Twenty Questions – Helm’s Deep Expansion. Ask your own question!

[Zarin]

Will you fix this shambles you made called Trait Trees?

[Comstrike]

Can Upscaling be applied to players wishing to go to the Moors as Freeps? Could it be done in the future?

[Cheery]

Not compound questions, nor multi-part, just a list:
1) What are the changes to Threat?
2) Will this expansion include changes to housing?
3) Any changes to Mounted Combat?
4) Any changes, additions to Crafting?
5) Any changes to existing areas with this expansion?
6) Any change in the acquisition and use of marks, medallions and seals?
7) How does the new Trait Tree methodology affect lower level characters class quests and deeds (for example finding pages and reaching kin with Moria Guards)?
8) With the narrowing of each characters focus, do you anticipate lower level characters having more difficulty with existing quests?
9) Will there be expanded use of Mithril Coin?

[Tony.Preston]

What do you feel your long term players' reactions will be to having less than half of the skills they've become accustomed to, do you think there will be any repercussions to yet another dumbing down of the game?

[sting-sethkan]

Will they still be used and if so will the level increase?

[sting-sethkan]

Any new crafts or possibly ad extra crafting abilities beside the limited 3?

[Grhysli]

Will Hunters have their off-hand Legendary item changed from a Weapon to a Quiver that is placed in the Class slot? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!

[Mirlaen]

What was the primary motivation behind the move to the tree system for traits?

Alternatively...
Why is it that in Epic scenes that come straight from the books, the dialogue is almost always paraphrased rather than directly quoted? Copyright issues or something similar?

[Belnavar]

Are there any changes to Virtues and Racial Traits (particularly the latter, which are badly in need of revamping)?

-Bel

[AaylaKheledlire]

- Any new platform/jumping quests?
- Lower warbands (no mounted) at lower zones in the near future?
- Any new things add to Bree? (dwarf area, caravans)
- Can we hear a new piece of HD music before release?
- New levels for war-steeds?
- Can we seen more cosmetic armors and maybe weapons? (HD preorder shield and armour was great! ) ..suggestion: please add a torch for RP players

[Gyasa]

How does the new Tanking system work since the main tanking skills seem to have dissapered?

[fusei]

The Guardian's Dev diary mentions a "threat revamp" and he Champion's dev diary doesn't say anything about aggro management at all, so my questions are:

What exactly is this "threat revamp"?

How will Champions strongly invested in the Martial Champion tree generate and maintain aggro?

[RJFerret]

Threat changes?!??

Legendary legacy changes?

Will class skills be relevant in Big Battles, just for Vanguards, or applicable to the two other roles?

With removal of bards and reduction in value of virtue traits at higher levels, will virtues remain?

With introduction of up-scaling, any plans for down-scaling to fixed instance levels in the future?

Will we get actual developer diaries at some point (the Guardian one notwithstanding)?

How many of each size, raid, fellowship, trio and duo, of Big Battles might we expect?

PS: For whomever asked about /follow, it's a bug that is to be fixed next update.

[Tirian-Hammerfist]

How is threat management going to work in Helm's Deep? (in reference to the changes highlighted in the guard dev diary)

[VirtualVikki]

Will the long talked about housing improvements/changes arrive with the new expansion? If not please answer someone else's question.

[robbie1435]

Do virtue deeds also give class trait-tree points or do only class deeds give the points?

[twinsuns]

1. What alterations are being made to PvMP?
2. How many Turbine Points will the expansion cost to get full content (epic story line, etc) but not necessarily "extra goodies" (cosmetics, etc)?

Thanks!

[Arodion]

When are we getting new, challenging multi boss raids?

Will upscaling be reversed to allow us to scale down to the level of kinnies to run lower level content with them without penalties?

[Orodbril]

To some people I have written Private Messages concerning their questions with answers from published sources in cooperation with Turbine, but for the other people who wants to know the answers for the same questions I'll repeat it here:

1. Moria instances scalable with HD?

No, on the German website http://www.hdr-seite.de/news_detail.html?id=843 is said that these won't become scalable and there are no plans to do so. There was no statement for GA, Angmar and Isengard.

"Die Moria Instanzen werden nicht mit diesem Update skaliert und das steht auch nicht auf dem Plan." (Maybe for Google Translate )

2. Default GLFF?

Massively has answered this question yesterday. ^^

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/09...-online-helms/

"There were a few questions answered that weren't related to the epic story. The team is looking into creating an official GLFF channel, since so many players use it but it doesn't receive official support."

3. Reason for class changes and trait trees?

Already answered in the Twitter-Dev- chat about class changes ( https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...lass-Changes):

"Q11: Raven-EU: What was the primary driver(s) for this change? #LOTRO
A11: Jinjaah: I think there were two main things that drove these changes: #LOTRO
A11a: 1. We wanted to design the trait trees in such a way that as soon as you leave the intro, #LOTRO
A11b: your trait line starts to play as it was envisioned instead of later on down the road when you began to collect traits. #LOTRO
A11c: 2. We really wanted each trait line to sort of stand out from the rest and reduce some of the class homogenization #LOTRO
A11d: that had slowly occurred over the years. #LOTRO"

4. Virtue deeds (not answered in a private message):

Also roughly answered in the dev-chat:

"Q1: bgriggs: Are the current virtues and traits being incorporated into the new system at all? #LOTRO
A1: HoarseDev: Virtues will remain mostly the same. Traits are now completely rolled into the new system. #LOTRO"

So propably virtues have nothing to do with the trait trees.

[Redit]

What are the threat changes?

are we getting any awesome armor or jewelry much like the Hytbold armor?

are we getting any older instances to be scaled like in their absence and mirkwood? (preferably moria)

are we going to be able to ride from Bree to Edoras without a load screen or going through moria?

what is happening to racial traits and virtues?

how will loot be handled with epic battles? (barter system, or direct items)

will warden gambits need to be unlocked via the new trait tree system?

will wardens still have access to all of our gambits?

is the warsteed level cap increasing?

[eigendrift]

Will the Raging Blades skill for champions be accessible when traited deep into the Berserker skill tree?

[Fredelas]

Here's my question: When can we see a video of Epic Battles in action?

I'm not talking about a 15-second clip. I mean actual continuous gameplay footage. Or even better, a live stream of a dozen developers taking one on.

[eigendrift]

Will there be an increase to the current Virtue cap of 16 with the release of Helm's Deep?

[eigendrift]

Will the enhancement of actual character design (i.e. improved graphics for the avatars' bodies, more customizing options at the character create screen and/or barbershops) manifest itself with the release of Helm's Deep?

[Farty]

I hear in HD gear swapping will not be possible in-combat any longer. Is this a 100% chance in HD?