LotRO, Cosmetic Gear, and the Wardrobe

One of the coming features that was included in last week’s free-to-play announcement by Turbine was the wardrobe. A twenty slot container for cosmetic items. I’m really looking forward to this, but for it to be really useful I’d like one additional feature: a way to convert quest rewards into cosmetic items.

I have quite a few bank slots dedicated to old quest rewards that I keep because I use them for cosmetic outfits. I would much rather keep these items in the storage chest in my home or in the upcoming wardrobe, but I can’t because they are bound items. These items are also impossible to share between characters, even though I just want to use them in cosmetic slots.

So to get the most use out of the wardrobe, I would love to see Turbine add a way to convert an old quest item into a cosmetic item. The type of the time would change to cosmetic and all of the stats and bonuses would be removed, it would also no longer be bound.

While I’m asking for stuff, I would love to see additional cosmetic slots made available, either as paid unlocks like vault slots or as level/quest/deed rewards.

LotRO F2P?!?

Turbine and Codemasters dropped a huge news bomb on the MMO community today by announcing that LotRO is going free to play on both the US and EU servers.

First reaction? I have to say I was disappointed. Going F2P makes it seem like the game was in trouble, which was a reaction I saw from several people on Twitter. Also, with the recent acquisition by Warner Brothers, was this really Turbine’s idea? Not that it makes any difference, I’m just curious.

After I read through what the free-to-play switch means for me as a founder and lifetime subscriber, my initial disappointment subsided partially. For me the game will not change much. I will still have access to all of the same features and content as before, and I still won’t be paying any money except for expansions. There will be a new button somewhere to launch the store, and I’m betting it will be up on the minimap near where the lorebook button is now. There will also be a new UI interface to show me how many Turbine Points I have somewhere assuming they’re handled like they are in DDO. Thank Eru that TP’s probably won’t take up bag space like Skirmish Marks. As far as getting Turbine Points in game? I’m ambivalent about having a message congratulating me on getting a TP reward, this seems like it is going just a hair’s breadth over the immersion line for me.

Beyond all of the game and financial mechanics, my major concern regarding the free-to-play switch is what impact this will have on the community. LotRO is well known for having some of the most mature and friendly player communities. I can personally vouch for Landroval. Even in the hub areas (like Bree and 21st Hall) the chat is wonderfully free of complaints, Chuck Norris jokes, and WoW comparisons. The user channel GLFF does get a bit woolly, but it’s not one tenth as bad as the infamous Barrens chat. So will we see an influx of bad apples in the fall? How much of a barrier was that $15 a month to keep all the bored level capped players in other games from rolling on a LotRO server just to try and stir things up?

There’s a discussion about this very topic on the forums today. Clover posted that it’s up to the existing players to keep the community feel by welcoming newcomers. That is partly true where a new player is actually interested in the game, but it ignores the type of player who is just there to grief people. With monsterplay restricted to subscribers only and fully-consensual, there’s no concern about spawn camps or ganking, but someone can still come over and grief in chat.

The community impacts are my biggest concern. Turbine has to be banking on a big influx of players, their current F2P policies aren’t going to yield any additional revenue from lifetime subscribers (soon to be lifetime VIPs). Actually they may lose some revenue there, since further expansions will be purchasable through the store with TPs. So if there’s nothing I’m interested in purchasing, I’ll be collecting 500 points a month waiting on an expansion to spend them on.

So, after having a few hours to educate myself and emotionally adjust to the announcements, the only thing that I’m upset about was this:

When does LOTRO F2P go live?

Free-to-Play will go live when Volume 3, Book 2 releases this fall.

No new content until this fall? When Book 1 came out I enjoyed the content but at the time I was expecting to see Book 2 within a few months, right around now actually. Now that I know there’s likely a six month gap? Book 1 feels pretty pitiful.

Why is this horse so slow?

I’ve been on an MMO vacation since I picked up Red Dead Redemption. Now that RDR’s single player story is finished, my interest has returned to PC games and MMOs (I’m still planning to play RDR some more just not as exclusively).

On Monday night I returned to Middle-earth and it felt good to be back. First things I did were the normal house keeping activities needed after any long absence: I made sure my housing fees were up to date and checked my in-game mail. Chores taken care of, I still had some alcohol in my bags from working on Inn League reputation so I headed to the Bree festival grounds to see if the anniversary festival was still happening.

As I started out on the ride north, I thought, “Why an I going so slow?” I checked to make sure I was in run mode and not walk, check. Then I realized, I was also feeling an urge to tap a button to go faster. I’ve gotten so used used to the riding in Red Dead Redemption and being able to move through the world at a full-on gallop that riding a horse in LotRO felt like walking.

Oddly enough, I ended up switching to an alt and running around and the speed felt fine to me, so my expectations got shifted just for horse travel.

Radiance Poll

There’s a poll up on the LotRO forums regarding radiance gear be sure to register your opinion or you don’t get to complain later. Thanks to Casual Stroll to Mordor for the heads-up.

I voted to remove radiance completely. Of course, I don’t think it’s likely that Turbine will really do that, but hope springs eternal. The second most popular choice (and there’s a large gap between second and third place) was to make radiance deed based. If radiance has to stay in the game, I would prefer deeds over gear. Partly, I think it is more in keeping with the spirit of the lore, after all the books were about the triumph of spirit than who had the coolest sword. Still, deeds will have their own issues, especially if are tied to some stupidly high kill count, but that’s an article for another day.

Turbine acquired by Warner Bros.


Relaxing after dinner, I saw this retweet from Patience that Turbine had been acquired by Warner Brothers Home Entertainment and felt my heart sink.

Turbine has been an independent studio in the MMO space ever since they bought the rights for Asheron’s Call back from Microsoft. I’ve always felt that this gave them valuable freedom in making decisions. I very much doubt that DDO would have been given as much time to succeed as it was, and I don’t believe a large company like Warner Brothers would’ve okay-ed the F2P experiment that turned DDO around.  Now Turbine will have to answer to WB for timelines and budgets.

Still, I can’t think of anything WB has done in the gaming industry lately so my initial disappointment may be totally unwarranted, but given similar situations I’ve seen, I’m not optimistic. Mythic didn’t profit from their incorporation into EA. Blizzard has recently been drawn a bit further into the management of Activision. Cryptic/Atari have had quite a few marketing and PR goofs, and I’ve often wondered how much of that was Atari’s involvement.

Lord of the Rings Online is my home MMO, the one I always come back to (well technically I never leave, being a lifetime subscriber). More than that, it’s been a treasured opportunity to play in Tolkien’s world in a way I’m not able to through the books or movies. I’ve never been worried about Turbine doing anything to screw up their game. I don’t have the same confidence in Warner Brothers.

Doom and gloom aside, this should mean that Turbine has a lot more resources and stability, and I truly hope that this acquisition works out for the best both for the Turbine staff and the LotRO/DDO/AC player communities.  It’s probable that the first effects of this acquisition won’t be felt for several months. For now, I just have to be patient, try to keep and open mind, and try to maintain an optimistic attitude. Still, I can’t ignore my gut, and as a wise man once said, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Some various news stories about the deal, for the curious:

DAW: Allan “Orion” Maki

For Developer Appreciation Week, I’d like to thank Allan “Orion” Maki, Senior Game Designer from Turbine.

I’ve enjoyed Lord of the Rings Online since it was released in 2007 and have always been impressed by the level of detail from the books that Turbine was able to include in the world. Yet, the game had some rough edges in the earlier zones that don’t exist in the later content (looking at you Lonelands).

This brings me to why I’m singling Allan out specifically, he’s done a lot of work to redesign and polish up the early game experience in Middle-earth. Most recently was a revamp of the Lonelands, which are much much improved, and making the Volume 1 epic quest line solo-able. Even better though, was the way he went about the epic quest change. Orion didn’t just nerf the quest line so that it is solo only. He implemented a character buff called Inspired Greatness that scales based on the size of the fellowship. It’s always a good thing to more options for completing quests, and this buff allows players to solo if they want or duo or still go with a full fellowship.

Head over to Orion’s My Lotro page and leave him a thank you if you’ve enjoyed any of the updated zones of the Volume 1 quest change.

If you haven’t already, go checkout Scarybooster’s DAW posts he’s doing a full week of them.

Revisiting the Dúnedain

Volume 3 launched a few days ago. There’s lots of good info (and podcasts) at Casual Stroll to Mordor and LotRO Reporter as usual if you want details on the patch.

What I wanted to mention is how much more I enjoyed the new content than I expected to. When I first read how Volume 3: Book 1 was starting out, I was disappointed. It felt like a rehash of old content. Going back to old areas and talking to rangers that I had met before. In practice it was actually a good deal of fun. The quests were pretty quick for the most part. There were some interesting story tidbits which I won’t go into for spoiler reasons. Best of all several of the missions took place in pretty cool instances, one of the neatest was the ice cave in Forochel.

Book 1 was pretty quick, around three or four hours at most, and is entirely solo. There is one skirmish where you can group up but all of the instances are solo instances, and the rest is easy open world stuff.

I’m looking forward to continuing the story, although I could stand to wait a few months for the next book, I still haven’t finished Books 8 and 9 from Volume 2.

TGIF

Couldn’t come up with a witty title, especially since this is a real ramble of a post. Lemme know if you have a title suggestion. So…

Lord of the Rings

Turbine has announced their next book release, Volume 3 Book 1: Oath of the Rangers. Aside from the advancement of the epic story quests, it seems to be all skirmishes and crafting recipes. I don’t know what I was hoping for but that wasn’t it. I did read a rumor that Volume 1 will be completely solo-able though which is nice, I only wish I remember where I’d heard that or how reliable the source was.

Star Trek and Champions

Despite what my Twitter says I didn’t actually play STO last night. If you look at my Raptr profile you’ll see I spent 3 minutes in the game because I launched the patcher last night and decided to click on Engage since the launcher said the server was up. I did get the game to launch to a “No logins authorized at this time,” which was enough for Raptr to think I was playing. The best part was a message I got from Blamefulgecko wanting to know how I got in so soon, was accidental but very funny.

No real news on the Champions front as far as the expansion controversy. I played a bit last night and had one disconnect early on but that was it. Crafting still seems to be a problem but only for some specific items (can’t remember which, sorry). The only major irritation from my play session was the camera spin bug. I’m not sure what causes it, but occasionally the camera would start to rotate wildly around my hero. It seemed to happen most often when I was flying. Fortunately, I’ve always been able to stop it by using the mouse look, but still I will be glad when it gets fixed.

Last thing I wanted to mention is there’s a follow up from the STO team regarding upcoming features. Lots of interesting stuff there, especially for Klingon players. For me, the IP location additions are the most interesting. All of the high level stuff is something I won’t be ready to see for quite a while. The most interesting bit though is the last paragraph under the Engage heading.

These updates are entirely free to Star Trek Online subscribers.

Obviously this was included in response to the Champions drama going on. I wonder how much communication is going on between the two teams, because PR-wise they don’t seem to be on the same page. I’m imagining Craig having a little hallway conversation with Bill about his timing.

Epic Volume 2 Marathon

We had a kin event scheduled on Saturday to get a those of us you just finished Volume 1 through the Drums of the Deep (2.5.5) in Volume 2. The instance runs went very smoothly, thanks to Gorandir, Azzbuk, and Mortermeer (from the Weathertons kinship) for helping out.

After finishing, Tele, Phebe, and I decided to push on into Book 6. We got all the way to the next big fellowship instance, and we must have been feeling especially motivated because we picked up Berniard from our kin as guide/healer and recruited Thomborn and Mercatio from lff chat.

Even with a full party of 65’s and one 64, we wiped twice getting to the end boss but strangely had no problems with the last two big fights. The Cloak of Flame and Shadow dropped and I lucked out to with the roll (which usually never happens). Unfortunately Mercatio was bugged somehow and didn’t get credit. So we may be getting a rematch against 2.6.8 sometime soon.

In the end, I stayed up playing until nearly 5 am and finished Book 7 up through Chapter 6.