MYSTERIES OF ENEDWAITH, 1

At the southernmost tip of Enedwaith, on the border between Lich Bluffs and the Mournshaws, lies an inaccessible castle. You can find your way to the enormous front gates, but no further. Inside the gate skeletons patrol. The architecture seems dwarven; four huge statues of oversized dwarven ancestor figures dominate the front courtyard. The structure is vast, even allowing for the fact that only the northern exposure can be seen. At the western edge of the outer wall is a small tented encampment, currently empty, and just beyond that a small gap in the rock face through which it is just possible to slip. This leads to a small, circumscribed area by the eastern wall with no other exit. Could the castle be the site of LOTRO's next major raid, apparently due early in the new year?

 

HACKED ACCOUNTS

If you are a European LOTRO player, and you haven't already done so, head straight for the Codemasters forum and sign this petition. Started two days ago by UK player CarolineP, it is a politely worded request to CM to give serious consideration to restoring hacked accounts, as other MMOs, includingBlizzard, already do. In her own words, "We recognise that this involves time & cost to yourselves. We would accept a reasonable charge being levied, as this would have the dual benefit of stopping frivolous claims too. We also accept that it would be reasonable to limit the frequency in which this allowed. Perhaps only once per membership year, or similar? But we most urgently ask you to change your policy, especially as the game becomes much bigger and F2P potentially opens up opportunities to scammers and other unpleasant type".

Apart from putting forward an eminently sensible proposal, one which perhaps is now more urgent than ever, this forum thread is probably unique in that it hasn't generated a single objection, rant, cynical comment or even debate: there is absolute player unanimity on this critical subject, which is of course as it should be. 

And another first: within 24-hours, CM Community Relations Director Satine (someone, incidentally, who by dint of personality has done more than anyone to blunt some of CM's more egregious PR disasters in the past) had responded with a positive post: "As it happens we do have a new policy for hacked accounts which will be coming into effect soon. (Sorry to use the word "soon" but I know it should be before Christmas though it depends on if any critical problems arise before then). Hopefully it will make life a little easier for those that have been hacked. We'll give the details on what it entails once we're ready to launch it".

So there you have it. Community action can sometimes be beneficial. But don't let Satine's very welcome news put you off signing that petition!

REALISM, TRAVEL AND GEOGRAPHICAL SCALE

One of the issues which crop up in the design of virtual worlds is the degree of associated realism. Some early RPGs included the requirement to buy and consume "food" on a regular basis, otherwise characters would rapidly lose abilities and wither away. That was just about acceptable if a bit tedious, but imagine a RPG in which characters in the wild had to track down, kill, skin and roast animals on a daily basis just to keep going - it would be virtually unplayable (unless, of course, it happened to be specifically a survival simulation). Similarly, everyone is aware of, and ignores, the fact that severe injuries can take weeks to heal, that even a superficial wound can get infected and cause death in a matter of days, and that nobody ever wore plate mail on the march, let alone carried two or three spare sets in a backpack.

Which brings me to the latest (and very welcome) LOTRO update. The new chapters of the epic quest involve riding south into the new region of Enedwaith with the Dunedain with a view to eventually linking up with Aragorn. It's a nicely designed addition to the story of the One Ring, but very early on players find out that, disappointingly, they won't actually get the chance to ride stirrup by stirrup with the rangers; instead, they are invited to make their own way to the next staging point. Granted that soon enough the unfolding plot will require them to ride off at all sort of tangents on associated quests, an actual gallop, in company, over hill and dale for at least a few of the early stages would have been great fun. As it is, what will almost certainly happen is that players will mutter "sod it!" and port to the next convenient location.

The standard response to this and associated grumbles (for example, that fact that many instances can now be entered with the click off the keyboard) is "well, if you'd rather walk, go right ahead" - but the point is, if an alternative method of travel is available, even hardened RPGers will sooner or later give in and make use of it. The rest of us will do so without a second's thought, though we might feel vaguely dissatisfied about doing so.

The issue of scale in games like LOTRO is indeed a tricky one. Even scaled-down massively, game equivalents of the journey times suggested in Tolkien's narrative would be difficult (and certainly unpopular) to implement. On the other hand, I tend to agree with those who feel that the epic quality of the game's geography is compromised by the over-abundance of instant travel options. It's hard not to feel just a little uncomfortable when two or three jumps will take you from the far end of Forochel to the southernmost tip of Enedwaith. The designers had got the balance more or less right in Shadows of Angmar, which really did offer a sense of vastness, with some journeys (notably the perilous initial overland foray to the Rift of Nurz Gashu) being truly memorable. I can't help feeling that the game has now swung too far in the direction of instant gratification, most of all perhaps where travel is concerned.

A WHISTLE-BLOWER IN ELFLAND

A member of my kinship alerted us to this thread, which will repay study by anybody interested in the reality of the sausage factories behind the games we play. The meat of it consists of some very angry whistle-blowing by an about-to-be sidelined employee of Electronic Arts - touching on, amongst other things, the reasons behind the poor performances of Warhammer and Age of Conan, and some pessimistic predictions about SWTOR. I can't judge his criticism about specific individuals, but I do have some first-hand knowledge of the disasters which can follow on the takeover by a rich but badly-run company of an poor and efficient one, and a lot of what EA Louse (the original poster) has to say rings true.

On a slight tangent, while reading though the thread, I was struck by the following comment which may well have some relevance to the recent content slowdown in LOTRO. And no, I don't mean the F2P delay on the European side, which I'm still convinced is due to legal shenanigans, but to the shortage of serious new story content which tends to show through all the glitzy bells and whistles which will accompany the eventual arrival of F2P.

"Do you think they have enough story content to last months or a year? Even the non immersive, non cinematic content takes a long time to produce and just hours or days to play through for a dedicated player. It takes BW a few years to develop a high quality single player RPG and those rarely have more than a couple dozen hours worth of good storylines. [...]Voiced, well made story content just isn’t enough in an MMO and that kind of content is very slow and expensive to develop. Even a minor setback can slow the amount of story content being developed for the game to a crawl. The point is, that while the story content will be a good thing, the game won’t survive on it no matter how good it is. It is the bait to get people to try out the game for a month or two and get hooked by the normal MMO activities."

No doubt time will tell...

AT LONG LAST, SOME NEW INPUT!

This, from the "News & Announcements" section of the Codemasters forum. Are you ready for it? Is the excitement proving unbearable? Are you jumping up and down with glee at the prospect of finally accessing some brand new material? Well, then...

There we go. Feeling better about things now?

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

As every reader of this blog surely knows, twenty long days have passed since F2P was due to launch in Europe, and we still seem no closer to a resolution. Codemasters is maintaining the kind of total, sweaty silence characteristic of a wounded WWII submarine lying in shallow waters with a couple of destroyers cutting capers just above it on the surface. Meanwhile, the forums are staggering under the weight of concerned, miserable or frantic players pleading, screaming, roaring, threatening or just plain doing their best to start a reasonable, sophisticated man-to-corporate-entity-type dialogue. That last gambit doesn't work, and I suspect it never will.

Why not? Well, I believe it's pretty clear by this time that there is no insurmountable technical problem stopping the launch. The basic code is obviously reasonably solid (OK, OK, I said reasonably, not perfectly), or otherwise the stateside servers would have collapsed. I also no longer think it can be a specifically Turbine-to-Codemasters transfer problem such as different accounting systems and their interface with the in-game shop, because that would have been fixed by now (unless the entire technical staff of CM is permanently on drugs, which I beg leave to doubt). Also, CM representatives, on their increasingly rare appearances on the forums, are limiting themselves to making gagging noises and jerking their heads back at the front office; translation, "I can't say a word about this or my employment prospects will do a China Syndrome".

What all this spells to my experienced and cynical mind is one word only: lawyers! I have no shred of evidence, of course, but the only reasonable explanation I can think of for this ongoing and open-ended delay, a delay with inevitably serious (maybe even disastrous) financial consequences over time for both CM and Turbine,  is serious legal problems of some kind. Maybe it's between the two companies, or perhaps it's something to do with some unsuspected pitfall of European law; perhaps the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg has decided it wants to levy purchase tax on in-game transactions, or else F2P contravenes some article of the European Union legislation on the free movement of goods and services. Perhaps. All I can say is that if this supposition is true, it could be bad news. Because geological time and the slow shifting of tectonic plates are as sheet lightning compared to the average speed of corporate lawyers...

PROTECTIONISM IN LOTHLORIEN?

In the days before the Mirkwood expansion, if you tried to swim across the Anduin from the western shore in Lothlórien, you could usually get to about a hundred meters or so from the eastern shore before a Felarrow orcish archer one-shotted you: "Aaargh! Glug!"... Some us would try and sneak past them, and a few players actually managed to set foot on the forbidden shore long before they were supposed to. Come the expansion, of course, those cany elves set up a water-taxi to get us across, and the Felarrows were redeployed  in North Mirkwood.

A couple of days ago, feeling the need for some cooling exercise, I set of on a leisurely swim across the Anduin from the point on the western shore where the abandoned boat has been pulled up the bank. Imagine my surprise when, about halfway across, I suddenly and unconditionally died: "Aaargh! Glug!", and not a Felarrow in sight. Instant death by game designer fiat, and no option to withdraw. What the hell? I was swimming from friendly territory to recently reconquered (and fully explored) territory. Why the bolt from heaven? And if for some reason you musn't now swim across the Anduin at a point where you were once perfectly able to do so, what's wrong with a good old invisible wall, or a sudden rapid?

Personally, I suspect old-fashioned protectionism; this is clearly a move to restrict lawful trade and protect the Lothlórien river-crossing monopoly. Will the IMF please investigate?

SKIRMISH POINTS TO REWARD CLASSIC INSTANCES

Back in March, I had been wondering what the future of skirmish points was likely to be, and whether they would be worth anything in days to come. Now the latest Developer Diary has come up with a partial answer:

"Classic instances will use the Skirmish reward system with some modifications and additions. What does this all mean in plain English? Classic instances will use the Skirmish reward system. All normal item drops from monsters and bosses have been replaced by Skirmish marks. Any spaces, like Annúminas or Helegrod, that had barter systems in place have had their item drops and barter NPCs removed. However, have no fear – many of the unique items that could be acquired from all instances have been added to a new Skirmish camp vendor: the Classic vendor. New unique tokens are also awarded for Classic quests and Challenge mode. In addition, we’ve put Legendary Item jackpots on end bosses, and even small chances to drop Tomes that permanently increase your character’s base stats! To sum up, Classic instances will give you everything they did before, except now they share a unified reward system."

So skirmish points will not only continue to be with us, but are to acquire additional purchasing power. What this doesn't answer is my original question, namely whether Scrolls of Empowerment will continue to be available in exchange for SPs, and at what cost. This is more than a minor quibble, for one simple reason: for those of us at l.65, with characters almost fully maxed out in every possible way (since we've had little else to do for the last eight months!), the odds are that few of the rewards for Classic instances will be of much interest. Since the basic stat Tomes mentioned above are to be drops rather than purchasable rewards, Scrolls of Empowerment, hopefully usable on a new tier of Legendaries, still look like being the only really useful investment for an end-game player.

And isn't it about time we got a separate currency and reward item menu, if only to make some space in bags, chests and other storage modules?

RUNNING FREE

So, LOTRO is going Free to Play in the autumn. I can't say this came as a surprise; given how hard Turbine and Warner have been pushing F2P and micro-transactions in Dungeons & Dragons Online, it was pretty much inevitable they would hit LOTRO sooner or later. The big question is, how will this affect the core group of dedicated players? There have been some outraged responses on the forums, but to be honest, I'm inclined to see this as a positive development.

Why? Well, for one thing, there is the inescapable fact that for the last seven months, there has been a marked decline in the game which no amount of obfuscation can hide: on the one hand, the almost total lack of any new input since Mirkwood (I still refuse to take Vol.III/Book 1 in any way seriously), and on the other, the news that key Turbine developers were taken off LOTRO and put to work on other projects. It became obvious that LOTRO was being starved of funds, and risked dying a slow death by a thousand cuts. Something had to be done, and that something turns out to be going F2P.

Will this have a negative effect on existing players? Not in any way that I can see. Lifetime subscribers will acquire VIP status, and will continue to play free on a day-to-day basis. While it's not entirely clear how major new expansions will be paid for, that's hardly an issue: whether we buy major expansions, as we've done so far, or purchase them from the LOTRO store, really makes no difference. As for micro-transactions in actual items, I honestly don't think this will make the slightest difference to existing players, since apart from some starter kits of low-grade weapons and armour, the items available for sale will have no effect on performance. If the store goes on to do a booming business in summer hats and wet fish, it's no skin off my nose...

At least this way we will finally be getting new content. Reports from DDO players are almost entirely positive about the rejuvenating effect of going F2P, and apparently a respectable amount of new content has indeed been forthcoming. One possible downside which has been commented on has been the possible influx of "WoW-type mindless idiots", but this strikes me as a wild exaggeration. For one thing, basic F2P access will be strictly limited to certain areas, so that much of the time we wouldn't even see any of these rumoured barbarian hordes. For another, why would such players flock to LOTRO in the first place, rather that the Other Game itself? That said, I wouldn't be averse to making the RP servers in Europe (and in the States, if Turbine decide to set one up) VIP only.

What I am less happy about, though, is that this development clearly means we won't see any additional content until F2P is launched in the autumn (September? October?). It's going to be a long summer. Hope you all have a good time fighting your way up to the Lieutenant...

STUCK IN THE DOLDRUMS

It's June 2nd today, exactly six months - half a year - since Siege of Mirkwood was released on December 1st. That's a long, long time to go without any updates (ignoring the ridiculous Oath of the Rangers which came out on March 1st), and with no word of anything to come other than vague mutterings about some announcement which might or might not be made at E3.

Inevitably, I haven't been spending much time ingame, other than to lead kinship raids into Barad Guldur twice a week (we are just getting to grips with the Lieutenant). Given that the BG raid is really all that's available for end-game players - of whom there's an awful lot by this time, less of course those who've left the game in sheer frustration - I've been wondering just why BG is still on a weekly reset. If it were reset twice weekly, as I seem to remember Nornúan used to be, we old-timers could at least get in a few extra cracks at doing something halfway interesting. It shouldn't take Turbine more than a few minutes worth of programming, is unlikely to cause offense to anybody, and might even reduce the overall volume of grumbling for a short while...