LOTRO Developer Twitter Chat - Thursday December 20, 3:00PM Eastern

[Valamar]

1- Sapience - Since I don't do Twitter; will you generate a "Dev Diary" or "Article" with the Questions and Answers? (PS those beards look like something out of the Hobbit!)

2- Scarycrow, Naril and Salk - Excellence above and beyond the job description -- hope Santa brings you folks something special in your envelope!

3- Aaron Campbell - Bug fixes and support for the Mac Client, data.lotro.com, the Lorebook,

4- Zimmitti (I think this is you)... I was riding my War-steed in Tâl Medras today, and kept "sliding" on all of the ice and snow checking on the Snowmen . Ignoring that ... mounted Combat is fun, just like actually riding!

[keikii]

3) Why can't you access the last boss (after Gorothul) on SG T1?

This has always been the case. The last boss is part of the challenge, and requires Gorothul to be killed without any of the spirits dying and the quest for the challenge by at least one member of the group.


My question is solely: are we ever going to get a dev that can actually raid and understands the game mechanics enough to actually test the instances and raids out before they go live so we don't have another impossible wing like Saruman and Fire and Frost challenges again?

[Dropdeadx]

Dont know if it part of the revamp or a graphics glich, But almost evey house/kinship homes are all bright white.
I dont like the look, the rest of bree's newlook looks great

[Galuhad]

For Rowan: Why the kinship system is not expanded with ideas from the Famous Suggestions forums thread?
Probably the most supported thread ever. The link to the thread here: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?385713

Can we have one of the Updates between expansions look at reworking systems that are showing their age as (Particularly Kinships/housing) as one of (if not *THE*) signature features of that update.

Why are housing/kinship revamps on the back burner? (Especially given recent focus on fluff content and graphics upgrades!)

3. Are there any plans to revamp 'game systems' such as kinship, housing and hobbies?

A kinship overhaul is the only thing I really would like to hear some more information on.. After writing the Kinship Revamp Proposal nearly 2 years ago without so much as a single acknowledgement, it would be great to hear some positive feedbacks from the devs and hopefully of some designated dev time in the coming year..

So my question I guess would be, are we ever going to see an improvement to the 'kinship' system?

[timmyloo22546]

Many people are experiencing severe performance issues, especially in PvMP, when can we expect a fix?

This ^^

Any update on fixing the memory leak?

[FreebooterFox]

Any plans to allow lower levels to try mounted combat?

Why are housing/kinship revamps on the back burner? (Especially given recent focus on fluff content and graphics upgrades!)

[josh13333]

What in Rohan causes increased load on computers?

[Econn]

I will not be able to be there thursday because I am haveing a heart procedure done. However my question to the devs is:
When will we see some work done for housing? Why? Because Brandywine the oldest of the servers has no houses for sale and players want houses. read the housing forum for proof.

[myfreezr2]

Will you ever keep your original promises of "convenience, not advantage" and "nothing will change for VIPs?"

Why has housing remained virtually unchanged since release, and when can we expect a housing update?

Any plans to make loot from instances and raids on par with the difficulty?

Why have the forums and mylotro been in such a buggy state for 2 years, and when will they ever be properly updated? (For cying out loud, why did you ever change them at all???? They were perfect in their original format.)

[Felgo]

@ Rowan
Will we be able to fund-raise new content for us? see: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...ur-own-roadmap

[Schinderhannes]

@ Felgo: thanks for the link and the excellent question!

1. @ Aaron: Are you satisfied with the latency of european players?
   
2. @ Aaron: Any plans on relocating the previously european servers?
3. @ Someone: What are the thoughts behind the flat itemprogression from 75 to 85?
4. @ Everybody: Do you have any ideas/plans for Lotro nobody but you knows about and you think this would be great?
5. @ Someone: Is it ok if we use lotro as a template for skyrim mods? (Armour, Weapons, etc)
6. @ Someone: Any plans on adding a new night sky to lotro for high/ultra high settings?

[Rann_Drak]

Can we ever expect a Cosmetic weapon system?
Are there any plans to create an option to disable legendary weapon glow?

Just these

[Kaithlyn63]

Can we expect one day to have legendary weapons following our characters during their progression (level 50-85 +) ?

I highly doubt that Aragorn had changed 50 times his sword during his life ...

It could be a scroll that improves the object or weapon by ten levels (we could for example get it through the store, epic quests or in chests).

The legendary system actually included in the game really annoying me each time the level cap is increased ...

[Punkinchunkin]

Do you really care about us customers or just our Credit Card numbers?

Why is the value of a VIP constantly being cheapened? I gladly take a modest bump in sub fees to offset the constant devaluation of my VIP status.

Are any plans for a housing revamp and more importantly how much are you planning on charging us for it?

Why does an expansion cost $70 now a days, come almost 2 months late sans an instance cluster and still not work?

Speaking of said expansion, how come there isn’t ONE Rohan instance?

Why are we being charged for the scaling of Mirkwood instances? We already paid for them.

If there are plans to scale the Rift, will it get massacred like Helegrod or done right?

Without a doubt the revamp of Bree is absolutely beautiful, heck nobody will ever fault the beauty of Lotro, I ask why is developer resources and money not being use to fix more important things? (see below)

When will Driagoch be fixed? (see above)

A hotfix means fix it while its HOT ie live. Why do you use the term hotfix when you are knowingly bringing down the servers? Also, 45 minute notice does not mean scheduled, means emergency or other term when it comes to unannounced server closures and fixes.

Im sorry these questions seem so pointed and brisk, but honestly they are where my thoughts are about lotro are now adays. After 5 years, 10s of 1000s of hours and countless dollars I feel all Turbine cares about is the dollars part and how to get even more which brings me to my last question.

What is Turbine doing to help keep long term players like myself satisfied and feeling wanted and valuable?
Since all the questions are being prescreened I do not expect any of these to be addressed publically. I hope somebody important at least sees them and is concerned, I know I am.

[Southers]

there are some really great proposals in the forums (some 2 or so years old now), so my main questions are short and sweet, referring to those.

housing update?

kinship update?

other questions I have...

do you think you have done enough to improve PvMP in the longrun? (I think it still has a lot more potential personally)

will there be more updates like #9? (where a lot has changed, but for the better)

why are almost all big rewards down to grind, not skill/ difficulty? (I like challenging play, and don't have time for endless grind)

Thank you and I look forward to the answers

Matt - UK

[cossieuk]

Why on (middle)Earth did you not advertise the game at the start of the Hobbit films, why you competition did. There has been WOW, GW2 and even Runescape adverts but none at all for LOTRO

[Southers]

Why on (middle)Earth did you not advertise the game at the start of the Hobbit films, why you competition did. There has been WOW, GW2 and even Runescape adverts but none at all for LOTRO

true was wondering the same thing at the time!

[Borafin]

Why the recent trend to turn the Festivals (a normally relaxing, play when you can atmosphere; but still able to get the rewards you want) into such a huge grindfest (gated rewards hidden behind quest completion tiers that require playing nearly everyday of the festival period)?

[hsji]

Any ETA on the lagginess of the store being fixed? It takes anywhere from 45 seconds to a minute and a half for the store home to load up, to say nothing of navigating for things. Similarly, the help function (and ticket submission system) is practically unusable due to the extreme slowness with which each screen loads. I don't mean to sound overly harsh but I couldn't file a ticket in game even if I wanted to - I tried to file one regarding the slowness of the help system but I wound up getting two levels and hit a zoning screen before I finished the ticket submission process.

On a similar note, any plans to introduce window functionality? It would be great if I could minimize the store or help windows while waiting for them to load instead of trying to go about things with half of my screen obscured.

Final note: my machine and link are not the problem, just to stave off any sort of speculation in that area. I'm 6 hops from Hurricane Electric and it's fiber the entire way from my apartment to the pacific backbone (and thus HE). I shouldn't be doing 11 megabytes per second down from AWS in Oregon and something like 500bytes per second down from the LOTRO store, no matter how you cut it. I feel like I'm back in my bedroom in 1992 trying to download dodgy GIFs on my 1200 baud modem.

Edit: Question #2: Why the "choose a subscription to play" screen in the launcher? What percentage of customers actually have more than one subscription? No sarcasm here; I'm genuinely curious.

Edit2: I was able to watch an entire play in the Frostbluff Theatre in between pressing the help button and finally being able to press submit. That's like .. two webpages and a couple of javascript context menus. Something is very clearly wrong there. Ticket #2808209, I started at 11:39PM and pressed submit at 11:44PM.

[Southers]

I've paid a lot into premium status, and currently I have nearly all the content unlocked. For me It would be really daft becoming VIP just for playing in the moors as a freep, even though I sort of want to.

Is there a chance of something like a moors pass in the store? or even as a low cost alternative for my account?

What is your recommendation to a player like me?

[Nasami]

Just in case I miss the Twitter thing:

a) A revamp of housing. Soon? PLEASE?

b) This is probably asking for the moon, but what the hell. Machinima tools for the game. You have all this gorgeous scenery and a pretty good group of emotes. Something like CITY OF HEROES' /demorecord would be BRILLIANT. (I will happily exchange PMs with whatever dev or devs needs to know more to see if it's something viable.)

c) Making instances/skirmishes also for 4/5-player. It really sucks when me, hubby, and roommate are all playing, and two other friends come on, and we can't skirmish/do instances with them because we don't have a sixth.

[Valamar]

Dont know if it part of the revamp or a graphics glich, But almost evey house/kinship homes are all bright white.
I dont like the look, the rest of bree's newlook looks great

Graphics glitch -- uncheck Speculative lighting.

[Galuhad]

Following the dev chat on twitter, just wondering if any of these questions will actually be pulled from the forum as they all seem to be twitter questions?

Edit: Nevermind, I see the Dev chat just finished so I guess none.. Once again I'm extremely disappointed to see the subject of kinships getting completely dismissed.

[Saelyth.]

Following the dev chat on twitter, just wondering if any of these questions will actually be pulled from the forum as they all seem to be twitter questions?

Edit: Nevermind, I see the Dev chat just finished so I guess none.. Once again I'm extremely disappointed to see the subject of kinships getting completely dismissed.

I feel you, i even asked that in a twitter question

[WhitewolfUK]

Following the dev chat on twitter, just wondering if any of these questions will actually be pulled from the forum as they all seem to be twitter questions?

Edit: Nevermind, I see the Dev chat just finished so I guess none.. Once again I'm extremely disappointed to see the subject of kinships getting completely dismissed.

I can tell you that both of my questions were both posted on the forums

I also have to say, I appreciate you guys on twitter so much for answering not one but two of my questions! I was pretty surprised to say the least