ONLY IN IT FOR THE LOOT?

Back on the Stateside forums, a vicious little argument erupted on 17 November over the top-end raid loot in Siege of Mirkwood, namely the armour set dropping from the Dol Guldur instance, and raged for two days until the thread was closed. The title given to the thread by the original poster says it all: “If you value raid loot, Mirkwood is NOT for you...”. Well, we already knew (see previous post!) that DG armour will be a visual disaster, but it seems that it’s going to be distinctly poor in terms of stats as well – some posters felt it will be barely better than the full Watcher set. And to add insult to injury, it turns out to be (oh, the shame!) purple rather than teal.

At the same time – and I’m definitely confused as to the thinking behind this - it seems the new SoM legendary weapons will only come in Second-Age flavours. No First-Agers at all. So will a l.60 First-Ager be better or worse than a l.65 Second-Ager? I would guess worse, but who knows?

However, yesterday’s DevChat included a couple of interesting comments about both these issues. In response to a question about the purple DG armour set, dev ZombieColumbus (no, really) responded: “In the past, we have gotten burned by giving out the best possible gear our game could generate with the initial release. This immediately makes itemizing further instances impossible. The advantage of holding back like this, is that the jump between our subsequent raid sets will be more noticeable”.

Dev Jalessa comes in for some very bitter criticism in the forum thread; according to the original poster, “the fault lies not with the instance designers, but with the LOTRO Systems Team, led by Jalessa, which intentionally made the loot weak, ignoring all of the mountains of player feedback begging for desirable raid loot throughout beta”. However, when asked whether “we are to see Teal Armour sets and First-Age weapons in the next book update?”, Jalessa responds with “… level 65 First-Age legendaries will not be available immediately with launch of Siege of Mirkwood. We plan on introducing them in a future update”.

The obvious implication of these two comments seems to be that top-end armour sets and First-Age LIs will both come available later, though still before the next volume – in other words, as part of a Mirkwood expansion. Whether this implies that there will be yet another 12-man raid in the region remains unclear. I rather doubt it, though, given that the one currently implemented ends with the death of the resident Nazgul; I mean to say, how could you top that? On the other hand, will a second (teal) armour set start dropping from the same raid? That sounds equally unlikely. Baffling…

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.