of the Ring - are they going to stop there, or try to take the story a bit into the 4th Age? Now THAT I would come back full time to see.

Click to expand...

u gota fight sharkey in the shire

It amazes me how this game still holds on. I don't mean that negatively but to still build on the existing iteration of the game with no foreseeable sequels or major overhauls, they must have done something right to still chugging along. There's only a handful of games that have made it this far and especially to have never spawned a spinoff or sequel. I never really got into the game. I felt sad they never brought PvP into the world as I really believed they had some solid angles with races, classes, and factions that could have easily turned into some pretty epic battles.

I have to tip my hat to them though. Still working on QoL patches and continuing to progress through a storyline that is beloved by so many but you never hear too much negativity towards their decisions I think it pretty impressive. I could be totally wrong though or oblivious as I see nothing about this game outside of posts here.

The combat is still complete and utter shit, unfortunately.

Once you get over the way combat works it's not bad. I liked the way they built the world.

For capturing both the letter and the essence of Tolkien, this is second to none. They did an amazing job building the world and around the edges of the main story.

Started playing the latest update the other day. Minas Tirith is awesome. It's fucking huge, and super detailed. Lots of quests running you all around in it too.

Lawl at the quest that has you throw a chicken off the top of the big ass pier thing.

Wow, this thread hasn't been updated forever. Game is still very much bustling and Mordor coming soon. Black Gate to be released very shortly here.




Welcome to the Update 20 Release Notes for Bullroarer, released on Friday, March 3rd. These notes will change over time.
We have updated Bullroarer with a preview of Update 20.

• Please note that the Beta EULA and ToS have not yet been updated, and will still incorrectly display the Turbine EULA and ToS.
• The Bullroarer database has been wiped for U20 open beta. Please feel free to copy your live character to Bullroarer using the LIVE transfer wizard.
• New Epic Volume 4 Book 8 will not be available during the U20 open beta.
• We would love your feedback on Update 20 and would particularly appreciate any comments you may have about the 6 person resource dungeons and their difficulty.

Update 20 additions:

• The world has a new area, "The Wastes" with 3 new regions: Noman-lands, Dagorlad, and the Slag-hills. You can access this area and start the new quest content in the Camp of the Host.
• Two new resource dungeons: After completing the required quests, you can enter solo versions of Skoironk and Carchost using the doors found in the Slag Hills. For the fellowship versions of the dungeons you will need to speak to nearby npcs after completing the fellowship quests.
• Four more custom tabs have been added to the chat panel. Chat tabs are now allowed to display across two rows at the top of the Chat window.
• New crafting recipes for endgame tokens: Two Host of the West recipes have been added to the Anorien crafting tier for each profession (Cook, Jeweller, Metalsmith, Scholar, Tailor, Weaponsmith, and Woodworker). You can also acquire 2 additional recipes per profession via rep barter, and there is a 1-shot recipe that drops for each profession.
• Imbued Legacy Tiers have been extended by 10 levels. Legacies will have 5 new tiers unlocked by default and another 5 that can be unlocked with scrolls of empowerment. The main legacy will have 5 new tiers unlocked by default and 5 tiers that can be unlocked with star-lit crystals.
• The pet collection has been re-vamped so that it now displays every pet available in the game. We are aware of an issue with kite pets not appearing in the camera, and some TBD pets which are planned for Update 20 but not yet complete. You should be able to preview pets, summon pets you own, and drag a pet skill to a quickslot from the collection UI. The old pet collections and associated titles can now be found under social deeds. To complete these deeds, summon each pet in the collection. Two new pet collection deeds were added: Best Bugs - beetles collection & Fetching Foxes - foxes collection.
• With Update 20, the following instances are now in the Featured Instance rotation: Lost Temple, Glinghant, Fornost: Wraith of Earth, Seat of the Great Goblin, Sword-hall of Dol Goldur, and Flight to the Lonely Mountain. Featured Instances now have a chance to drop Wastes crit crafting items and rep token bundles for the Host of the West Quartermasters.
• You can now acquire an "Ornate Inlay" in the T2 challenge Throne of the Dread Terror. This allows players to barter up their existing Throne of the Dread Terror equipment.
• Two new flora repeatable quests for the Wastes have been added. These quests will count towards Assisting the Herbalists: North Ithilien. Both are bestowed by Arador out of the Host of the West camp after completing Noman-lands quest content. Phials of Golden and Violet extracts can be collected from flora in the Wastes, and traded for rewards at the Herbalist.

Quests and Questing areas:

• Players with the vector quest "Incubated by the Flaming Deeps" underway (incomplete) will have to reobtain the quest from the NPC.
• You can now perform emotes on the stages in Belfalas premium housing areas.
• The Bree Scholar's Hall no longer has a visible exterior.
• North Ithilien - Cair Andros: The Captives - fixed Maushlak occasionally not entering combat.
• Instance: The Reclamation of Talath Anor - Typo/wrong VO in instance entry dialogue and background dialogue has been fixed.

Items:

• Skirmish - The price of the Small Reputation Acceleration Tome is being increased to better reflect Mark and Medallion acquisition rates.
• Return to Arnach travel skill scroll now properly requires Friend standing with Rangers of Ithilien, not Kindred.
• Older and scaling instances received a large scale pass to provide/improve Beorning specific container drops where they were missing or not class appropriate.
• Nanu has finally come out of hibernation and started moving again! The turtle's hiding place has been updated.
• Dyes - "Dark Purple" and "Deep Purple" were used in different places to refer to the same colour. All references to this colour have been unified to "Dark Purple."
• Sigileth's daggers are now appropriately flagged as daggers, not swords, in the wardrobe.
• Auction House - Cosmetic Pets - The Aurochs Calf, Stowaway Rat, and Sand Flies cosmetic pet items now properly post to the "Cosmetic Pets" Auction House category.

Classes:

• Burglar - Using Track Treasure will deactivate an active resource tracking skill and vice versa. Only one type of item may be tracked on the mini-map at a time.
• Captian's Reform the Lines skill has received a visual update.
• Captain - Elendil's Fortune buff is no longer removed when the Captain is healed.
• Captain - Five stacks of Elendil's Fury will now cause your next Blade of Elendil to consistently grant a defeat event.
• Captain - Last Stand Heal legacy will now properly increase the Last Stand heal.
• Captain - Increased initial value of Defensive Strike Armour Buff legacy.
• Champion - Riposte now unlocks on partial parries.
• Champion - The Physical Mastery Buff from Battle Frenzy now refreshes reliably.
• Guardian - Follow Through now adds as many max targets as indicated by trait text.
• Hunter - Archers Mark now properly reduces a target's critical defense.
• Hunter - The Blood Arrow heal over time duration has been decreased from 20s to 10s without changing the overall magnitude of heal, so each tick is larger.
• Lore-master - Enfeeble-modified debuffs should properly account for other sources of debuff strength.
• Lore-master - The Fellowship Friend buffs from the Bear and Raven now properly reduce incoming damage.
• Lore-master - The Firm Grasp trait now works with the daze effect that Lightning-storm can gain from certain items.
• Lore-master - Lore-master Resist Legacies (non-imbued) have been re-balanced to be more effective at higher tiers.
• Minstrel - Follow Up now works out of combat.
• Rune-keeper - Essence of Storm no longer removes the "Charged" buff which makes Sustaining Bolt free.

Misc:

• In the Fellowship Mini Panel, fellows buffs and debuffs will no longer disappear after they are defeated.
• Fixed a display problem that would cause effects icons to jump around and flicker. This should also be a small performance improvement for the client.
• The following emotes now have animations: assist, attack, blush, brb, curtsey, drool, fight, grumble, hug, innocent, mumble, pat, ready, resist, rest, stare, stretch, succumb, sweat, tear, wait, & wink. "Nothing" should be the only text-only emote remaining for all races now. The /pat emote chat text has been changed to reflect the new animation. The hug emote will now show hugging self animation.
• You will no longer see any mobs above level 105 (until Update 21).
• Updated french and german mordor map.
• The accelerator button should no longer appear on the Deed panel for reputation deeds.
• NPCs standing with crossed arms will no longer show held items.
• Beleriand weapon fx is now more noticeable.
• Mount skill icons should now all appropriately ghost when you cannot use the skill.
• The Mordor map should now more correctly display fellow member locations.
• Added a Stable-masters Collection button on the radar.

This is the number 1 game I really think I want to play until I download it and create another new character and go 'hooooleeeee shieeeeeeet what the fuck is going on'. Gets me every time,

This game never really hit my radar. I went to Twitch and found a guy strimming it. From what I can tell from 15 minutes of watching, it looks like EQ2, plays like WoW.

The combat in this game most definitely doesn't play like WoW. WoW is extremely responsive, but there is this constant delay in combat in LOTRO. It's not something you can see watching it, but when you play it is immediately noticeable. You can kind of get used to it, but if you've ever played WoW, it will never feel 100% right.

I absolutely adore this game for the world and atmosphere, but I never really enjoyed actually playing it (i.e., grouping, raiding, questing) because of the weird combat feeling.

I will say that if you are a fan of Lord of the Rings, you HAVE TO pick this up and play it. It's amazing to be immersed in the world (and they did a GREAT job creating the world). It's so cool that you can run all the way from the Blue Mountains down to Rohan (and I guess Mordor soon). The game started out with only bits of Eriador, so the fact that they have kept expanding it so much is wonderful.

McCheese said:

The combat in this game most definitely doesn't play like WoW. WoW is extremely responsive, but there is this constant delay in combat in LOTRO. It's not something you can see watching it, but when you play it is immediately noticeable. You can kind of get used to it, but if you've ever played WoW, it will never feel 100% right.

I absolutely adore this game for the world and atmosphere, but I never really enjoyed actually playing it (i.e., grouping, raiding, questing) because of the weird combat feeling.

I will say that if you are a fan of Lord of the Rings, you HAVE TO pick this up and play it. It's amazing to be immersed in the world (and they did a GREAT job creating the world). It's so cool that you can run all the way from the Blue Mountains down to Rohan (and I guess Mordor soon). The game started out with only bits of Eriador, so the fact that they have kept expanding it so much is wonderful.

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The thing that strikes me when playing this game is the scale of everything. They did a great job capturing just how big Middle Earth was. The world is huge and it takes time moving around in it.

Last two posts sum it up for me. Love the world, hate the combat. And unfortunately the latter is so important that I never got a character further then level 32 or so. I have a Lifetime account from day 1, I must have accumulated like 30k Lotro points or so by now. I have been thinking of selling it, but too much hassle.

I really liked Angmar and Moria, Lothlorien was OKish but still a nice change after living in caves for so long, they lost me after that. Sure, the world and atmosphere are great and beautiful, if you like the Middle Earth (which I do).
But it's so casualized that it kept bothering me more and more. How in the fuck can I stroll around Dol Guldor pretty much unmolested? Walk straight into Isenhart and knock on Saruman's door, on day one, while being 9 levels below zone level?!? I stopped playing at that point (it also didn't help they switched to F2P and eventhough I was subbed I had the stupid buy-me shit all over my UI).
Angmar was so badass, you walked into that place and it was flooded with mobs, with many elites, and you were almost guaranteed to get your ass kicked.
I was thinking about checking it out again several times, just to go through the main storyline, but since they merged their servers I think my EU account is byebye.

Your account can be transfered for free if your server closed. There is no buy-me-shit on the UI except the little coin button on the bottom for the store. No different than any other game. Certainly no pop-ups or anything of the like. Gondor is sweet and the end game for the T2C content including the newer raid is anything but casual. Grindy? Sure, but no casual.