Some questions for @Raninia regarding endgame

[BinaryTertiary]

Edit: Cannot update the title of the thread, as "endgame" in the title doesn't really suit the questions presented for the most part. If a moderator (or Cordovan) could edit it out, it would be grand



Firstly, I'd like to start with saying that the amount of openness displayed by Raninia is, by far, the most welcome thing this game/community got in years. Whether you agree with the information or not, it's amazing to actually hear someone talk back...

With the pleasantries out of the way, here are some questions:

• As a new producer, are you pleased with the direction the game was heading in the last few years? (end-game gear heavily outclassing anything that a "casual" player might pick-up from landscape/dailies)
  
  
  • Based on that, are the plans ahead going to deviate from this trend? (bridging the gaps in some manner, increasing relevancy of crafting in the future and alike)
  
  
  
  
• With the history of 130 cap being rather ... eventful (the RK powerspike and death, Guardian irrelevancy in any major content, Wardens relying on a lottery to be impactful and current meta), we have seen some rather promising changes to shake things up.
  
  
  • The main question I'm trying to ask is what is the current standing on trait lines? Do we redefine trait lines as a ROLE (Minstrel main specc'ing into Red being capable DPS, Champion specc'ing into Blue being a tank etc.) or are we still staying on the original classification (Minstrel bringing healing exclusively, Champion bringing AOE damage as examples)
    
    
    • If former is true: Will we see any large-scale changes to how classes operate (similar to U22.2)?
      
    • If the latter is true: How will you balance out classes not outright being ignored (similar to Captains completely phasing out Guardians in all 3 stages of group content)?

• While unconfirmed when, the new legendary server seem to be aimed at making landscape more challenging, appealing to the demographic of players that wish for more of a challenge.
  
  
  • What is going to happen to Anor? We have already witnessed Ithil closing down due to lack of players. Do you have worries about further splitting the player-base down?
    
  • An interesting development is the request by some players to have the difficulty of the landscape scaled back, in contrast of this new mechanic's goal. Will you look into making the content more flexible on both sides of the spectrum or are you sticking firm to just the difficulty increase with this mechanic?

• In one of the previous correspondences (I cannot remember the source, unfortunately), you mentioned you have first played the game way back (2007 or 2010? Cannot remember exactly). This might be a memory jog due to the passage of time, but what are some key differences that you have noticed between playing the game then and now? What struck you the most over the years?
  
  
  • What memory is most engrained from when you played the game originally? What's stuck in your head as being that "one" moment?

• In what way, as a player, do you think you can improve the most?
  
  
  • Follow-up, do you have eventual aspirations to join larger group contents (6 and 12-mans)?
  • What do you think is the most daunting mechanic/skill (or anything) a relatively new or returning player would face?

• Will you ever consider streaming your own gameplay on the LOTRO social media outlets, similar to Cordovan? (Not saying to replace him, either as an extra with Cordovan providing additional commentary or insight OR as your own stream)

I think these are all the questions I have, if anyone on the forums would like to chime in, it'd be really appreciated in case I missed out something crucial.

[Raninia]

Edit: Cannot update the title of the thread, as "endgame" in the title doesn't really suit the questions presented for the most part. If a moderator (or Cordovan) could edit it out, it would be grand



Firstly, I'd like to start with saying that the amount of openness displayed by Raninia is, by far, the most welcome thing this game/community got in years. Whether you agree with the information or not, it's amazing to actually hear someone talk back...

Hey! Thanks for the kind words. I'm still reading through the forums fairly regularly, but I'll be fairly judicious in when I respond - so you're probably the last person that can pull the "tagging" trick on me for a good while

With the pleasantries out of the way, here are some questions:

As a new producer, are you pleased with the direction the game was heading in the last few years? (end-game gear heavily outclassing anything that a "casual" player might pick-up from landscape/dailies)

This is probably an unsatisfying answer, but I don't really have a good grasp on where the game has been headed in the last few years from the perspective you're coming from. I'll say that I think there's definitely issues with some things that have happened over the past few years - for example, I think we could've handled the rollout of War of Three Peaks - and there's been things that have gone really well - U29 Wildwood has overall gotten really good reviews, and we think it's a great thing we may wanna do more of.

This may not line up with your personal preferences! Totally get that if so, totally understand. I definitely wanna be mindful of feedback, but I try to take a broader view of the playerbase. We have a few channels to collect feedback and see how things do, so we're never really just looking at one place, no matter how loud it may be.

To get back to what I think is the spirit of your question - I think LOTRO has a ton of awesome opportunities left, and I'm excited by some of the conversations that we've been having about what those could be. I'm actually in the middle of pitching some of them this very week. We probably won't be ready to talk about what those things will be for a while - if my pitch is successful, I suspect the first time we'll really talk about is in Sev's Producer's Letter for 2022 - but I think there's some cool stuff on the horizon regardless of whether it's the cool stuff I'm pitching

Based on that, are the plans ahead going to deviate from this trend? (bridging the gaps in some manner, increasing relevancy of crafting in the future and alike)

Wanted to answer this separately - the answer is, sort of? As above, there's some things that have gone well, and some things that haven't. Our goal is to evaluate those, understand why those that didn't work out didn't, make different decisions, and hope for better results. Again, the playerbase has a wide variety of perspectives - something you like might be anathema to someone else; something they like might be a thing you hate - so we're trying to make wide groups happy with different updates. The reality will always be that not every aspect of every update will be for every player, and we want to do our best to ensure that every player has something, and we're not creating zero-sum games for different player archetypes.

[*]With the history of 130 cap being rather ... eventful (the RK powerspike and death, Guardian irrelevancy in any major content, Wardens relying on a lottery to be impactful and current meta), we have seen some rather promising changes to shake things up.

• The main question I'm trying to ask is what is the current standing on trait lines? Do we redefine trait lines as a ROLE (Minstrel main specc'ing into Red being capable DPS, Champion specc'ing into Blue being a tank etc.) or are we still staying on the original classification (Minstrel bringing healing exclusively, Champion bringing AOE damage as examples)
  
  
  • If former is true: Will we see any large-scale changes to how classes operate (similar to U22.2)?
    
  • If the latter is true: How will you balance out classes not outright being ignored (similar to Captains completely phasing out Guardians in all 3 stages of group content)?

[/list]

I think it's a little bit of both, at this point. One thing that's important to be mindful of is that the distinctions you're talking about generally don't matter as much for landscape content. Obviously, if you're playing a spec that has more heals, you'll have a harder time killing landscape mobs, but it can be more of a personal playstyle thing than just trying to optimize, if that's your jam. Our goal with endgame instance content at high tiers is that every class has at least one trait line that's useful and worth bringing, so that no class is completely shut out of that content. That said, getting 30 different class/trait combinations to all be fully viable within endgame - not to mention Brawler coming up - is not something we see as a feasible goal with where we're at right now, and maybe ever? A lot of other games have moved away from this sort of old school model entirely because of how difficult it is to balance. I'm not saying we'd do that, just to give context as to where folks that have bigger budgets and resources are at.

All that said, we're interested to see how the changes for U30 play out. Once we start getting more data from the live population - the Palantir and Bullroarer feedback has been helpful in tuning the changes, but live is just a much bigger population, even for high-end raiders - we'll see where and what needs to be changed. I'm confident changes will be needed, I'm not confident we know what they'll be yet. That's pretty normal though, so I'm not terribly concerned overall. My hope is we'll have the chance to make some changes before U31 Gundabad, but I'm confident we'll have them in for U31 at the latest. We'll definitely start talking about things in more detail once we have more detail to talk about. Caveat being, I probably won't be, since I'm definitely not at the point I really understand endgame raiding outside of the fundamentals I know from being a progression raider in days of yore on other MMOs.

• While unconfirmed when, the new legendary server seem to be aimed at making landscape more challenging, appealing to the demographic of players that wish for more of a challenge.
  
  
  • What is going to happen to Anor? We have already witnessed Ithil closing down due to lack of players. Do you have worries about further splitting the player-base down?
    
  • An interesting development is the request by some players to have the difficulty of the landscape scaled back, in contrast of this new mechanic's goal. Will you look into making the content more flexible on both sides of the spectrum or are you sticking firm to just the difficulty increase with this mechanic?

Anor's gonna get updated in the next few months with up-to-Mordor content, and then several months after that, up-to-Grey Mountains, and so on and so forth. I suspect Anor will catch up with live content some time next year, but I don't have a hard date for that scheduled yet. Once it does, we have no plans at this time to close it, it'll just continue as it currently is. Anor's been pretty successful for us - one of the reasons we're doing more Legendary Servers in the first place! - so we're pretty happy with how it's been going. We've found that it hasn't really split the playerbase in any meaningful way - we'll keep an eye on future Legendary Servers, and Anor itself, just in case, but we're not terribly concerned about that being an issue for a while. We don't introduce new Legendary Servers often enough that we think it's a big problem.

Using the difficulty scaling tech to make things easier is an interesting idea. I know there's some discussion on the forums of how much utility that would bring, and that's definitely something for us to be mindful of if we decide to go that direction. We do want to be mindful of making the game accessibility to a wide variety of MMO and Tolkien fans, but we wanna make sure that if we decide to make the game easier for players, we're doing it in a way that they're also not being stigmatized. Right now, because we're placing a visible marker on players, you can see when someone is playing on a higher difficulty - I've got some concerns that this would lead to some social issues for players playing on a potential lower difficulty than normal. We'll discuss this internally, but we're mostly focused on seeing how well the system in general does; we think it's in a good place, but we don't want to double down on it before we've really seen it at scale.

• In one of the previous correspondences (I cannot remember the source, unfortunately), you mentioned you have first played the game way back (2007 or 2010? Cannot remember exactly). This might be a memory jog due to the passage of time, but what are some key differences that you have noticed between playing the game then and now? What struck you the most over the years?
  
  
  • What memory is most engrained from when you played the game originally? What's stuck in your head as being that "one" moment?

I played back around 2011-2012, shortly after LOTRO first went F2P. The biggest difference is definitely the graphics improvements - I distinctly recall being unimpressed with the quality of the various textures in 2011, as they already felt fairly dated to me then. When I started playing again a few months ago, I was really impressed at how some aspects of the game felt decidedly contemporary. I've been playing a good bit of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition - it's great if you loved the games! - and I think our water, for example, looks reasonably competitive with theirs

The moment that stuck out to me from 2011-2012 was Weathertop. It was probably one of the last things I did before I stopped playing back then, and it's pretty iconic, so it's been stuck in my head for a while. I haven't quite reached it yet, but I'm excited to relive it.

• In what way, as a player, do you think you can improve the most?
  
  
  • Follow-up, do you have eventual aspirations to join larger group contents (6 and 12-mans)?
  • What do you think is the most daunting mechanic/skill (or anything) a relatively new or returning player would face?

Really, it's just learning the game. The MMO mechanics are pretty traditional and I'm reasonably familiar with them, but there're a lot of vagaries and nuances that I don't properly appreciate yet, and it's a bit of a handicap for me in some conversations. LOTRO is a lot of game, and I'm trying to play as much as possible

I'd like to experience as much as possible, so 6- and 12-player content is definitely on that list. I don't think I'll be ready to experience it by the time U31 comes out, but I'm hopeful that I'll be ready sometime thereafter.

I think the hardest part of this game is how much it assumes you already know how to play an MMO. While that was a reasonable assumption back in 2007 when MMOs ruled the PC space, the market looks wildly different fourteen years later, and Tolkien fans that are just getting into games, or just getting into LOTRO, don't have the background anymore to dive into the game as easily as many of us did. There's a lot of implied things that aren't communicated well, and lots of aspects of the first five levels are really outdated in the way they're being taught. One thing I'm hoping to focus on in the next few years is to update those experiences for players who aren't already MMO experts when they start.

• Will you ever consider streaming your own gameplay on the LOTRO social media outlets, similar to Cordovan? (Not saying to replace him, either as an extra with Cordovan providing additional commentary or insight OR as your own stream)

I'm not against it! I just haven't seriously thought about how I would handle all that stuff. Reality is that if I wanna do something official, that means more work for Cord, so I want to make sure I'm not overburdening him with more stuff. We've discussed it, and it's something we'd like to do, but we haven't figured out a plan yet.

I think these are all the questions I have, if anyone on the forums would like to chime in, it'd be really appreciated in case I missed out something crucial.

Thanks for the thoughtful questions! I'll try and respond to follow ups from yourself and others, but can't promise I'll get to all or even most of them. You caught me at a good time today

[Gildoriel]

Raninia, that would be something - you and Cord duoing the content!

[DavidmeetHal]

I think the hardest part of this game is how much it assumes you already know how to play an MMO. While that was a reasonable assumption back in 2007 when MMOs ruled the PC space, the market looks wildly different fourteen years later, and Tolkien fans that are just getting into games, or just getting into LOTRO, don't have the background anymore to dive into the game as easily as many of us did.

I think this is what a lot of people do not understand, the MMO market as a whole has changed over the last 14 years. What was profitable 14 years ago isn't necessarily now,

[Arnenna]

I'm really happy to read that SSG will be taking and considering feedback with a broad variety of sources and player types involved. That's exactly how it should work IMO.

We all play the same game, but in a myriad of different ways. All equally important. I like that you are trying out higher difficulty landscape for those that want it, and also that it's optional, so that those that do not want it, aren't going to get stuck with it.

It will be nice to see if you can turn crafting back around. It's been sorely lacking for a number of years now. Gear seems to be driven by the latest currencies (all which have caps and appear in lootboxes), and crafting has suffered because of it. All that results in really is people parking alts once gear acquisition becomes either raid/instance or lootbox driven. Basic crafted gear for level jumps and in between level jumps, should always be available. Example. Level 105 gear is not replaced until level 112 if one does allegiances, or level 115 for basic purple crafted. Too steep a curve.

I like the idea of more Wildwood type updates. Something around Moria level would be great. Most regions in Middle Earth have an alternative route of the same level, but Moria doesn't. Not that I would consider missing Moria, but it would be nice to have options in that level range. It is possible to skip it, by running in Eregion until late level 50 - 54, then jumping early into Lothlorien, but a new area covering those levels would be much more interesting.

[Joedangod]

I'd like to echo OP's statement that it's nice to see a more open approach to communication, and I'd like to follow that up with a question of my own:

Are there any plans to improve support for the LUA API?

Generally speaking a lot of the target/party effect tracking is tough to work with/fairly buggy overall, it'd be nice to see this stuff improved so we can really get into building plugins that cut down on all the visual clutter in-game (of the 5 rows of buffs/debuffs present on all players and enemies in a raid I probably only really care about 6 effects tops).

[BinaryTertiary]

Hey! Thanks for the kind words. I'm still reading through the forums fairly regularly, but I'll be fairly judicious in when I respond - so you're probably the last person that can pull the "tagging" trick on me for a good while

¯\_(?)_/¯ It worked!
Edit: ASCII isn't enabled in BB Code, Cordovan please?

This is probably an unsatisfying answer, but I don't really have a good grasp on where the game has been headed in the last few years from the perspective you're coming from. I'll say that I think there's definitely issues with some things that have happened over the past few years - for example, I think we could've handled the rollout of War of Three Peaks - and there's been things that have gone really well - U29 Wildwood has overall gotten really good reviews, and we think it's a great thing we may wanna do more of.

This may not line up with your personal preferences! Totally get that if so, totally understand. I definitely wanna be mindful of feedback, but I try to take a broader view of the playerbase. We have a few channels to collect feedback and see how things do, so we're never really just looking at one place, no matter how loud it may be.

To get back to what I think is the spirit of your question - I think LOTRO has a ton of awesome opportunities left, and I'm excited by some of the conversations that we've been having about what those could be. I'm actually in the middle of pitching some of them this very week. We probably won't be ready to talk about what those things will be for a while - if my pitch is successful, I suspect the first time we'll really talk about is in Sev's Producer's Letter for 2022 - but I think there's some cool stuff on the horizon regardless of whether it's the cool stuff I'm pitching

Of course, such an answer was expected. You are pretty new to the team and probably haven't been caught up to everything quite yet, which is fair. And no, your answer isn't disappointing at all, as I wrote originally, any communication, regardless of content, is better than we were previously getting.
Yes, WoTP launch is something of a stain for myself as well, as many of my friends up and quit following the launch. The subsequent changes that occurred didn't help either (the Legendary Item ... items changes). They're now playing other games and spending time elsewhere, but are very much open to coming back if things get a bit more ... friendlier. (Note that they are far more casual players than I am)
Wildwood was really good, quest bugs aside. It felt good to revisit some ... how do I say it ... "old areas, but new touch" kind of thing. Hoping for areas such as that to fill up the gaps (Forodwaith passage to Angmar or Old King's Road please!)
Absolutely true that LOTRO still has a long way to go, even the books didn't just end when the Ring was destroyed. Plenty of Evil, plenty of conquests are will still unfold.
...hopefully your pitch includes us going....a bit more East.....and South

Wanted to answer this separately - the answer is, sort of? As above, there's some things that have gone well, and some things that haven't. Our goal is to evaluate those, understand why those that didn't work out didn't, make different decisions, and hope for better results. Again, the playerbase has a wide variety of perspectives - something you like might be anathema to someone else; something they like might be a thing you hate - so we're trying to make wide groups happy with different updates. The reality will always be that not every aspect of every update will be for every player, and we want to do our best to ensure that every player has something, and we're not creating zero-sum games for different player archetypes.

Myself and many likeminded agree that crafting has taken a bit of a steep dive in quality recently.
Too expensive (material wise) for the benefit (item stat wise).
Hopefully some progression can be achieved where we will see some more emphasis put on crafting for the next level cap(s)!

I think it's a little bit of both, at this point. One thing that's important to be mindful of is that the distinctions you're talking about generally don't matter as much for landscape content. Obviously, if you're playing a spec that has more heals, you'll have a harder time killing landscape mobs, but it can be more of a personal playstyle thing than just trying to optimize, if that's your jam. Our goal with endgame instance content at high tiers is that every class has at least one trait line that's useful and worth bringing, so that no class is completely shut out of that content.

Want to single piece out particularly because...well, okay. This is something I'll touch up on in the end, so...bookmark!

That said, getting 30 different class/trait combinations to all be fully viable within endgame - not to mention Brawler coming up - is not something we see as a feasible goal with where we're at right now, and maybe ever? A lot of other games have moved away from this sort of old school model entirely because of how difficult it is to balance. I'm not saying we'd do that, just to give context as to where folks that have bigger budgets and resources are at.

There is a bit of irony then in this statement, no? If the balance is already difficult, why add more to it? What has sparked this desire to create another class?
I guess we'll see what the class niche is once it's revealed (excusing the ... skill leaks which tell us a lot)

All that said, we're interested to see how the changes for U30 play out. Once we start getting more data from the live population - the Palantir and Bullroarer feedback has been helpful in tuning the changes, but live is just a much bigger population, even for high-end raiders - we'll see where and what needs to be changed. I'm confident changes will be needed, I'm not confident we know what they'll be yet. That's pretty normal though, so I'm not terribly concerned overall. My hope is we'll have the chance to make some changes before U31 Gundabad, but I'm confident we'll have them in for U31 at the latest. We'll definitely start talking about things in more detail once we have more detail to talk about. Caveat being, I probably won't be, since I'm definitely not at the point I really understand endgame raiding outside of the fundamentals I know from being a progression raider in days of yore on other MMOs.

An interesting answer, quite a bit of insight.
True that changes will have to come and unfortunately, to me and many others, it seems that the U30 Bullroarer was cut short. There were still some issues to figure out, but for entry-level raiding, it's all good to go. So, on one hand, I understand what's being said, on the other, personal, it's disheartening. But the golden rule still stands, "Show must go on".

Anor's gonna get updated in the next few months with up-to-Mordor content, and then several months after that, up-to-Grey Mountains, and so on and so forth. I suspect Anor will catch up with live content some time next year, but I don't have a hard date for that scheduled yet. Once it does, we have no plans at this time to close it, it'll just continue as it currently is. Anor's been pretty successful for us - one of the reasons we're doing more Legendary Servers in the first place! - so we're pretty happy with how it's been going. We've found that it hasn't really split the playerbase in any meaningful way - we'll keep an eye on future Legendary Servers, and Anor itself, just in case, but we're not terribly concerned about that being an issue for a while. We don't introduce new Legendary Servers often enough that we think it's a big problem.

Yeah...I could've figured as much. You wouldn't have "soft-announced" more legendary servers if you weren't confident in Anor.
Interesting to see that Anor will "continue as is" however. Once they do catch-up to regular servers, how will you treat the content? Will you delay it for Anor launch? What about the XP penalty (story-pace modifier)?
Maybe Anor will become a regular server when it reaches live content? Who knows...we'll see!

Using the difficulty scaling tech to make things easier is an interesting idea. I know there's some discussion on the forums of how much utility that would bring, and that's definitely something for us to be mindful of if we decide to go that direction. We do want to be mindful of making the game accessibility to a wide variety of MMO and Tolkien fans, but we wanna make sure that if we decide to make the game easier for players, we're doing it in a way that they're also not being stigmatized. Right now, because we're placing a visible marker on players, you can see when someone is playing on a higher difficulty - I've got some concerns that this would lead to some social issues for players playing on a potential lower difficulty than normal. We'll discuss this internally, but we're mostly focused on seeing how well the system in general does; we think it's in a good place, but we don't want to double down on it before we've really seen it at scale.

I don't think the community itself would have a reason to "brand" the players that would play at easier difficulty. As close-knit and small the community is (comparatively to other MMOs), LOTRO's crowd tends to stick to their own niches within it and it is unlikely that people would pick on others for whatever reasons. Personal experiences included, we stick to our own. I don't see anything wrong with implementing such technical options for those who just want to enjoy the world or have their own fun (which is something you yourself also alluded to earlier with the classes part of the discussion, the "jam").

I played back around 2011-2012, shortly after LOTRO first went F2P. The biggest difference is definitely the graphics improvements - I distinctly recall being unimpressed with the quality of the various textures in 2011, as they already felt fairly dated to me then. When I started playing again a few months ago, I was really impressed at how some aspects of the game felt decidedly contemporary. I've been playing a good bit of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition - it's great if you loved the games! - and I think our water, for example, looks reasonably competitive with theirs

The moment that stuck out to me from 2011-2012 was Weathertop. It was probably one of the last things I did before I stopped playing back then, and it's pretty iconic, so it's been stuck in my head for a while. I haven't quite reached it yet, but I'm excited to relive it.

F2P launch was widely considered to be the main-reviver of many MMOs and LOTRO was no exception. I remember seeing LOTRO on various gaming blogs/portals when the F2P boom happened and how the MMO market was shifting, especially noting LOTRO being one of the main winners of that arrangement.
If we just look at it graphically, LOTRO doesn't really stand up to other games in the genre. Texture work, even on some more "modern" design, still seems aged. But that's not a bad thing, really. It has style, it's unique. LOTRO's set out and has stood true with it since the beginning, it's gotten to a point that when I view some of the newer models I can note the sharp edges on the models and I'm enjoying it even. Counterparting most other MMOs recently that you can witness on the market, where something that might look horrible really stands out there, LOTRO's style allows it get away from that cause...well, it's how it all looks. You come to expect and appreciate it. (As oxymoronic as this segment sounds)

You said Weathertop was where you quit...why? What pushed you away?

Really, it's just learning the game. The MMO mechanics are pretty traditional and I'm reasonably familiar with them, but there're a lot of vagaries and nuances that I don't properly appreciate yet, and it's a bit of a handicap for me in some conversations. LOTRO is a lot of game, and I'm trying to play as much as possible

LOTRO is truly a massive game, with quite a ton of content. While it's a slippery slope with it regarding how you wish to play, it has something for really everyone, if they're willing to look past some of it's roughness (mentioning LIs again cause...we all know).
I'll be more specific with this then, which mechanic, vagary or nuance(s) do you feel like you don't appreciate yet? How would you tackle to learn them?

I'd like to experience as much as possible, so 6- and 12-player content is definitely on that list. I don't think I'll be ready to experience it by the time U31 comes out, but I'm hopeful that I'll be ready sometime thereafter.

Well, I heard that there could be a new legendary server where everyone starts fresh coming up soon.....could be a good opportunity to learn... :P

I think the hardest part of this game is how much it assumes you already know how to play an MMO. While that was a reasonable assumption back in 2007 when MMOs ruled the PC space, the market looks wildly different fourteen years later, and Tolkien fans that are just getting into games, or just getting into LOTRO, don't have the background anymore to dive into the game as easily as many of us did. There's a lot of implied things that aren't communicated well, and lots of aspects of the first five levels are really outdated in the way they're being taught. One thing I'm hoping to focus on in the next few years is to update those experiences for players who aren't already MMO experts when they start.

I see, so you'll probably look into improving/updating/changing the tutorial sections of the game? This is something I can see being rather beneficial to new players for sure.
I still remember my first tutorial and I didn't originally come from MMO background (was and still am a Tolkien nerd) and some stuffs were a big "...what?". Even after meticulous research (where LOTRO-Wiki is truly a blessing), there's a lot of information that we just ... don't have.

I'm not against it! I just haven't seriously thought about how I would handle all that stuff. Reality is that if I wanna do something official, that means more work for Cord, so I want to make sure I'm not overburdening him with more stuff. We've discussed it, and it's something we'd like to do, but we haven't figured out a plan yet.

You don't have to handle much, we have a manager that can just do it! I'm certain he'd appreciate a break every odd week or so while you take over!
There's quite an audience out there that wishes for more engagement, hopefully these are just the first steps!

Thanks for the thoughtful questions! I'll try and respond to follow ups from yourself and others, but can't promise I'll get to all or even most of them. You caught me at a good time today

Thanks for answering!

But...now for the "bookmarked" part.

I think it's a little bit of both, at this point. One thing that's important to be mindful of is that the distinctions you're talking about generally don't matter as much for landscape content. Obviously, if you're playing a spec that has more heals, you'll have a harder time killing landscape mobs, but it can be more of a personal playstyle thing than just trying to optimize, if that's your jam. Our goal with endgame instance content at high tiers is that every class has at least one trait line that's useful and worth bringing, so that no class is completely shut out of that content.

For landscape, there is no class (or specialization) that is struggling. All of them can handle it, it's mostly down to the player.

However, my crux of this question was the end-game, be it casual raiding or "top-end questers" (as per Cordovan words, not mine!).
What's the actual stance on the balancing approach for these specializations? Will we ever see Guardians coming in to DPS for their Champion tank friends, with Captains healing?
There is a lot of merit to such flexibility I think, as it really reduces the chance of a class being completely....outclassed.
Best examples again, are Champion tanks and Guardian DPS's specializations.

• They're both on the edge being able to join runs and have been for a while.
• Changes they'd need to get into such content wouldn't really be that strenuous to achieve, as it's just a few rather simple tweaks and balances.
• Further notes go to Minstrels and Beornings. They provide very fun and enjoyable gameplay, however...it's just not there.

More to the merit of this, and to the point, I think there needs to be some base-line for what each class does. Because there's quite a disparity that occurred between HD release, numbers that were ran and original developer's commentary, on top of things that occurred during U22.2.
While having "at least one trait line per class for a raid" seems rather straight-forward, problems occur immediately with what happens when:

• Content just doesn't need what that class provides
• Another class just does it better with the tools provided

I'll stop at this before I overindulge with information that might not be relevant.

Thanks for reading!

[wispsong]

I'm really happy to read that SSG will be taking and considering feedback with a broad variety of sources and player types involved. That's exactly how it should work IMO.

We all play the same game, but in a myriad of different ways. All equally important. I like that you are trying out higher difficulty landscape for those that want it, and also that it's optional, so that those that do not want it, aren't going to get stuck with it.

It will be nice to see if you can turn crafting back around. It's been sorely lacking for a number of years now. Gear seems to be driven by the latest currencies (all which have caps and appear in lootboxes), and crafting has suffered because of it. All that results in really is people parking alts once gear acquisition becomes either raid/instance or lootbox driven. Basic crafted gear for level jumps and in between level jumps, should always be available. Example. Level 105 gear is not replaced until level 112 if one does allegiances, or level 115 for basic purple crafted. Too steep a curve.

I like the idea of more Wildwood type updates. Something around Moria level would be great. Most regions in Middle Earth have an alternative route of the same level, but Moria doesn't. Not that I would consider missing Moria, but it would be nice to have options in that level range. It is possible to skip it, by running in Eregion until late level 50 - 54, then jumping early into Lothlorien, but a new area covering those levels would be much more interesting.

I miss crafting good teal items. It helped some of my "parked" crafting characters to "Save Bilbo". Nowadays everything is stuck behind end game of some sort. What really bothers me is the increase in mats and requirement of special instance mats. And just wanting to make housing items...the Vales items take 70 gathered items. We did not have a tenfold increase of these items on landscape. So even just making "fluff" takes a lot of mats...way to many imo and I wonder who comes up with these numbers.

I also liked Wildwood and although I have no problem to avoid Moria (can't do it entirely due to the LI intro), the zone has been a very relaxing diversion. I wonder though why the new housing items had to be out behind lucky instance drops and we didn't even have a choice upon finishing the quest chains. I'm not very lucky and could run these instances 100+ times not getting Helcassar or Thoroval. Even some currency dropping from the bosses to buy those after maybe 5-10 runs would have been appreciated since they can be run solo on lower level.

[Aeroniel]

I think the hardest part of this game is how much it assumes you already know how to play an MMO. While that was a reasonable assumption back in 2007 when MMOs ruled the PC space, the market looks wildly different fourteen years later, and Tolkien fans that are just getting into games, or just getting into LOTRO, don't have the background anymore to dive into the game as easily as many of us did. There's a lot of implied things that aren't communicated well, and lots of aspects of the first five levels are really outdated in the way they're being taught. One thing I'm hoping to focus on in the next few years is to update those experiences for players who aren't already MMO experts when they start.

LOTRO was the first MMO (and still the only) for me when I started playing in 2013. What absolutely enabled me to start learning the game was being in the right kinship. I came to the game through "Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative" on the Coursera platform. Prof. Jay Clayton had worked with vet players to establish kinships on several servers specifically to assist his students. There was a structured method we were given to contact the kinship once we were out of the intro. After that, I had kinnies to help me learn the basics, the jargon, and to quest with.

Right now, a new player being able to find a kinship that is willing and able to spend the time helping them learn the ropes is hit-or-miss. A lonely, scared voice calling out in world chat, which scrolls by so fast with food chat, punning, and general convos. Kinships may respond but they have different motives for recruiting. Some want numbers, some will help a bit, but the coursera kinships were committed to taking a lot of time showing new players the ropes. The existing tools we have, such as forum sections, or LOTRO-wiki, just don't seem effective in matching kinships to players' needs.

I don't know the answer, but maybe there's some way to incentivize one or a few kinships on each server to be the starting place for new players. SSG might establish some expectations of the kinship(s), get some feedback from new players who join about their experience with the kinship, and provide a structured way for a new player to contact the kinship once out of the intro. (The coursera kinships established a user channel, and we students were told in the course how to use that.). And some cool incentives for the kinships willing to do the work - one of a kind kin house? Some cool cosmetics?

If more structured support for new players is in place, it could be something SSG could advertise. I had a lot of stereotypes about who played video games (kids in their moms' basements!) and whether I as a middle-aged woman would be welcomed. So some work to overcome new-to-MMOs' concerns and stereotypes would be helpful.

And one last thing, Raninia - is your to-do list long enough yet?! Cheers and good luck, glad you're on board!

[PewPew9700]

Hey! Thanks for the kind words. I'm still reading through the forums fairly regularly, but I'll be fairly judicious in when I respond - so you're probably the last person that can pull the "tagging" trick on me for a good while


I think the hardest part of this game is how much it assumes you already know how to play an MMO. While that was a reasonable assumption back in 2007 when MMOs ruled the PC space, the market looks wildly different fourteen years later, and Tolkien fans that are just getting into games, or just getting into LOTRO, don't have the background anymore to dive into the game as easily as many of us did. There's a lot of implied things that aren't communicated well, and lots of aspects of the first five levels are really outdated in the way they're being taught. One thing I'm hoping to focus on in the next few years is to update those experiences for players who aren't already MMO experts when they start.

I wasn't an MMO expert when I started and had a difficult time understanding why I was dying often-ish (Champ). I think if you re-do the intros, it would be good to spend some time teaching new players about gear and stats. I see comments about "Why am I always dying" in WC often enough and then of course, the usual convos about class, gear, and stats. Of course, I eventually learned about the gear and stats I needed for my class (and my trait tree) but it took a lot of reading and researching. And once I learned about gear and stats, crafting and trait trees made sense to me and the changes I saw in my Champ were really satisfying once I incorporated all of the information that I sought out. I've since rolled every class enjoyably.

I also just wanted to say that I really love MM and enjoyed War of Three Peaks. I am also VERY excited for the upcoming housing changes. Housing has become one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game for me and I hope to see housing get continued love.

Thanks!

P.S. Does anyone know if Brawler is coming with Update 30?

[Ungolliant]

I wasn't an MMO expert when I started and had a difficult time understanding why I was dying often-ish (Champ). I think if you re-do the intros, it would be good to spend some time teaching new players about gear and stats. I see comments about "Why am I always dying" in WC often enough and then of course, the usual convos about class, gear, and stats. Of course, I eventually learned about the gear and stats I needed for my class (and my trait tree) but it took a lot of reading and researching. And once I learned about gear and stats, crafting and trait trees made sense to me and the changes I saw in my Champ were really satisfying once I incorporated all of the information that I sought out. I've since rolled every class enjoyably.

I also just wanted to say that I really love MM and enjoyed War of Three Peaks. I am also VERY excited for the upcoming housing changes. Housing has become one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game for me and I hope to see housing get continued love.

Thanks!

P.S. Does anyone know if Brawler is coming with Update 30?

lol'd about teaching what is there to teach champion is incredibly op it takes brain dead mode to pop few skills and aoe anything, game is so simple ,fast and embarassingly easy that guides of any sort should not exist at all ,anyone can learn all by themselves really lmao

[Arnenna]

I wasn't an MMO expert when I started and had a difficult time understanding why I was dying often-ish (Champ). I think if you re-do the intros, it would be good to spend some time teaching new players about gear and stats. I see comments about "Why am I always dying" in WC often enough and then of course, the usual convos about class, gear, and stats. Of course, I eventually learned about the gear and stats I needed for my class (and my trait tree) but it took a lot of reading and researching. And once I learned about gear and stats, crafting and trait trees made sense to me and the changes I saw in my Champ were really satisfying once I incorporated all of the information that I sought out. I've since rolled every class enjoyably.

I also just wanted to say that I really love MM and enjoyed War of Three Peaks. I am also VERY excited for the upcoming housing changes. Housing has become one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game for me and I hope to see housing get continued love.

Thanks!

P.S. Does anyone know if Brawler is coming with Update 30?

When I started playing, I died in the intro, a few times. Being my first computer game (not just first MMO), simply walking around was a learning curve. I had no idea that the zero-death titles existed until months later, when I was taking my second alt through the content. Way too late to re-roll at that point, as my main was at level cap.

I asked that very question, of my hubby. "Why do I keep dying?" The answer - because you're fighting level 45 mobs with a level 8 bow. Yup, I had no idea that we should "gear up" as we level. I also had no idea that we could out-level mobs. Having never really used the mini-map, I literally killed everything in front of me, and I went everywhere on foot until about level 40. So when I had to go from Esteldin to Aughaire, I killed every mob I came across while travelling there. It was at that time I noticed my mini-map looked a bit different, so again, I asked hubby, "what's wrong with my map? Those little red dots have disappeared." Imagine my surprise when he told me to go stand next to a wolf, and when I did so, it totally ignored me I also learned that day that we can outrun stuff, and there we didn't have to stand there and fight before moving on. The learning curve got steep fast after that though. I had met my kin, and they thought it would be fun to take me into an instance (what's that I said). We entered the rift, and I went in all guns blazing on the first pull. What a fun time that was.

So, there are players out there that really do need to learn the very basics. I was one of them, so hopefully, they will look into that a little bit. I like the idea of a buddy system, where established players can enter the starter zones to buddy up with players looking for guidance. They would need to scale right down, or even be disabled from fighting, and just be there to give instructions, hints, tips and general knowledge on starting a character and moving through the game.

[Omen_Kaizer]

All of this is great, glad to see the discussion. And thanks for posting originally BinaryTertiary.

I think it's a little bit of both, at this point. One thing that's important to be mindful of is that the distinctions you're talking about generally don't matter as much for landscape content. Obviously, if you're playing a spec that has more heals, you'll have a harder time killing landscape mobs, but it can be more of a personal playstyle thing than just trying to optimize, if that's your jam. Our goal with endgame instance content at high tiers is that every class has at least one trait line that's useful and worth bringing, so that no class is completely shut out of that content. That said, getting 30 different class/trait combinations to all be fully viable within endgame - not to mention Brawler coming up - is not something we see as a feasible goal with where we're at right now, and maybe ever? A lot of other games have moved away from this sort of old school model entirely because of how difficult it is to balance. I'm not saying we'd do that, just to give context as to where folks that have bigger budgets and resources are at.

For landscape, there is no class (or specialization) that is struggling. All of them can handle it, it's mostly down to the player.

However, my crux of this question was the end-game, be it casual raiding or "top-end questers" (as per Cordovan words, not mine!).
What's the actual stance on the balancing approach for these specializations? Will we ever see Guardians coming in to DPS for their Champion tank friends, with Captains healing?
There is a lot of merit to such flexibility I think, as it really reduces the chance of a class being completely....outclassed.
Best examples again, are Champion tanks and Guardian DPS's specializations.

• They're both on the edge being able to join runs and have been for a while.
• Changes they'd need to get into such content wouldn't really be that strenuous to achieve, as it's just a few rather simple tweaks and balances.
• Further notes go to Minstrels and Beornings. They provide very fun and enjoyable gameplay, however...it's just not there.

This is probably the most interesting part of the discussion for me.

I want to endorse Vastin's method of piecemeal tweaking classes, especially given how yall gotta budget dev time. In u30 beta, that was bringing red guards and red bears and red bears closer to raid viability as dps, mostly via baseline damage tweaks.

Guards, Vastin didnt touch mechanics at all or traits hardly, mostly adjusting baseline dps numbers. Traits and new effects are fun but if presumably-lower-effort bumping up of numbers gets it done, please do so. Ain't quite done though, but I'm pleased with the progress. Atm, from what I'm reading the u30beta top end red guards were dummy parsing about 75-80% of top end red champs, which is just another good across-the-board 20% increase to making it a wash to replace the 2nd red champ with a red guard in all but the most minmaxy of raid comps. If you shoot for parity and hit a bit under for the most demanding content, that'll still leave the meta for the lower tier raid or dungeon content with more valid options and thus richer (for the bulk of grouping with probably most 130 players! And probably most of the playtime of players who identify by "raider" because we need those embers). And it necessarily helps out solo specs for the landscape too. So keep tweaking!

And i think yall hit the mark with red RK. I predict we'll see one per minmaxed raid comp, no stacking, which IS that practical goal of at least 1 slot per class which I also hold. U30 isnt out yet so we'll see, but I've got a good feeling we'll see a red RK in just about every raid comp. Red bear too for single target fights specifically (practically, probably never though, because who wants to bring in a red bear for Thoss and Rukhor and drop it for Shelob?), replacing a 2nd or 3rd red champ; i am in left field by myself saying this, but it's looking like theyll pull ~70% of the boss dps of an equivalent red champ in the same raid but expose and the extra 4s per 16s a raid with an existing yellow bear will get from Armor Crush will more than make up the difference. Not a viable replacement for a 2nd yellow champ of course. So all this narrowing of the gaps was done with boosted baseline damage AND the alteration of one bigass debuff on each. Only Vastin can say the dev time to results ratio, the latter half of that ratio only knowable after it goes live. But it feels like time well spent and if the "harder" work of fixing bear's execute or making claw swipe trait-agnostic comes farther down the road, that's fine!

[Uroc]

lol'd about teaching what is there to teach champion is incredibly op it takes brain dead mode to pop few skills and aoe anything, game is so simple ,fast and embarassingly easy that guides of any sort should not exist at all ,anyone can learn all by themselves really lmao

My cousin is not gamer and she needed to learn to walk in this game. Your response only make people that struggle at first to feel bad about it while problem was only that they were not experienced in this type of mechanics. My friend didn't know how to walk either then she become very good group player capable of doing hard raids.

People when starting to learn they cant absorb so much information in such short time, that is very natural for users of some game/user interface. While for you is clear that too much wounds killing you for very fresh player that is something for which he needs maybe repeat info or something. I know some veterans that manage to die before lvl 20 because if you take too much mobs in same cases you die.

Maybe person feel like he/she need more tutorial and he/she have right to talk about it, we don't need to shot them down just because for us or experienced gamers that part of game is easy. Person was not rude and you just risking of this really nice thread to be locked down because you provoking some ugly discussions.

[Curuer_Bauglir]

My cousin is not gamer and she needed to learn to walk in this game. Your response only make people that struggle at first to feel bad about it while problem was only that they were not experienced in this type of mechanics. My friend didn't know how to walk either then she become very good group player capable of doing hard raids.

People when starting to learn they cant absorb so much information in such short time, that is very natural for users of some game/user interface. While for you is clear that too much wounds killing you for very fresh player that is something for which he needs maybe repeat info or something. I know some veterans that manage to die before lvl 20 because if you take too much mobs in same cases you die.

Maybe person feel like he/she need more tutorial and he/she have right to talk about it, we don't need to shot them down just because for us or experienced gamers that part of game is easy. Person was not rude and you just risking of this really nice thread to be locked down because you provoking some ugly discussions.

Best to ignore this one. They will never have anything to contribute to a discussion. Their only intention is to try and make themselves look good because they no accomplishments of their own, so they try to denigrate others. If you have to tell people how great you are, it's because you're not actually great.

[PewPew9700]

I asked that very question, of my hubby. "Why do I keep dying?" The answer - because you're fighting level 45 mobs with a level 8 bow. Yup, I had no idea that we should "gear up" as we level.

Interestingly, I knew to gear up but my gear had Will on it and Agility, and who knows what other nonsense . It wasn't until I discovered this page, https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Cha...at_Derivations, that the LOTRO world made sense to me. I also wasn't aware that there was an MMO Holy Trinity. I had to google "DPS," lol. Thanks for your kind reply. I giggled several times

[istvana]

A few very general comments.

1. Thanks for the continuing willingness to communicate.

2. I appreciate your understanding that there is a wide variety of playstyles and it is unwise to focus on just the endgame players, however loud they may be. If we get a lot of new players from the TV series they will most certainly lean more to casual and ignorant of MMOs compared to the current player base. They are likely to make our current casuals seem hardcore and for the good of the game you need to have a game that will appeal to them - without driving current players away. But endgame players are and will be important and for the game to succeed you must focus on them too not just the *hoped for* new incoming players.

3. You are right that new players are far less knowledgeable than most of us were when we started, and seem to expect more handholding. I've seen a few cases lately where they ask seemingly inane questions over and over and seem not to grasp the concept of spending 5 minutes actually reading all the helpful information the game sends at them. Personally I like the tutorial (though I usually skip it) but maybe it needs more about some basics that it does *not* handle. Virtue points, trait points, what the roles of a tank, healer and dps are. The later is done very well in FFXIV a game I rarely praise.

4. The legendary servers were better behaved than the older servers perhaps because you did some things better with the benefit of experience. If you hope for an influx of new players you might consider having brand new servers going live when your marketing kicks in. Obviously not VIP only. And you might give us some incentives to start new characters there at the risk of gutting population on some current servers. You will want a good mix of clueless newcomers that may not ever have played a MMO and veterans of the game and the genre. I almost hate to say this - it may not be good for current servers - but if you take seriously the hype about the game benefitting greatly from the TV series it may be the way to go for the game's benefit.

5. Oh yes - almost forgot. Gaining 130 levels looks daunting although we veterans know it is trivially easy compared with getting to level-cap in EQ or other early MMOs. You may or may not have the resources to do a level squish as WoW and a few other MMOs have done. If you do not - there hopefully are other ways to speed things up without cutting too much into revenue from valars and other boosts.

[DavidmeetHal]

lol'd about teaching what is there to teach champion is incredibly op it takes brain dead mode to pop few skills and aoe anything, game is so simple ,fast and embarassingly easy that guides of any sort should not exist at all ,anyone can learn all by themselves really lmao

Not someone that has never played an MMO or even a computer game before.

[Braer]

As a first step in getting those without an MMO gaming background a better grounding can we not have them exposed to official streamers displaying the very antithesis of good gameplay and choice born of enquiry. We can forgive those that learn and grow, but not those who prove incapable and continue to mis-inform just to provide SSG an unregulated marketing pawn to the detriment of themselves and followers alike not the least of which - our CM. See "senior" moderator output.

[Braer]

lol'd about teaching what is there to teach champion is incredibly op it takes brain dead mode to pop few skills and aoe anything, game is so simple ,fast and embarassingly easy that guides of any sort should not exist at all ,anyone can learn all by themselves really lmao

Do you not watch the Friday 5 and 8pm official streams? Dig out the videos and see if you can repeat that claim.

[Raninia]

Ok, buncha responses here. I'll try and respond to/answer what I can.

Raninia, that would be something - you and Cord duoing the content!

Heh, I think I'd probably want to play my F2P character, so I'm not sure I'm far enough along to be more than speedbump for Cord

I'm really happy to read that SSG will be taking and considering feedback with a broad variety of sources and player types involved. That's exactly how it should work IMO.

We all play the same game, but in a myriad of different ways. All equally important. I like that you are trying out higher difficulty landscape for those that want it, and also that it's optional, so that those that do not want it, aren't going to get stuck with it.

It will be nice to see if you can turn crafting back around. It's been sorely lacking for a number of years now. Gear seems to be driven by the latest currencies (all which have caps and appear in lootboxes), and crafting has suffered because of it. All that results in really is people parking alts once gear acquisition becomes either raid/instance or lootbox driven. Basic crafted gear for level jumps and in between level jumps, should always be available. Example. Level 105 gear is not replaced until level 112 if one does allegiances, or level 115 for basic purple crafted. Too steep a curve.

I like the idea of more Wildwood type updates. Something around Moria level would be great. Most regions in Middle Earth have an alternative route of the same level, but Moria doesn't. Not that I would consider missing Moria, but it would be nice to have options in that level range. It is possible to skip it, by running in Eregion until late level 50 - 54, then jumping early into Lothlorien, but a new area covering those levels would be much more interesting.

Crafting is something I'm not terribly familiar with yet, it's one of those systems that I haven't terribly engaged with yet. I think there's some discussion internally about how to improve crafting, but it's not something I expect us to address this year.

For future Wildwood-type updates, I think that there're a number of areas we're looking at. I was given a spreadsheet and color-coded map of a number of places that we could target in the future. Can't confirm anything of course, but hopeful that many of them will be of interest to players, especially those that enjoyed Wildwood

I'd like to echo OP's statement that it's nice to see a more open approach to communication, and I'd like to follow that up with a question of my own:

Are there any plans to improve support for the LUA API?

Generally speaking a lot of the target/party effect tracking is tough to work with/fairly buggy overall, it'd be nice to see this stuff improved so we can really get into building plugins that cut down on all the visual clutter in-game (of the 5 rows of buffs/debuffs present on all players and enemies in a raid I probably only really care about 6 effects tops).

So, nothing definitive, but there's definitely a vocal group within SSG that feel that we should. We're planning to have a serious discussion about it in the next few weeks, but it's not something we can get done before U31. I don't have enough understanding of the costs and benefits to have a useful opinion yet, but that's one of the reasons we'll be having that discussion! If we do decide to go forward, it'll still be a little while to get to it - while I don't have full knowledge here, initial estimates I've been given for creation are reasonably high.

Myself and many likeminded agree that crafting has taken a bit of a steep dive in quality recently.
Too expensive (material wise) for the benefit (item stat wise).
Hopefully some progression can be achieved where we will see some more emphasis put on crafting for the next level cap(s)!

As I mentioned above, I'm still learning about crafting, but it's something I'm hoping to gain a better understanding of. Additionally, I can say it's on my list of things that I think we can work on improving for a future, post-U31 expansion. It's a decently heavy lift based on what I've heard so far, but the increased clarity will help improve the quality of that estimate.

There is a bit of irony then in this statement, no? If the balance is already difficult, why add more to it? What has sparked this desire to create another class?
I guess we'll see what the class niche is once it's revealed (excusing the ... skill leaks which tell us a lot)

Well, for one thing, just because it's hard to balance for high-end raiding doesn't mean we shouldn't ever make another class Lots of players don't engage with raiding at all, and would enjoy playing a new class. This definitely creates additional challenges for us when trying to balance high-end raiding - enough so that I don't think we can add classes in perpetuity without significantly revamping the systems - but those're challenges that we think we can tackle somewhat in parallel.

An interesting answer, quite a bit of insight.
True that changes will have to come and unfortunately, to me and many others, it seems that the U30 Bullroarer was cut short. There were still some issues to figure out, but for entry-level raiding, it's all good to go. So, on one hand, I understand what's being said, on the other, personal, it's disheartening. But the golden rule still stands, "Show must go on".

Bullroarers are valuable, but they have diminishing returns. We tend to see fewer people on successive days and runs, and they mostly call out the biggest issues pretty early on. I understand the desire for us to get things perfect before we get things to live, but the reality is that's always a false choice - running additional Bullroarers just takes us away from spending time fixing stuff that's been found and making new things for the future. I'm not sure if 2 runs over three - four days is necessarily the right amount of Bullroarer, but I need more data to have a useful opinion there.

Yeah...I could've figured as much. You wouldn't have "soft-announced" more legendary servers if you weren't confident in Anor.
Interesting to see that Anor will "continue as is" however. Once they do catch-up to regular servers, how will you treat the content? Will you delay it for Anor launch? What about the XP penalty (story-pace modifier)?
Maybe Anor will become a regular server when it reaches live content? Who knows...we'll see!

I expect Anor will continue as a separate server with its specific rules in reasonable perpetuity. I'm not sure how we'll treat new content once Anor has gone live - we have a fair amount of time before we have to come to that decision, and I'm not sure that's been seriously discussed yet.

I don't think the community itself would have a reason to "brand" the players that would play at easier difficulty. As close-knit and small the community is (comparatively to other MMOs), LOTRO's crowd tends to stick to their own niches within it and it is unlikely that people would pick on others for whatever reasons. Personal experiences included, we stick to our own. I don't see anything wrong with implementing such technical options for those who just want to enjoy the world or have their own fun (which is something you yourself also alluded to earlier with the classes part of the discussion, the "jam").

Yeah, that's totally possible. I'm definitely not an expert on the LOTRO community and defer to others - like Cord - in those conversations. I'm generally looking more at broader gaming audiences and such for examples, and that's definitely been a thing elsewhere, so I want to make sure we've thought it through before we've committed.

You said Weathertop was where you quit...why? What pushed you away?

The gameplay didn't super grab me, I was sort of rushed to that point, and then my gaming group drifted to another F2P MMO. I think we actually went to DDO for a while? I didn't last super long there either.

I'll be more specific with this then, which mechanic, vagary or nuance(s) do you feel like you don't appreciate yet? How would you tackle to learn them?

Crafting, from above, is definitely a great example. Instance clusters, kins, LIs, etc. - a lot of these are things that I've read about and talked with people about, but haven't personally engaged with much if at all. One of the reasons I think it's valuable for me to play through that stuff is so that I can better understand the player experience and perspective. The goal is to get my character(s) through the game and experience as much of it as possible. Of course, the stuff I can't reach reasonably soon - endgame, for example - I spend a lot of time reading about, watching streams/vidoes, and talking to folks about. But nothing beats interacting with that stuff ingame yourself, in my opinion.

Well, I heard that there could be a new legendary server where everyone starts fresh coming up soon.....could be a good opportunity to learn... :P

I probably won't be playing on the Legendary Servers at this point, just because I don't think I'd really be able to appreciate the way y'all will. I'm trying to mostly play as a free player atm, want to keep that perspective in mind and experience as much of the game as I can before I dive in and make purchases.

I see, so you'll probably look into improving/updating/changing the tutorial sections of the game? This is something I can see being rather beneficial to new players for sure.
I still remember my first tutorial and I didn't originally come from MMO background (was and still am a Tolkien nerd) and some stuffs were a big "...what?". Even after meticulous research (where LOTRO-Wiki is truly a blessing), there's a lot of information that we just ... don't have.

It's something I'd like us to look at for sure, but it's not a done deal by any stretch. I think there's a lot of value in it, but finding the right approach and the right time is important.

You don't have to handle much, we have a manager that can just do it! I'm certain he'd appreciate a break every odd week or so while you take over!
There's quite an audience out there that wishes for more engagement, hopefully these are just the first steps!

I definitely wouldn't want to take over for Cord on a Friday on a consistent basis - that's a lot of pressure! If he wanted to take the occasional break, I'd be happy to fill in, but those are big shoes to fill.

I'm also hopeful these are just first steps, but like I said, nothing to announce about this yet

However, my crux of this question was the end-game, be it casual raiding or "top-end questers" (as per Cordovan words, not mine!).
What's the actual stance on the balancing approach for these specializations? Will we ever see Guardians coming in to DPS for their Champion tank friends, with Captains healing?

That's a good question, but unfortunately I'm not the right person to really speak to it beyond what I've already said. One of the Systems Designers, like Vastin, would be better to speak to this. He's fairly busy atm, so I won't push him to answer imminently, but I'll throw him a heads up that there's more interest around this, so hopefully when he has a spare hour - or several collections of small minutes - over the next few months, he'll be able to get back to y'all.

LOTRO was the first MMO (and still the only) for me when I started playing in 2013. What absolutely enabled me to start learning the game was being in the right kinship. I came to the game through "Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative" on the Coursera platform. Prof. Jay Clayton had worked with vet players to establish kinships on several servers specifically to assist his students. There was a structured method we were given to contact the kinship once we were out of the intro. After that, I had kinnies to help me learn the basics, the jargon, and to quest with.

Right now, a new player being able to find a kinship that is willing and able to spend the time helping them learn the ropes is hit-or-miss. A lonely, scared voice calling out in world chat, which scrolls by so fast with food chat, punning, and general convos. Kinships may respond but they have different motives for recruiting. Some want numbers, some will help a bit, but the coursera kinships were committed to taking a lot of time showing new players the ropes. The existing tools we have, such as forum sections, or LOTRO-wiki, just don't seem effective in matching kinships to players' needs.

I don't know the answer, but maybe there's some way to incentivize one or a few kinships on each server to be the starting place for new players. SSG might establish some expectations of the kinship(s), get some feedback from new players who join about their experience with the kinship, and provide a structured way for a new player to contact the kinship once out of the intro. (The coursera kinships established a user channel, and we students were told in the course how to use that.). And some cool incentives for the kinships willing to do the work - one of a kind kin house? Some cool cosmetics?

If more structured support for new players is in place, it could be something SSG could advertise. I had a lot of stereotypes about who played video games (kids in their moms' basements!) and whether I as a middle-aged woman would be welcomed. So some work to overcome new-to-MMOs' concerns and stereotypes would be helpful.

And one last thing, Raninia - is your to-do list long enough yet?! Cheers and good luck, glad you're on board!

I think that's an interesting idea, but it's definitely heavy on the community side, so technically speaking, a lot of what you're describing doesn't strictly need our involvement. That's all to say - go for it! I think we can be more supportive of that, but there're few channels for this better than ingame chat. We'll see what we can do to support this kinda thing, but it's something I can honestly I haven't seriously thought about before this, so it'll take me a bit of time

And yes, my "To Do" list is quite long already, but that's the job!

P.S. Does anyone know if Brawler is coming with Update 30?

Brawler won't be included with Blood of Azog, we'll definitely do more stuff around the new class before we release it!

lol'd about teaching what is there to teach champion is incredibly op it takes brain dead mode to pop few skills and aoe anything, game is so simple ,fast and embarassingly easy that guides of any sort should not exist at all ,anyone can learn all by themselves really lmao

Hey, I get you're frustrated and unhappy, but aggressively interacting with folks on the forums like this won't make anyone feel better. I encourage you, take some time, go for a walk, don't engage with the things that make you unhappy.

As a first step in getting those without an MMO gaming background a better grounding can we not have them exposed to official streamers displaying the very antithesis of good gameplay and choice born of enquiry. We can forgive those that learn and grow, but not those who prove incapable and continue to mis-inform just to provide SSG an unregulated marketing pawn to the detriment of themselves and followers alike not the least of which - our CM. See "senior" moderator output.

This isn't particularly helpful either.

[laughatdo0m]

Will future expansions see the same sort of rollout that was used for "Minas Morgul" and "War of Three Peaks"? That is to say, will they only be available for ~4 months via the "LOTRO Market" ($-only website), or will players that cannot access the LOTRO Market be able to access new content immediately as it is released by spending LOTRO Points in the "LOTRO Store" (in-game store)?

[BinaryTertiary]

Okay, well that kinda settles all the questions I had. Maybe some other posters can contribute further, but myself (and people that have similar interested that helped this conversation with the questions) are thankful for your insight.

Hopefully, Cordovan will allow us to necro the thread in a few months time once you get more experience with the game and progress through some areas!

We're happy to have you around and the communication's appreciated (don't let a few bad apples spoil the bunch)!

[Arnenna]

Will future expansions see the same sort of rollout that was used for "Minas Morgul" and "War of Three Peaks"? That is to say, will they only be available for ~4 months via the "LOTRO Market" ($-only website), or will players that cannot access the LOTRO Market be able to access new content immediately as it is released by spending LOTRO Points in the "LOTRO Store" (in-game store)?

Paying VIP's not being able to purchase expacs with "paid for" points is a real bug bear of mine (as people, and SSG already know). I get that there are paid for LP and not paid for LP, but throwing a blanket solution over that isn't what I regard as treating paying customers fairly.

There are many ways around it.

Have the usual three tier packages on the market, and have one base pack in the store. The criteria to be able to purchase is a three month sub, which has either been running for three months already, before release, or can be purchased, before purchasing the store base pack. The pack doesn't even have to show up in the store unless a sub is active and has either three months just gone on it, or three months still to run. Though, having it show will act as incentive for people to sub up.

They get real money either way, and those that pay for a running sub, don't feel like their subs are worthless.

I don't know how that could be implemented for the folk that purchase LP to buy a base pack, but I'm fairy sure that there would be a way for them too.

[Joedangod]

So, nothing definitive, but there's definitely a vocal group within SSG that feel that we should. We're planning to have a serious discussion about it in the next few weeks, but it's not something we can get done before U31. I don't have enough understanding of the costs and benefits to have a useful opinion yet, but that's one of the reasons we'll be having that discussion! If we do decide to go forward, it'll still be a little while to get to it - while I don't have full knowledge here, initial estimates I've been given for creation are reasonably high.

Well, I'm definitely rooting for that vocal group. My dreams of getting modernised unit frames in LOTRO might just come true yet.