Mirkwood map change - yikes!

[Trixie_Me]

When did the Mirkwood maps change? It was difficult navigating the Scuttledells before, now it's pretty much impossible. Who thought this was a good idea?

[TesalionLortus]

I like some of their artistic/color design choices on these maps and that's exactly why they feel much better to me as official "terrain" maps than something super raw like terrain map plugin. But yeah, they should NOT make things so green on this one

Even the upscaled version isn't of much help here:




They should have kept the distinct colors for rocks and make it more readable for which is which and where the paths are





They need to go back to change the Downholt error anyway... so maybe the artist can address that and re-generate Scutledels a little differently?

[Neinda]

Are these in game maps developed by SSG or are they some add on or plug in? Maybe a bug report is in order if this was done by SSG. It is possible they changed something and did not realize the maps would become useless.

[Halphast]

The Scuttledells were always a huge pain- here's a simplified map. (hoping the link works; I've never been great at attaching linked images here)

[Trixie_Me]

Are these in game maps developed by SSG or are they some add on or plug in? Maybe a bug report is in order if this was done by SSG. It is possible they changed something and did not realize the maps would become useless.

They've been slowly converting some of the old maps to the new terrain maps, and for most, it's not a problem. But this is really problematic. And yes, I did put in a bug report, even though I know the change was intentional. They've made maps like the Old Forest easier to navigate over the years, not harder. At this point, you will need a map like the one Halphast posted to find your way. It's a bad change and should be reverted.

And thank you, Halphast, for posting what I hope is a temporary workaround for this issue.

[Neinda]

They've been slowly converting some of the old maps to the new terrain maps, and for most, it's not a problem. But this is really problematic. And yes, I did put in a bug report, even though I know the change was intentional. They've made maps like the Old Forest easier to navigate over the years, not harder. At this point, you will need a map like the one Halphast posted to find your way. It's a bad change and should be reverted.

And thank you, Halphast, for posting what I hope is a temporary workaround for this issue.

This is more like someone told someone to go update a map and it was updated and no one actually looked at the end product. There appears to be no quality control here or this map would have never made it to live. It appears to be a big green blob that is a placeholder for an actual map. Maybe they hoped no one would actually notice the change?

[Namma]

When did the Mirkwood maps change? It was difficult navigating the Scuttledells before, now it's pretty much impossible. Who thought this was a good idea?

Agreed. Bad idea to just dump this poorly thought out "new" thing into the game.

I actually used to like Mirkwood and now find it difficult to map navigate.

For the record, maps are intended to be a utility - whether paper or other - for navigation. This trend towards some satellite imagery is not map making at all, it's only pretty pictures since they do not behave as Google maps do with zooming in and street/ground level views.

Whoever caved in to those with loud voices should really re-think this and get real maps back into the game.

LOTRO has no need to resemble any other game - period.

[Namma]

The Scuttledells were always a huge pain- here's a simplified map. (hoping the link works; I've never been great at attaching linked images here)

Thank you for this. It's a marked improvement over what the game devs left the players with. Perhaps I may be able to complete quests in this region with it.