Producer's Letter 2013! Helm's Deep on the way!

[Vincent_Price]

Next expansion will be East Rohan, plus we'll get a new region in Spring!

https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articl...nline%E2%84%A2

Housing revamp on the way!!

YEEESS!!!

[Stanimir]

Well I've been wrong about Helm's Deep being included for players for a good 6 years.

[ROCOMAN]

The link no longer works, which makes me wonder how you found it...

Was posted on Twitter a little a few minutes ago. They were seemingly having link problems, as both of the links they provide do not work, but the original one worked for me when it was posted /shrug.

[Stanimir]

Was posted on Twitter a little a few minutes ago. They were seemingly having link problems, as both of the links they provide do not work, but the original one worked for me when it was posted /shrug.

Indeed, I saw it when I first clicked on it, but now it doesn't work. Least I got to read it once

[Edrogar]

A letter from Kate Paiz, Executive Producer, The Lord of the Rings Online™.



Hello all!


January has been an exciting month for us on the dev team! We’ve wrapped up our plans for 2013, and I’m very pleased to announce some new big initiatives for LOTRO you can expect in the coming year:

• Player’s Council – We are doubling down this year on the conversation between Turbine and you, our players. We are going to start a Player’s Council, a group of players who participate in more regular & structured feedback sessions with the dev group. We want to make sure that as we grow and extend this game, that we are incorporating your likes and dislikes about what we are into what we release. The Community Team will be releasing more information about how we’re going to construct and run the Player’s Council in the coming weeks.

• Western Rohan – I am at this moment standing on the parapet of the Hornburg, looking out over Helm’s Deep as devs populate the landscape with hundreds (soon to be thousands) of Saruman’s Uruk-hai & Orcs. We will be bringing you the rest of Rohan in two installments – Wildermore, a northern region between the Wold and Fangorn, will be released this spring, after our 6th anniversary, and later in the year, you’ll be able to see Western Rohan, Edoras, and participate in battles of epic proportions. Much more on this to come…

• Housing – I am extremely pleased to say that this year we will be tackling a major revision to the Housing system. In February and March we will be gathering information about how Housing should change, and then we’ll be releasing revisions to the system in the latter half of the year. We look forward to leveraging our new Player’s Council to help shape and guide the extension of this feature!

• Class Adjustments – Later in the year, we will be making some significant changes to the skills and traits of the Free Peoples classes. We’ll be pruning out skills that just feel disappointing in play and increasing the potency of others. The end result will be fewer skills, but a more profound impact on moment-to-moment play. How you choose to specialize your class will make a real difference!

There are plenty of other things happening this year, and we’ll be doing more dev chats via Twitter to keep getting the word out, so stay tuned for more details and more news in the coming weeks.


Na lû e-govaned vîn.



Join the Official Discussion!
Developer Diaries

[Bhoris_they_spider]

In summary:

Player Council: We will continue to pretend to listen to our players at the same time as introducing features no one has asked for (see stat/warden changes on Bullroarer)

Western Rohan: Stuff you already knew or had guessed. More info to follow as it will involve a drawn-out and vague pre-order. Maximum cost, minimum promises/content being the order of the day.

Housing: We might add a few new item hooks and maybe a new chest for 500/2k Turbine points respectively.

Class Adjustments: We are dumbing the game down further to make it more like GW2


I can't wait!

[mikalar]

I noticed a lot of ambiguity in the letter and am looking forward to the new regions. Just hoping they are not accompanied by new levels.

[monteeburns]

In summary:

Player Council: We will continue to pretend to listen to our players at the same time as introducing features no one has asked for (see stat/warden changes on Bullroarer)

Western Rohan: Stuff you already knew or had guessed. More info to follow as it will involve a drawn-out and vague pre-order. Maximum cost, minimum promises/content being the order of the day.

Housing: We might add a few new item hooks and maybe a new chest for 500/2k Turbine points respectively.

Pretty much sums it up.

Class Adjustments: We are dumbing the game down further to make it more like GW2
.

Except it's free in GW2.

I can't wait!

Likewise. Still, at least she finally managed to struggle out of bed and scribble out a few lines.

[Frkhead]

In summary:

Player Council: We will continue to pretend to listen to our players at the same time as introducing features no one has asked for (see stat/warden changes on Bullroarer)

Western Rohan: Stuff you already knew or had guessed. More info to follow as it will involve a drawn-out and vague pre-order. Maximum cost, minimum promises/content being the order of the day.

Housing: We might add a few new item hooks and maybe a new chest for 500/2k Turbine points respectively.

Class Adjustments: We are dumbing the game down further to make it more like GW2


I can't wait!

Well, if the player ont the Council all have your attitude, I kind of understand them for not listening to us :P

Yeah, I know. I'm just a noob so what do I know...

[Oldin]

If I wanted to re-read the Twitter Dev Chat I would have done that.

[ElldintheWise]

I would like to see substantial changes to permissions and the introduction of kin house chest transaction logging. It would be nice to be able to implement item withdrawl limits to prevent kin members from robbing the kinship blind as well as see who is taking out of the chests.

Other games already have this implemented, but LoTRO seems to be behind the times with Kinship management tools and permissions.

Just my opinion.

[Eartholloth]

Gotta love the peeps who know what all is coming way before we are even getting it. :rollseyes:

[OnyxSoulbane]

So they are copying CSM in EVE. It has never worked in EVE, it sure isnt going to work here.

Bleh

[Vincent_Price]

If I wanted to re-read the Twitter Dev Chat I would have done that.

Can you paste the answers where they said, we'll get a new region in the Spring, the housing revamp and them actually announcing Helm's Deep in the dev chat?

[Eoryn89]

Some very poor attitudes from the first few posters

I am looking forward to seeing more of Rohan! Player Council sounds great! But I hope this doesn't mean that that their will be less space for innovative ideas brought up by gamedesigners. I think that by asking the community what they think would improve lotro, you mainly get suggestions of what would be great for lotro based on experiences they had in other games (if that makes sense)

[kickman77]

Gotta love the peeps who know what all is coming way before we are even getting it. :rollseyes:

Didnt you know, the only players who post on the forums are either noobs or uber elites who know whats going on before the devs even do.

Now on a more serious note, as someone who lurks the forums but doesnt post to avoid the flaming most have at even a simple mention of change, I would be highly interested in joining the players council. This seems, if it can be implemented in a good way something a lot of players who do not (notice: Majority of the player base) use the forums would be interested in doing.

[Daniangi1]

[angry_moment]
All people do is whine. Seriously!
I thought this only happened on stupid communities like WoW's.
The other day I bought a hot-dog and I didn't like the hot-dog - it was cold. I went there, complained, and left. I'll never pay for that hot-dog again.
If people are mad or hateful or whatever, complain and leave. Stop playing. If the game is so broken and sucks so much as you all say, just leave! You're paying for it because you want to, so don't come complaining because you're always paying for something you don't like because YOU are the one paying.
[/angry_moment]

Anyway, back to the original idea of the post: can't wait to see the new regions and the housing revamp!
The devs and the art team made a GORGEOUS work on Eastemnet so I'm pretty confident that Western Rohan is going to rock!

Good luck everyone, and let's hope we survive the wait

[BigLotroFan]

Can you paste the answers where they said, we'll get a new region in the Spring, the housing revamp and them actually announcing Helm's Deep in the dev chat?

They said in the dev chat that a new region would come out in Update 11. Seeing as Update 9 was in December, Update 10 will be February, it is pretty easy to guess that update 11 will be April. Someone already got into the new region and did a youtube of it a while back during the last bullroarer test cycle.

As for Helms Deep...well when they announced that rohan would be two expansions last year and that eastern rohan would be released first it is pretty easy to guess that western rohan would be the next expansion. Since Helms Deep is in western rohan it's not far to figure it would be included.

IMO them saying that Helms Deep would NOT be there would have been news.

[Vincent_Price]

They said in the dev chat that a new region would come out in Update 11. Seeing as Update 9 was in December, Update 10 will be February, it is pretty easy to guess that update 11 will be April. Someone already got into the new region and did a youtube of it a while back during the last bullroarer test cycle.

As for Helms Deep...well when they announced that rohan would be two expansions last year and that eastern rohan would be released first it is pretty easy to guess that western rohan would be the next expansion. Since Helms Deep is in western rohan it's not far to figure it would be included.

IMO them saying that Helms Deep would NOT be there would have been news.

Thanks for answering but was actually hoping from dev-chat answers of them saying all that.
Cause :

If I wanted to re-read the Twitter Dev Chat I would have done that.

Yes, they said that "some region will come with Update 11", but they didn't say which one.
As for HD, we all knew it was coming, but we didn't know when. Now we know : 2013.

[GundamPilot018]

Yes, Housing revamp! I am really looking forward to that. I really enjoy a good Housing system in mmorpg's, gives me something else to do besides the usual questing, dungeons and crafting.

Looking forward to the new area for Rohan. I still need to get my main through RoI content and then RoR though., I have not played Lotro since Mirkwood.

The Player Counsel sounds interesting, looking forward to seeing how that turns out.

Glad to see the game is still moving along, I look forward to what Turbine will bring to Lotro.

[Celestrata]

And, closing this thread, as the official producer's letter discussion thread is here:

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...92#post6647092

Thanks!