Top 2023 Lotro wishes

[Emraneth]

Happy Holidays to devs and fellow players! It has been a great year in Lotro! So what should happen in 2023 to make it even better?
1) Performance improvements. This might be beating a dead horse but it is the single biggest issue in the game and literally costing the game players. In everyone's best interests to be a priority.
2) Volume 5 book 2+... it's been a couple years already since book 1, is the honeymoon over? Let's get back to the main story.
3) Southern Gondor/Harad. The desert landscape the game is missing. Aragorn's campaign into Harad is in the appendices, so it is an in canon story waiting to be written. Also, a way to continue Volume 5.
4) Dangling Mordor plot thread resolution: what does Borangos want in Mt Doom and others. This has been hanging out there for a long time now.
5) The Southfarthing. SSG spent a year eliminating gaps in the map and created a new one between Cardolan and the Shire, while the story was hinted at in Yondershire. If I was hedging bets, I think this is the most likely of my 2023 wishes. Also, another way to continue Volume 5.
6) Lindon. This last elven land missing in Middle Earth. We spent several years all in on dwarves, how about an elven focus for a while? Also, not a bad way to capitalize on that awful Amazon series.

[Thurinuor]

A new and scalabe UI! The deed panel is so ugly since they streched it.

[Pewpewmidget]

1. Account-wide cosmetics and mounts
   Imagine how many more people would buy mithril coins or the store pets and mounts. I would be one of them.
2. Delving system to be fixed and better optimized for the content available.
   From what I have read, T10 is too difficult for solo/duo content.
   Let's be real, adding dread, mobs that spawn adds that spawn adds and every other annoying feature of the game is just making them worse to play.
3. Stop with the mentality that only Gundabad instances should drop endgame stuff.
   There's a huge world outside of Gundabad and everyone deserves to have more content to play and options of what instance to run.
4. Get rid of failed systems if you are not going to fix them.
   Huge waste of time and resources.
5. Festival Mithril barters changed to their respective festival tokens.
   70 Mithril coins for a regular mount and 350 Mithril coins for a fully equipped war-steed is way too much.
   Adding older mounts to festival barters for festival tokens would add more to festivals and make them more enjoyable.
   Especially if you can gift mounts.
6. Festival Hobbit presents added to their respective festival barter npcs.
   I don't know why this is even a thing.
   Spend money on Mithril coins to spend Mithril coins on Hobbit presents for a rare chance to get a festival-related item.
   Tell me you care more about money than players without telling me you care more about money than players.
7. Seasonal instances to either reward their exclusives via wrapper or be removed.
   The boneheaded change to Storvagun two years ago really angered a lot of players and pushed some away.
   Adding a guaranteed Storvagun bracer, Red Maid cloak or Thrang lash/bell would make these instances more enjoyable, less stressful and more time respecting.
8. Featured instances to be revamped.
   I actually do like this system but the current rewards are very underwhelming and the system is not rewarding enough to make it successful.
9. Revamp scaling instances and add a t2 option to the instances that don't already have it (Like School/Library of Tham Mirdain)
   Tier 1 is too easy and it doesn't make sense to have a easy challenge mode.
10. Add Featured Skirmishes.
    Again, I like the featured instance system and adding a featured skirmishes system seems like a fun idea.
11. Add more Skirmishes.
    Dropping off after Siege of Mirkwood and picking back up in Before the Shadows is a head scratcher.
    There is a ton of content in between Mirkwood and Gundabad to work with so the possibilities for more skirmishes is there.
12. Add more Missions.
    Some like these and some don't. I'm one in the middle with a love/hate relation. There is a ton of content to work with.

[Arnenna]

Do away with old horses for Mithril.

This game has a lot of flaws, some harder to forgive than others, and some, that can have a blind eye turned to. But old horses for mithril is the worst thing - for me - in the whole game.

[istvana]

"Do away with old horses for Mithril."

A classic case of nagging.

[blacknazgul13]

Yeah, I love collecting mounts so having a bunch of cool-looking mithril ones that cost an arm and a leg (for a college student) to buy, it would be really nice if they just cost festival tokens. Maybe they could cost more than the recent mounts, so we have to collect more tokens, but please don't have them for mithril. It's just not fair for newer players that literally didn't know the game existed when you could get the horse much more easily.

[Pewpewmidget]

Maybe they could cost more than the recent mounts, so we have to collect more tokens, but please don't have them for mithril. It's just not fair for newer players that literally didn't know the game existed when you could get the horse much more easily.

I agree with this 1000%.
Maybe the current year's mounts should be offered for 20 festival tokens then add 5 more for the older mounts, depending on how old they are.

Current: 20 Festival tokens.
Last year: 25 Festival Tokens.
2020: 30 Festival Tokens.
2019: 35 Festival Tokens.
2018: 40 Festival Tokens.

...and so on.

[hagermanj]

Put All Carry-Alls in the Store!!

I would pay for multiples,

[blacknazgul13]

I agree with this 1000%.
Maybe the current year's mounts should be offered for 20 festival tokens then add 5 more for the older mounts, depending on how old they are.

Current: 20 Festival tokens.
Last year: 25 Festival Tokens.
2020: 30 Festival Tokens.
2019: 35 Festival Tokens.
2018: 40 Festival Tokens.

...and so on.

Oooh, I like that idea. Even if it were 10 per year instead of 5 per year that would still be much better than 70 mithril for the scores of past festival horses

[Pontin_Finnberry]

I've been wanting to see a kinship revamp of some sort, and i know they've talked about in recent years in producer's letters and such, might not be 2023 but I hope so, honestly a kinship revamp has been ask for over a decade now with players bumping up a thread made by Galuhad, and I still kinda wonder why nothing has been done yet in all that time for kinships, others things only take priority if you make it one, about time to make it for kinships.

Thats my wish for 2023 as its waited a long time being asked for.

[TesalionLortus]

Merry Christmas to everyone and the dev team. Well, I sure hope 2023 may be filled with positive additions and exciting new content.

Southern Gondor/Harad. The desert landscape the game is missing. Aragorn's campaign into Harad is in the appendices, so it is an in canon story waiting to be written. Also, a way to continue Volume 5.

It's in the appendices but happens in Fourth Age alongside King Eomer, clearly after all the other "main book" stuff is dealt with, so wouldn't be canon doing it now, and bad narratively since Gondor is spared and otherwise occupied at the moment. It's been said Aragorn waged war to defend peace and that cavalry of Rohan got to do some fighting in the far deserts of the South. Which screams preemptive strike to me, from the direction of the coast, perhaps, and it wouldn't be too far-fetched to imagine that taking back Umbar was either a part of it or in direct preparation for this strategy, since it's a lucrative key port, deep into enemy territory, surrounded by potential enemies, inside and outside. People are keen on both Umbar or Harad explored now, but it really does not click for me from geopolitical/military standpoint of the region. It's a real commitment to actually keep that port in your possession once it's taken, and you're risking provoking nearby Haradrim states (and Gondor needs a break from serious war), but it would be an act of a fool of a king if the idea was that he just trusts a pirate, someone like Jajax, to keep his word, make an alliance, or whatever else would be required to make the premise of a storyline done right now work without any troops involved. (Besides, IF, then I wanna see cavalry of Rohan in the deserts of Harad... I mean, it just sounds so cool!)

1) Performance improvements. This might be beating a dead horse but it is the single biggest issue in the game and literally costing the game players. In everyone's best interests to be a priority.
2) Volume 5 book 2+... it's been a couple years already since book 1, is the honeymoon over? Let's get back to the main story.
4) Dangling Mordor plot thread resolution: what does Borangos want in Mt Doom and others. This has been hanging out there for a long time now.
5) The Southfarthing. SSG spent a year eliminating gaps in the map and created a new one between Cardolan and the Shire, while the story was hinted at in Yondershire. If I was hedging bets, I think this is the most likely of my 2023 wishes. Also, another way to continue Volume 5.
6) Lindon. This last elven land missing in Middle Earth. We spent several years all in on dwarves, how about an elven focus for a while? Also, not a bad way to capitalize on that awful Amazon series.

A new and scalabe UI! The deed panel is so ugly since they streched it.

Agreed with all these! Really sound like reasonable areas to focus on and what we've been waiting for, so each of these would be a blast.

Also, I would add:

1) What happened in Rhun? This direction might work better, since something mysteriously ominous evidently happened there that requires investigation "of the Wise" (rather than a type of investigation kings do) and the greatest threats would be mythical ones lying low/with local interests, not outright geopolitical/military ones that could threaten kingdoms of the good guys (not yet anyway).

2) Map overhaul. Higher res, less confusing. Overview of Middle-earth/Rhovanion etc that has in-game accurate representation of terrain and distances. Huge stitched together maps that are scrollable and allow in-depth orientation within the world. Yeah, that's still under UI part but a distinct part of it.

3) Successful mounted combat lag fix/revamp that was mentioned by Orion. May not be that huge on its own but if successful... that may open the door to these traversable boats!

4) Figuring out the way to allow for somehow viable free-roam playstyle on landscape, with alternative XP sources on landscape that are free-roam friendly, without railroading (Yes, won't stop pointing this out. Whatever the *vocal* majority may think of the idea, this really looks like something common and big enough in the gaming world with most open worlds, so very well-suited for the game's MASSIVE world, and giving players more choices outside of traditional railroad ones or increasing your replayability score could only be a good thing)

5) Difficulty choices on normal servers, hopefully it'll happen in 2023 after all and not abandoned. Throw in the ability to switch it more on a whim, and access these "quest" options from the settings/UI, would be a great quality of life improvement and great appeal to newcomers. Definitely get rid of the Beam of Eye of Sauron too

6) Photo mode camera... which I know at least Cordovan is aware of, how great would that be! If the engineers can't make it work without lags, even when tethered to our character with some limits and not fully detached, then at least something like a giant disguise that allows me to look from much higher above ground would go a long way to allow me to get better shots, views into distance and angles of places. Pleeease


As a nice bonus, which is a wish of mine and Phantion... if Scenario could find the time to do some gentle landscape work and make a better sense of Arthedain now, in the game world

[BlitzKr1eg]

There are really too many issues to be fixed, and regarding the number 1 issue performance we're not even sure if it can be fixed at this point, especially not without major monetary investments.

1) Performance issue, if this doesn't get solved then there's absolutely no future for the game...A part of me feels like SSG knows this and are just milking everything they can until there's no substantial player base left.

2) Class balance, this continues to be a major issue, personally I think the HD-trait revamp is mostly to blame. In SoA every class had its own main role and a secondary role that they were decent at. But since HD now every class are supposed to have 3 trait lines which often includes a new role, suddently you went from balancing a few classes around their main roles into balancing 3 trait lines for every new class. The new classes that were introduced after the Rk/Warden hasn't really helped with balance either. My suggestion is just simply to return to the Pre-HD trait philosophy, that would make balancing so much easier.

3) Stat-bloat...It's just awful, most classes are basically stacking their 1 stat that contributes to healing/dps and vitality, in the old days you had to had a more balanced approach. Also stuff like In-combat power regen are completely useless these days.

4) Remove old systems that aren't being used in any large scale...Skirmishes as their original intent were mostly fine, even tho I personally wasn't a fan, but ever since SoM there's been countless new "systems" that has mostly been useless....Remove the bloat please.

5) Currency/token bloat, same really as the my previous point...Our premium wallets are filled with coins and tokens that are completely useless. Remove useless currencies please.

6) Content difficulty, here I also propose to bring back the old ways, there's nothing wrong with a bit of challenge. Also its an MMO, re-introduce fellowship quest!

7) Focus on PVMP and End-game instances/raids

8) Level cap? I would propose something similar to what ESO are doing, having players to level through the original content (1-50 in Lotro's case) and then introduce a new but minor way of improving your character (like champion points in ESO), that would help both new players and old players. Also the original content were really incredible, a re-focus on that content is just something positive!

9) LI/Virtues....Let's be honest, almost every single overhaul of these two game-systems has been a complete failure, return both to what they were in MoM (with minor adjustments).

[TesalionLortus]

4) Remove old systems that aren't being used in any large scale...Skirmishes as their original intent were mostly fine, even tho I personally wasn't a fan, but ever since SoM there's been countless new "systems" that has mostly been useless....Remove the bloat please.

5) Currency/token bloat, same really as the my previous point...Our premium wallets are filled with coins and tokens that are completely useless. Remove useless currencies please.

Sorry but sometimes I bang my head against the wall when I see empty proposals like this (and been for years tbh). Why? What's the bother? Don't like them or don't need them = don't use them, problem solved. Old content is still story relevant content (and it's still content) + there are cosmetics, housing or other stuff to buy for old tokens (and much more I imagine with future housing additions), it's not just "useless"

7) Focus on PVMP and End-game instances/raids

First, Orion got busy with that recently which is the best you can count on because it's never been the main focus of this game, period. Second, they're always doing that with new content, the only thing that changed recently is that missions/now delvings are seemingly a part of such "end game content" but I guess people playing all of them, demanding more of them and regularly chasing the carrots/deeds from these (even when complaining about it) is what got us here, so here you go. You're still going to get the usual amount of instances + raid in cap content I assume, so I'm afraid it's other parts of the game/dev time that are going to suffer from this "mission spam" situation.

8) Level cap? I would propose something similar to what ESO are doing, having players to level through the original content (1-50 in Lotro's case) and then introduce a new but minor way of improving your character (like champion points in ESO), that would help both new players and old players. Also the original content were really incredible, a re-focus on that content is just something positive!

They said they can't do that, too demanding, also LOTRO is quite different in that you want to have some distinction between difficulty of older areas and Mordor, at the very least. As usual, I'm trying to be that "voice of reason" so I would love it if they tried and brainstormed a middle-ground solution, neither a squish nor scaling. Maybe have a lvl frozen somewhere and then increase difficulty through other means (with "champion points of ESO" kind of system attached for beyond cap progression) which would be different from the current lvl increases because you could have safer spots/locales with regular mobs that can be visit in each new region by anyone at cap, regardless of their progression with new points. But Sev was adamant about "we can have 200 levels no problem" very recently... so I really hope they may reconsider before it's too late and the only way that remains is the time-consuming costly overhaul/scaling/squish of old content. There are people on this forum who like to brag about how easy it is to level up to cap if you're a regular, which is BS, because many players don't have THAT amount of time or even if they have playing and enjoying content takes more time in practice vs just speedrunning through it, you would find plenty of people who are like "oh yeah, in game for 2-3 years, I've just reached Mordor." Imagine the far away prospect of reaching places like Harad or Rhun when these are in the game, at even higher levels. If you wanna see all of content, ok, nothing to help here... but some people would be absolutely fine with being able to see/taste new landscape at a certain threshold, no matter their progression (keyword being new landscape that's always visitable to them once they reached a certain progression threshold, rather than constantly further away, gated behind more levels)

[Winzhi]

Network performance
Scaleable UI
More group endgame
All lines viable for highest tier of endgame

The same a lot of us have been asking for the last 3 years.

[Elmagor]

1)Lag fixes
2)Kinship revamp
3)Craft revamp
4)River hobbits
5)140 level locations every 6 months with 140 level instances
6)PVE content for creeps
7)Deed panels revamp

P.S. And for god's sake, advertise game! We have a lot of changes for new players, but new players never heard about them, because SSG never advertise them

[Whohaz_Duhrang]

1. Kinship Focused Update Of Course., As Most Who Play And Return Are Apart Of Them., More Ranks? Titles? Kin Reward Track? Another Kin Chest (or at least more space then a measly 295 slots ### is that) *could be moveable too*

2. Neighborhood Housing Update Especially For Non Premium Areas. Like... Really... Just 4 Yard Hooks (### is that)? Plus The Invisible Walls That Wont Let You Place Items Up To 50% Of The Actual Space Owned., Please Do Away With That. Also Interior Hooks Are Very Few For Standard Housing., To Fill And Have It Look Semi Decent Requires You Fill The Space With Big Decor Items You Dont Even Want In The Home, Just So It Doesnt Look Whack. SSG Thats Whack, Please.....

3.Add New Rewards To The Curator!! (###) Or Just Make A New Type Of Curator NPC With New Items. And Not Just A Single Set For God's Sake, Please Give Players Something To Strive For., So Few The Items Are That People Seek, In Which Many Either Have, Or Have Already Looked Upon Previous. Why Have The SAAAAMMMEEE STUFFFF OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN?

4. More Hobbies., Some That Require The Player To Move To Certain Locations (like water for fishing) And Some Hobbies That Can Just Be Done With Others, Wherever They Happen To Be.

5. Another Festival Area / Or New Festival Games., No Grab Item Give Item Quest's Please. If You Travel To Breeland's Festival Fields, You'll See You Have Quite A Grand Area., But Yet With Nothing Really In It

My Man Cord, Lets Us Roll A Fatty., And Enter LOTRO., There Yee May Find Many Similar And Unique Desires., Much More Than What One May Find Here On This Thread., Especially If You Would Announce You're Present, And Are Looking Forward To Other's Feedback With The Devlopment Of The Game, And What One May Like To See In The Future.

[Daguest]

1/2FA authentifications and/or more account safety. My username and countless others have been leaked years ago and SSG does nothing to help. They don't even recover compromised account. It's scary.
2/Remove the "lvl cap" thing from the Dale instance cluster deed and the Morgul Crests drops, so I can drop them at level appropriate and for cosmetics. Yes crests drops from RT but it's a very rare drop and not intended to be the main way to get them.
3/less lag
4/not going to happen, but a wish is not always something that can happen. LOTRO being able to use more than one CPU core so my CPU is not at 100% because only one core is used and I have FPS drops. Despite all the other CPU core being at near 0%
5/Elf premium housing that look kinda like rivendell (no flets, or a choice)
6/more elves cosmetic for weapons. 2-3 isn't cutting it^^
7/lantern and dagger being usable as cosmetic for the shield slot
8/more chainmail, leather and scale mail armor, less full plate for kings with full gold and all the stuff. I want to play an adventurer sometimes.
9/still in the "not going to happen", being able to choose where you sheathe shield and also the quiver position. Some NPC have shield and 1h weapon in their back (Magoldir in the epic, the elf soldier girl in the Vale that handle the Arwen mission chain). Legolas always had quiver on the side (which is more realistic).
10/revamp race trait to be less impactful on class. So you can do a not-elf archer and not feel you did wrong. Same with HE being so strong with warden/min, and how dwarves champion are really suffering from long animations. Not to mention hobbits having nearly no useful traits compared to others. You opened up the classes-race combination, but traits are still very strong.
11/ability to change gamma and contrast when you have a dual screen setup. I can't see s*** in Mordor and can't change that because I have a second screen.

[BlitzKr1eg]

Sorry but sometimes I bang my head against the wall when I see empty proposals like this (and been for years tbh). Why? What's the bother? Don't like them or don't need them = don't use them, problem solved. Old content is still story relevant content (and it's still content) + there are cosmetics, housing or other stuff to buy for old tokens (and much more I imagine with future housing additions), it's not just "useless"

The problem is that I can't remove them...The Premium Wallet is completely bloated by tokens that I'll never use...Just give us a way to barter tokens that we dont need for I guess skirmish marks. If you personally don't want a better overview of your wallet then that's fine, just give us the option. Shouldn't even be that difficult to implement compared to my other suggestions.

Overall I'd say that "bloated" is a great word to describe the current game in many ways.

[TesalionLortus]

If you personally don't want a better overview of your wallet then that's fine, just give us the option.

THAT I may find useful but that's part of UI update, lots of things tie into this, and introduction of better segregation, maybe also by regions, plus allow to hide entries players have no interests to see on their main tab or something like that. The game isn't bloated by content or tokens which are useless (they aren't), it's bloated by the bad UI overview of things. Wallet or the list of destinations at stablemater NPC, it's all hard to find and badly unintuitively organized, with small fonts. So that's what's in need of a fix, preferably full-scale UI redesign of sorts

[SophieTheEnchantress]

Merry Christmas!

I continue to hope all players will treat one another with graciousness and respect for all of 2023. There is a real person behind the character you are about to ace out, stand on top of, insult, or grief. That person may be having a really bad day, or week, or life. Try not to make things worse. Be kind.

Middle Earth is so immense I want not for activities and rewards. It will take me years to work through what already lies before me. I can make do with the way things are and want for very little.

Whatever comes, I hope it brings a maximum of happiness and a minimum of sadness to the greatest number. It will probably involve many wise choices and compromises. I wish a bright star of supreme goodness to shine forth and guide the people at Standing Stone Games, showing them the way.

[Lambtron]

Cloak of Durin's Crown.

I still hold out hope.

[Fordarb]

I'm a simple Warden who likes world immersion:

1) All the in-game chairs will work in 2023.

That is all.

[Kirchenmaus]

- Unify/reduce the many landscape currencies. The purse is becoming more and more confusing. How about Eriador coins, Gondor coins, Rhovanion coins?
- Class Balance. Some quests and missions are absolutely no fun soloing with some classes, while with others they are like taking walks. That can't be the point.
- Unify/reduce the incredible amount of consumable items. Depending on how/where they are acquired, they may or may not be stackable. Please make all basically identical items stackable.
- Please make the stacks of all items uniformly larger! Within the 'carry-alls' and in the regular bank slots/inventory slots.
- Runes of enhancement should be stackable in the 'Essence and Traceries' just as high as outside. Unfortunately, due to the stacks being far too small (100 pieces!), the carry-all is relatively useless.
- Please make marks, medallions and sigils relevant again. What's the point of skirmishes or epic battles if you can't buy anything useful (even at higher levels) for them in the skirmish camp?
- Please finally remove all obsolete items from the game. This includes drop items from enemies, to shards, relics, etc.

If I understand correctly, the main problem for lags is supposedly the overfull data storage, which is certainly also due to the incredible excess of items in the game. Please reduce them.
I don't even want to know how many people have created multiple accounts just to be able to store all items somewhere ...

And if you want to make more money, just fulfill the players' wishes. We've been telling you for years what we're willing to spend money on, but you ignore it. Instead, you remove, for example, reputation accelerators from the skirmish camp and replace them with a single one in the mission reward box, which is the least important for end-game players. That makes reputation farming for the deed log no fun anymore!

I am extremely grateful for the many improvements that have been made in the last few years and the expansions are basically fun. But you should really finally get a grip on the performance problem. It's been driving paying players away for years.
Yes, there are always new ones, but do they really stay long and invest their money? As soon as you reach the higher levels, the lags increase. The rubberbanding is a real problem, especially on the war steed. It drives people away sooner or later, because new games just don't have such problems.
And then, of course, there are the outdated graphics, which are designed for monitors of 1024x768 pixels. Monitors are getting bigger and bigger, people expect better graphics.

If it's because of money that you can't make certain improvements, start a crowdfunding.

In this sense I wish the SSG team a Merry Christmas and a blessed start into the New Year!

[TearMaker]

5) The Southfarthing. SSG spent a year eliminating gaps in the map and created a new one between Cardolan and the Shire, while the story was hinted at in Yondershire. If I was hedging bets, I think this is the most likely of my 2023 wishes. Also, another way to continue Volume 5.

How many years have we been asking for SF and they have actively given us everything but.

I wouldn't count on anything anymore with Lotro. They seem hell bent on destroying many aspects of the game. Maybe a streamlining effort for whatever reason - who knows?

I would shed any content in 2023 for some stability in the servers. Lag is killing any enjoyment

[Galuhad]

I've been wanting to see a kinship revamp of some sort, and i know they've talked about in recent years in producer's letters and such, might not be 2023 but I hope so, honestly a kinship revamp has been ask for over a decade now with players bumping up a thread made by Galuhad, and I still kinda wonder why nothing has been done yet in all that time for kinships, others things only take priority if you make it one, about time to make it for kinships.

Thats my wish for 2023 as its waited a long time being asked for.

x1,000,000