LOTRO Developer Twitter Chat - Thursday March 21, 3:00PM Eastern Time

What news may you share with us concerning the realm of Gondor?

Good things may take a while to come true yet I will still ask, now that the chance is given. How long till we see any progress on the Avatar Upgrade? (For I remember reading long ago, that Turbine was working on it for the future yet no word have I read about it ever since)

May we expect a more realistic series of emotes or an update of those that we already have?

Do you have a mind/plans to bring all the places of Middle-earth to the game and thus make the fans/readers/enthusiasts/roleplayers rejoice?
(For many, long to see various places such as Lond Daer, Mithlond, Forlindon, Angle, Lossarnach, Carrock, Erebor, Dale, Thranduil's Halls, Tower Hills, Woody End and many other)

Would you release areas with naught in them (no quests/deeds etc) save the scenery just for the mere delight of many folk to see other places and use them for roleplay?
(It is a lot faster I deem to have a landscape completed without any quests and story lines, npcs/mobs etc or at least those could be added in future when there may be time to spare there)

A game like this, should have finer advertising which in truth as I see it, there is great lack of it both in numbers and virtue. Are there any plans related to this matter and is there going to be a trailer for LotRO this time with the next Hobbit movie?
It would be wise and would bring much profit I believe (if the trailer is done in a way that will fill the viewers with awe and enthusiam as many other videos achieve to do so)


You have my thanks for reading this and in case any of the questions I posted, is concidered well enough to have a reply.

Is there any possible way you guys can reorganize the reputation panel?

I have to scroll through and read everything every time I want to find my rep with a certain faction. Doing it alphabetically by region seems counter intuitive to me where by level by region would be much better. Maybe even a checkmark to show completed factions?

1. Will we get a multi-boss, loot locked, significantly challenging and significantly rewarding raid such as Orthanc was?

2. When will we see non-random loot acquisition for legendary class items and recipes. (deed gated, or guaranteed drops from challenge modes)

3. Are you planning on returning to team-based character progression? The current loot system isolates each individual in a raid and does not allow for the fairness of raiding kin's dkp systems or friends passing on gold items for others.

4. Are you happy with the developments of everyone-has-a-FA that the farming of BfE produced? What steps will you take in the future for First Age level gear?

5. Will there be raider representatives in the upcoming council?

1. Can we get more news on the Player Council?
From what I've observed, there is a a gap of communication between players and developers. Not much interaction in general (at least in forums, eg: RKs), and most feedback in Bullroarer forums didn't seem to reach the devs.

2. Can you guys focus not just only on new content, but also the bugs?
Personally I have been beta testing somewhere else, and I know that you cannot really rush people to fix them, but it seems that the amount of bugs and crashes and lag isn't really making the players happy.

3. Can you please improve remote looting?
For the orange class items, people say the description should be "Only the luckiest [class] are worthy of this [item]." and unfortunately that seems to true. I would really like to see its loot distribution system (ie the RNG) to be improved, and/or at least make it to be another looting option, along with roll/pass, master looter, etc.

I feel these are somewhat more concerned by people (or well, at least I am) and I hope these questions will be answered.

Will there be locks implemented for scaling instances?

Imho having no locks is breaking the game. The new raids for example award 1-3 seal on T1 the reason for this i feel is that you would be able to farm a HUGE amount of them if you got a decent amount from each run. Side effect of this is a lot of farming to get seals (hundreds of raids to get new armor or ONE first-age worth of seals). With locks on the raids you could raise the number of seals earned, as well as making people run all the content over just one raid over and over. It would still take a few weeks to get the armor but you don't need to farm hundreds of raids / instances for hours a day.

Being a developer myself i cant see the technical problem with implementing a lock system that can handle scaling content, only the problem of money not being invested to fix it.

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Originally Posted by Dainain

And Earrings too (there are 3 different earrings with 150vit 38 might, but no VIT/AGI ones execpt the Revered Warden's Earring)

edit:found them - in stoneheight and ncf
So ill just 2nd the question about bracelets instead

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At sambrog there is one bracelet with 150 vita, 75 agi and some blocking or something like that! Its a blue one!

Will lotro be shutdown next year or Turbine have extended the license with Tolkien Society?

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Originally Posted by Oinone

At sambrog there is one bracelet with 150 vita, 75 agi and some blocking or something like that! Its a blue one!

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No, there's not. I've scoured compendium and posted warden tank loot onto the forums. Where's your proof?

A second question from me.
Any chance of new dyes being added to the game?
Such as metallic, pastel shades, beige.

Related to the same question any plans on making the Erebor sets dyeable?

It's a good idea to loot components in raids to upgrade armours; Any hope to extend this idea to 3 and 6-mans instances with different components to upgrade purple jewels into blue jewels, instead or above of this depressing RPG loot system ?

- Will the RNG be fixed anytime soon, or do you even acknowledge it's not working correctly?
In the old system it was just a feeling that it was "biased", with the new system it's pretty much proven that it is not working fairly, the number of observed statistical anomalies (e.g. people getting multiple very rare drops in a row) is just way too high.

- Do you have any plans to change the mechanics of the new loot system to account for other factors than RNG-luck (e.g. diminishing returns on farmed instances, adding viable options at skirm camp)?

- Can we expect more (well, any) proactive detailed communication in the future?
A lot of the frustrations I see at the moment might be avoided by at least explaining changes and the reasoning behind them before they happen. Like the whole T1 FA drop mess, the sequence of events causes a lot of speculation, which in turn creates tension between different groups of players. Even if unpopular, an honest answer is better than constant silence.

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Originally Posted by Brethwyn_EU

Questions.

1. Where does the wooden gate in eastern Hytbold lead to? There's an "open space" in between the mountains east of Hytbold, and wondering if this may be an area planned for future content?

2. When will we get more news on the new area coming with Update 11?

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there is the plain top of the east wall mountain... i know a route to the top, but there is nothing else than beatuiful panorama and some dangerous rifts in the middle of the east wall mountains (i mean u can fal in em and u must map home / class teleport / unstuck to get out) if u are interested send pm..

i want to go there again and dont want it closed with invisible walls what devs tend to do :P

Question:
Why we have those invisble walls everywhere? so i can come enough close to seee that hobbit squirrel shepherd in North Downs, but cannot come really close... etc. Honestly.... devs created a content, why is goood to disabling access to it?^^
is there any future plan to allow players to see currently unavailable locations (i mean remove me: unexplored areas) either via making some kind pocket item (for lot tp in store) what can port back the player to their milestone home with 5s cd (and removes auto teleport on those areas), or just make seers orb housing item work like a palantir?

(long ago sapience stated that those places can create corrupted versions of character ... etc. what if the player would like to take the risks like myself?)

Question2:
Is there any plan to make warden golden class items useful? as currently they arent worth slotting :P (dps bonus items are useless compared to stacking blee set effects, and tank items have useless bonuses like mitigation proc, for a class what has cappped mitigations really easily...)

Question3:
Is there any chance to modify the remote loot system so warden can access again to items with viatility + might? as they tend to have loot better staats (max morale, avoidances... etc.) than agility + vitality ones

Question4:
Is there any plan to bring back those good old challenging rare mobs tothe game, as they should be something like warbands in rohan for other areas...

Question5:
Will the rewamped(?) housing system, stick with hooks (as then i is hardly called rewamped... i woud call it extended) Or we shall place housing items where we want in future?

Question6:
What happens with housing items what i bought from other player (i. e. i paid them to put the bound decorations to my hause)?

The true relics that were added in u10 look to be designed to help warden tanks, but why were they added as lvl 75 not 80?

I have 2 questions regarding the new season in the Moors (which you said last dev chat will come with either U10.1 or U11)

1) Would it be possible to offer scaled versions (with Audacity 3) of the current sets, as well as new sets with new bonuses and stat distribution, giving us 2 options per traitline. Maybe also a scaled version of the old Lvl 75 PvP set with Audacity

2) Will Creeps see a balance patch? Especially Warg and BA damage need scaling, but also WL and Defiler healing

And some more:

3) Any information you can share about the RK revamp? And who is our Dev?

4) Who will revamp Creeps? And any news regarding the "new Creep class speculations", which you caused with your comments last dev chat

5) Any chance loot will be less random and luck based, especially gold class items and Horse-Lord recipes? Making a seal+deed (the complete cluster deed) barter for gold class items and a Hytbold Token barter for Horse-Lord recipes (once Hytbold is completly rebuilt) would be a great idea

6) Does the gold item inflation mean we'll see a new tier of gear (better than gold) or some other itemization revamp (like modifiable armor) with the next expansion?

Thanks in advance

Any plans to add new regions (e.g. Grey Havens, Sarn Ford) to Eriador?

For PvMP...

1.) How long should Creeps expect to be taking pre-Audacity damage?

2.) Is there a fair way to penalize Freeps who gear-swap in the Ettenmoors? Given the various buffs a Freep can achieve by simply switching weapons/gear pieces, it would only seem natural that a penalty should be applied.

3.) If there are no plans to scale Warg damage, how about increasing our base mitigation numbers/and or Crit Defense? Or better yet, combine Tact/Physical Mits into one Corruption so a semi-viable build (against fully geared U10 Freeps) might be possible.

Q: I've heard rumors that the classes will be made "easier to play." Is this a legitimate thing? If so, why is it necessary? The thing I love about LotRO is how complex the game play is and how in depth and independent the classes are. (If there are complaints about difficulty, maybe people /shouldn't/ start the game on something difficult like RK or LM....They're ranked for a reason!)

Is their a barrier to doing more passive event weekends, as in lootbox drops,treasure,xp,loot,skrim marks,item xp,pvp stuff and reputation.

Will there be more detailed communication with the player base about the ‘vision for the game’ or is hiding behind the 140 character limit the preferred method?

Sorry guys we hit our limit with twitter (we did this last time, too) and they locked us out and we couldn't finish.

That said, we're putting the transcript together with 3 or 4 more questions we didn't get to.

Thanks for coming, we'll let you know when the next one is!