LATEST DEV CHAT DIGEST

Shorn of verbiage, bad jokes and waffle, here is the gist of the information released during the latest Dev Chat session. Probably more hard information percolated through on this occasion that is usual in these sessions.

NEW REGIONS IN BOOK 14
Book 14 has little in terms of new playable landscape for players to explore. We are introducing a small portion of Eregion to support our epic story but mostly the efforts of the World Team for Book 14 settled firmly in the realm of bug fixing.

NEW INSTANCES IN BOOK 14
Q: Where will the new 6 man instances take place and what size will they be?
A: They will take place in... familiar locations. As for scope, I designed them to be pretty quick, a 1/2 hour to an hour, but unpredictable and a bit random. Let's just say, you haven't seen any instances like this in LOTRO before.

NEW SCHOLAR RECIPES IN BOOK 14
There are a number of new scholar recipes coming online in book 14 - some for potions, others for new dyes and wall colours for your home, improved battle lore scrolls, and one-use recipes that allow you to make items that will be very handy for other professions.

THE RAIDING BUG
Q: Will the infamous raid vitals bug that is afflicting European LotRO players be fixed in time for Mines of Moria?
A: I have been told that the Raid vital bug has been fixed for Book 14. Or so they tell me!

ANUMINAS & OTHER ARMOUR SETS
There are new armour sets in book 14 and the Annuminas armour set has seen a very good upgrade. Additionally, helegrod has been changed over to use bartering.

UNSPECIFIED BOOK 14 CHANGES
I'm pretty excited about Book 14. I got to create something for this update that I have never done before, and we have never seen in LOTRO before. I am going to be REALLY vague about exactly what is coming, but let's just say I'm trying to make the story much more important to everyone in the game, not just those of high level.

SKILL COOLDOWN & WEAPON SPEED
Q: I have a game mechanics-related question. This has been discussed both recently and in the past, and even the lorebook gives contradictory information on this. Basically, are skill cooldowns affected by weapon speed or are those solely dependent on skills? If so, is there any other use for weapon speed besides seeing what your auto-attack cycle speed is?
A: Individual skill cooldowns are not affected by weapon speed, only the time before you can next execute subsequent skills. Attack with a fast weapon and you have to wait less time after that skill is done before your next skill will start. Some skills are designed to ignore the weapon speed related timer, but those are usually quite special and built [to?] allow a faster response.

MORIA: NEW MOUNTS
Any new mount variations made available between now and Moria will mostly be saddle and color variations. However, we have a region coming up (you may have heard of of it) that ponies (and assumedly horses as well) dare not tread. This means that something new is coming.

MORIA: WARDEN & RUNE-KEEPER CLASSES
The Warden is a more "tank-y" class and is a master of marital combat, and must strike his blows in such a way to best finish off his enemies. The Rune-keeper is a master of words, and uses those to either damage his enemies or inspire his allies.

STOCK EXCHANGE LATEST

Time for another look at LOTRO's stock exchange, a.k.a. the Auction House prices. Overall, the signs are that the economy has slowed down somewhat since early February, a steady decline which the introduction of Book 12 did nothing to affect. That perennial economic indicator, the price of Beryl Shards, currently averages about 900 silver, down from just over one gold. Etched Beryl Rings, of which only a few are being offered, range from 12.5G to 15G, with no takers at any price, at least today.

The biggest price drop has affected exchange items from two of the major questing and raiding areas, the Rift and Anuminnas. Battered Arnorian Armour pieces are currently on offer for an average of 200 silver each (800S for 4 pieces, with a buyout of 1,200S), a full 50% down from the February price of 300S each. Rift-Iron Coins average 180S (one lot of four is currently on offer at a starting price 0f 725S with a scarcely larger buyout), again a large drop from an average price of 450-500S two months ago. Not surprising, really, as more and more players are venturing out into the Rift and gathering the coins for themselves - and also, of course, realising that there's not all that much they can exchange them for, anyway. I foresee Rift-Iron Coins hitting a new low of about 80S or so in less than a month. Meanwhile, the Laurelin AH does not offer so much as a sniff of Helegrod armour items at any price whatsoever. Now that would be a good short-term position to take...

A WASTED OPPORTUNITY

Observe these two items of equipment: though lacking the "must-have" chic of teal items, they are good, solid bits of armour, carrying some very desirable increases in stats - the +30 Agility, +15 Will and +45 Power you would get from the Leggings of Mirkwood are not to be sneezed at, and even the "green" Dwarf Leather Gloves of Might look useful.

Alas, it is a dead cert that nobody has ever worn these pieces of armour into battle, nor the many dozens like them. Why? Because they can only be equipped by players who have reached the giddy heights of level 50, and nobody else. Which is completely inane, since l.50s have a wide choice of crafted or reward items with stats vastly superior to these; anybody sticking their nose into Helegrod or Barad Gularan wearing similar items (never mind the Rift) is heading for a quick wipe. On the other hand, players around, say, l.40 would give their eyeteeth for some of these items.

This has always struck me as one the odder (and, I suspect, lazier) design decisions of the game; LOTRO is chock-a-block with weapons and armour of all kinds whose use is limited to levels 48-50. The iron law of marketing which states that top-level players will invariably make a beeline for the best available equipment the game offers, ignoring everything else, also guarantees that such second-rate (for their level) items will become nothing more than vendor thrash. Which, like every wasted opportunity, is a pity. A drastic down-grading of minimum levels for a lot of this stuff would be a sensible future move.

LOTRO: HOME OF THE WHITE MICE?

It seems to me that a successful MMORPG represents, amongst other things, an almost perfect microeconomic model – and what’s more, one based on the responses and reactions of real people, rather than computer algorithms. All the elements of classic market economy theory are present: supply and demand, gluts and shortages, self-interest and a very moderate amount of altruism, love of novelty and brand loyalty - and of course, determined efforts to influence, manipulate or subvert the market…

This conceit is reinforced by the frequently violent fluctuations of LOTRO’s economy as expressed though Auction House prices. Among the reasons for such fluctuations are changes in the supply of specific goods as implemented by the designers (i.e., price control by the government) and the introduction of new and hence more desirable goods (i.e., innovation and marketing by manufacturers). At the moment we seem to be going through a mild depression, with prices for many goods set high while demand is falling. The current price for that perennial market indicator, the Beryl Shard, is floating just above 1 gold, up more than 40% from early January. Scarcity drives up prices, needless to say, but sometimes it does so to the point of also driving out buyers. Bits of the highly desirable Armour of the Aurochs set, for instance, which have the great market advantage of not being Bind on Acquire (BoA), are found almost exclusively in Helegrod – but as we know, Helegrod requires 24-man raids which are difficult to organise and, as far as the individual player is concerned, offer a very poor return on time invested. The result is that not many players bother to raid there, and Armour of the Aurochs pieces are correspondingly scarce; a Helm of the Aurochs may be the most expensive item on the Laurelin AH, offered at 70G with an 80G buy-out.

Not surprisingly, the current scarcity of top-quality single-use recipes has also driven up the price of the very best crafted weapons, armour and jewellery; Etched Beryl Necklaces average 5-6G, Etched Beryl Bracelets 12-14G and Etched Beryl Earrings 15-16G. On the other hand, the general disdain in which Annuminas armour is held by most players and the extreme difficulty of assembling complete sets (is anybody still bothering?) means that the market for Arnorian Armour Fragments and Battered Arnorian Armour has almost collapsed; current prices are as low as 10-20 silver for the former and about 300S for the latter, with no takers. Rift-Iron Coins are on offer for 400-500S each, again with no takers at that price – probably a reflection of the fact that there’s not much of value to buy with them. In general, it can be taken for granted that irrespective of what the developers intended, the price of poorly thought-out or unimpressive goods will quickly go though the floor – another perfect concordance with real-world economics.

Come to think of it, how do we know that LOTRO’s economy isn’t already being manipulated by economists from the Harvard Business School running arcane experiments? Maybe those infamous gold-farmers are really MBAs, and all of us are nothing more than white mice running through a sophisticated economics simulation. A chilling thought.