Rise of Isengard: Dev Diary Feedback: Dunland Region Overview

[Clover]

Dunland is the natural extension of our path down through Enedwaith, following the path of the Grey Company as they rush to the south to aid Aragorn in his quest to confront Sauron and rescue the city of Minas Tirith from the onslaught of the Dark Lord’s armies.

Read more in the latest Developer Diary from Jessie 'Vastin' King and post your comments here!

[Aldamiras]

Overall, though I haven't seen every part of it, I'd give this new area a big thumbs up. I like the fact that in this expansion we are seeing worser and worser enemies, as we move further south. I should expect that at some point, perhaps where the downed crossing into Ithilien is reached, that we'll no longer be encountering "normal" mobs, but an army of signature-class foes. With all these improvements to the two classes I play, I feel more than ever that I WANT to face more formidable enemies, and with the removing of the caps on virtues and all, I feel more encouraged to WANT to build up my character to face what is to come.... And truthfully I haven't felt like this since MoM launched in '08. So if you'll take any advice from me, make what is to come a serious threat and challenge, but let us build up and gear up freely to deal with it. Its all good for me

[WinterStar]

The View From Atop Orthanc
''
And so from this lofty vantage point, marking a key milestone upon the grand road we walk upon, we can now look out across the world of Middle-earth and see glimpses of what lies yet before us:

The rolling pastures of Rohan stretch out far to the east until they encounter the mighty Anduin, the armies of Gondor are gathering in the south to defend the walls of Minas Tirith, ''

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so i guess the next expansion is pretty much Rohan

[revoked]

Wonderful dev diary! Enjoyed the insights into the thinking behind the quest lines (which I am really enjoying) and the challenges Isengard presents. Great job!

[Fredelas]

This was an interesting read. However, at several points, the tone seemed almost apologetic.

I'm curious to know, what initially motivated Turbine to choose this particular region the setting for this expansion, with all the challenges of geography, timeline, plot, and characters that it presents?

[Silverangel]

Skimmed a little bit to better be shown the way it is rather than be told, but otherwise a really nice dev diary written in a refreshing voice. There seems to be a typo "shaking a staff and me" in the second to last sentence. Enjoyed!

[Malachi108]

You didn’t think we were just going to let you shoot him off the walls of Orthanc, did you?

Errm, why not? Are you sure?


Joking aside, the questline is Trum Dreng is definitely the best non-epic in the game so far - beats even the Reforging of Narsil in my opinion. Phasing technology really comes into play at full there.

Before Phasing:
NPC: Come, we will storm the enemy camp together. Be warned, it will be dangerous and we may not return.
Me: Well, I can't die in this game anyway. And you, my friend, are standing in the middle of a town where other people talk to you to get the same quest. So there's no danger to you either.

Now, this is totally out of the window. There is a new element of danger for everyone now, and it can be used to tell some amazing storylines, as Trum Dreng shows. Amazing.

[vtravi]

Dunlan is fine, nothing revolutionary but that is OK by me. THE BIG PROBLEM with me is that there are no group quests. Two days in I am bored to tears from doing solo quest after solo quest. To think I have to do this all the way to 75 I not sure if I can make it. I face started some group skirmishes just to break up the monotony. I know most people these days are soloists but a nars peak like area would have been nice

[TheAC]

Dunlan is fine, nothing revolutionary but that is OK by me. THE BIG PROBLEM with me is that there are no group quests. Two days in I am bored to tears from doing solo quest after solo quest. To think I have to do this all the way to 75 I not sure if I can make it. I face started some group skirmishes just to break up the monotony. I know most people these days are soloists but a nars peak like area would have been nice

I'm fairly sure that the closer you get to Isengard, the tougher it will be. I have a feeling that the majority of the quests in Nan Curunir itself will most likely be small fellowship or fellowship quests.

[vtravi]

I'm fairly sure that the closer you get to Isengard, the tougher it will be. I have a feeling that the majority of the quests in Nan Curunir itself will most likely be small fellowship or fellowship quests.

I hope that is the case

[Wanderv]

Great devdiary!

Earlier i saw mention that 6 clans are here.
1. Ox-clan (uch-luth) - strong clan, mostly hostile to dunedain, algraigs are also part of them
2. Dragon-clan (draig-luth). Evil guys.
3. Stag-clan. Weak outsiders. Friendly
4. Boar-clan. Mostly enslaved. Friendly.
5. Falcon-clan. Friendly guys.
6. Lizard-clan (avanc-luth). Friendly.

So 4 of 6 clans are fully friendly to players, 1 partially (ox-clan) friendly and only one fully hostile. Strange situation for actually lore-hostile people, isn't it?

[Martigan]

Really enjoyed reading that, thanks.

So far I like the landscape and feel very much. Quest lines are good, fun and well thought out.

(It does feel a little clostrophobic though, like quest zones rather than a landscape. I remembering big old landscapes like east angmar and misty mountains.)

Forget what I said above, now I've had a chance to look around I really like the immersive feel of the landscape. I havent had this much immersion and out of instance fun since Moria! Good job. The little touches like the realistic cosmetics, children npc's and barking dogs make all the difference. The Pit is an awesome concept, please introduce that into pvp Loved the bog area and that abomination camp.

Havent experienced any challenges at all yet. Red mobs are easy peasy to solo, which is a lost opportunity. I can take a mob down thats several levels above me and it only does about 150-200 damage on me.

I'm hoping for some group content up ahead and some nasty mob zones that I need to team in or have a real challenge. After all its the only questing and pve Im going to get for a long time right?

Some challenging rare signatures in out of reach places would be nice too.

[Raven-EU]

Landscaping

Looks and feels great. The landscaping team have done an awesome job! Not much more to say... +rep

Questing

I've enjoyed the quests so far but some parts of it are very repetitive. I've only reached that bog in the south west corner but the pattern is pretty obvious...

I realize that there is a limited number of quest types that can be easily implemented in a MMO (collect N of, kill N of, kill mob N etc) but in the SoA, and MoM areas this is not so much IN YOUR FACE as it is in SoM, Enedwaith, and now RoI. The last three expansions have been very quest hub centric which makes this kind of design so much more obvious.

To elaborate: When I get to hub N+1 I immediately get two quests: Gather X items and kill Y mobs. Upon handing in I get the follow-up quests: Deliver items to hard-to-reach NPC and go kill elite mob. Follow-up: Kill second elite-mob and Z mobs in last camp. Done, get link quest to the next hub... Somewhere in there there's usually one or two hub-specific quests that are enjoyable (even if they too center around kill X, gather Y).

I'm unsure why this is less acute in SoA and MoM, perhaps because there's more travel involved and that you usually have multiple quest hubs active at the same time?

Problems

For the next land mass expansion, don't place quests so close to zone boundaries! When doing quests in Bonevale I managed to walk in and out of zones all the time, trying to target mobs on the other side of a zone boundary etc. Phasing doesn't help either as you keep popping into and out of layers when running after mobs/nodes. It's clearly a powerful game mechanic, but you need to be more careful where and how it's used and how it affects questing areas.

Class changes

Ok, I've only played my Rune-Keeper so far and the Doom and Gloom seen on the forums have come to shame and nothing The class has the same feeling as before but better. The Fire line with Improved Essay of Fire is just awesome! Buuurn you minions of Saruman! Burn!

Stats changes and itemization

Ok, I get it... You want me to throw away my old gear. I get it! You don't like the old system... I get it! Ok?

But to be serious: Going from end-game raid gear to the gear available in RoI hurts! A lot! Loosing 25% of your morale pool is NOT FUN. I've bitten that particular bullet and am going with the new gear but it's not fun being set back that much. I think that this could've been handled better, perhaps by allowing raid gear (if you have it) to be traded for something similar but with stats more in line with the new system? Less TCM and more will/fate/TO.

As it is now I've gained about 40% will (near 900 now), 15% fate (somewhere around 700) but I've lost 33% vitality (400:ish from 620:ish). My hard morale have dropped from 5.2k to just above 4k and with each new piece of gear I pick up I loose some more... Is this intended?

Old content

I hope you get round to making a lot of the old content scalable with decent loot itemization. Ost Dunhoth is one of the best instances in the game and it is now as obsolete as CD and URU are. This makes me very sad because that means that great content already developed isn't experienced by the new players.

HOWEVER: Don't strip-mine the old content like you did with Great Barrow and Helegrod where you took amazing content and regurgitated it into bite-sized chunks that don't have to be chewed to be swallowed...

Summary

I give RoI a 4 out of 5 possible. Repetitive quests and a painful gear/stats transition lowers the score.

[DobbelB_EU]

Great devdiary!

Earlier i saw mention that 6 clans are here.
1. Ox-clan (uch-luth) - strong clan, mostly hostile to dunedain, algraigs are also part of them
2. Dragon-clan (draig-luth). Evil guys.
3. Stag-clan. Weak outsiders. Friendly
4. Boar-clan. Mostly enslaved. Friendly.
5. Falcon-clan. Friendly guys.
6. Lizard-clan (avanc-luth). Friendly.

So 4 of 6 clans are fully friendly to players, 1 partially (ox-clan) friendly and only one fully hostile. Strange situation for actually lore-hostile people, isn't it?

You forgot the Dievlig, the wight clan. They are also hostile.

[wikjif]

[...]HOWEVER: Don't strip-mine the old content like you did with Great Barrow and Helegrod where you took amazing content and regurgitated it into bite-sized chunks that don't have to be chewed to be swallowed...

Great Barrows was split up because of a load problem that it created.

[Raven-EU]

Great Barrows was split up because of a load problem that it created.

This is new information to me, do you have a reference for this? (I have no reason to doubt what you say, I'm just qurious)

I still see the new bite-sized instances of the Great Barrow as having a total value less than the original as you loose the overall feel of it beeing ... you know ... Great.

[wikjif]

This is new information to me, do you have a reference for this? (I have no reason to doubt what you say, I'm just qurious)

I still see the new bite-sized instances of the Great Barrow as having a total value less than the original as you loose the overall feel of it beeing ... you know ... Great.

I think it was in the Dev Diary that originally introduced the scaling instance system that stated that because of the size and level that the Great Barrows opens up at causes more strain on the servers than any other instance in the game especially with it being a free instance that anyone level 20 and up can use.

This is also related to the limitation that you can only open up 5 instances per hour because opening a new one up every 5 or 10 minutes has terrible consequences on the servers performance.

Edit:
Here are links to both the Helegrod and Great Barrows articles.

[Vhalantru]

I'm fairly sure that the closer you get to Isengard, the tougher it will be. I have a feeling that the majority of the quests in Nan Curunir itself will most likely be small fellowship or fellowship quests.

Sorry to burst your bubble there, but according to the beta testers there is a grand total of 6! fellowship quest in the whole expansion...

[Raven-EU]

I think it was in the Dev Diary ...

Thanks! Now that I re-read that diary my brain tells me that it already knew that stuff and it would've told me so if I'd only asked it nicely in the first place rather than demand information on the spot. It also informed me that it has feelings too and have not had any gifts of chocolate lately! So there... :P

Yeah, I can understand that cloning of an instance copy of GB would be kind of a strain. I'm guessing here but CD is probably also a bit of a resource hog to launch and probably also Fornost. They should be less of a problem as they're probably not run as much (starting at higher level and having less grind value).

[Wanderv]

You forgot the Dievlig, the wight clan. They are also hostile.

Ah i miss them as went to Dunland through Trum Dreng. Thank you.

So 7 clans. Sounds nice

[Dahbee]

5 days, thats how long it too do the entire questline with just rest bonus, Im sure some people bought exp mods to get to 75 in less time, lol. There are obvisou signs of missing quest and questlines, there are incomplete quest count deeds because of this. The last 2 levels were hard to find some quest because of no "pointers" and because of this I ran out of quests to do at 74.5. Also very noticeable is the greatly incease experience rewards from some quest areas where quest have been omitted.

I do like the reduced slayer deeds so we dont have to kill the same mob over and over and over again. The new deed is an overall beast slayer type has the same count as any one of the individual slayer deed for warg/wolf/cabain/etc/. The added rewards for these deeds is an LI exp rune that seems a bit on the small size @26500, I think they should be double that.

Landscape has some awesome views but still get stuck on too many geometry curves. The water flow over the rapids looks much better then Moria and old zones. And ofcourse there is nothing like falling thru a solid wood floor in The Pit of Fail, errm Iron. It was unreal how the mobs there hit so much harder then other places.

So aside from not having any daily quests to get Legendary items/scrolls/runes/etc and the epic fail of itemization, and I say that because we are FORCED to get finesse on gear or not do damage to a mob ( from miss/bloc/parried/evade's), what I really want to know is why didnt Finesse get put into several traits? /facepalm. Sure sounds like that Radiance(whatever) scandal from last time...