E3 2011: Day 3

LotRO – I caught an exciting bit of news yesterday: phasing is coming to LotRO. Why this wasn’t mentioned at all in the Isengard announcement I can’t imagine. Possibly it’s not marketable enough or a common enough term, but I kind of doubt that given WoW’s popularization of it. These are the kinds of details that I mentioned I was going to wait for yesterday, but I hadn’t expected them to come out so quickly.

E3 Sidenote: That’s it? Seems like the E3 news really faded quickly this year. I didn’t see anything else in the news feeds yesterday that caught my attention. That could be a good thing I guess, it’s not like I don’t have a stack of games I want to play already.

E3 2011: Day 2

Nintendo – I haven’t played a Nintendo game since the NES, so yesterday’s E3 held very little of interest for me as far as the big console announcements. I did keep an eye on Twitter though and caught a couple of articles. While I’m impressed that Nintendo is finally paying some attention to graphics, I’m not sold on their new controller. It looks too large to hold comfortably for any length of time.

LotRO – Turbine announced Rise of Isengard and released a cool trailer. Unfortunately there’s not much real information yet. The level cap is going up to 75 (which we already knew) and they’re adding one new raid and three new regions: Dunland, Gap of Rohan, and Isengard. The biggest news is that you can pre-order and get an in-game mount and some cosmetics now.

My first instinct was to get the Legendary version. Then I thought about it a bit. I haven’t played in months, aside from some quick logins to make sure my housing maintenance was paid up. So, since I have until September 26th, I am going to wait a bit and see what additional information comes out. As good as the cosmetics look, I’m curious how my points the expansion would cost. Is it possible I could get it for free using my accumulated lifetime stipend? Do I really want to pay $10 extra for three colors instead of $40 for just one? I may end up spending the money, but not yet.