''Launches in Fall 2013''

[zalladi]

Don't know if anyone else noticed, the description for this forum is now:

''Launches in Fall 2013''

Or maybe I'm just blind and never saw that.

But otherwise, good to know it won't be a 2014 expansion.


Edit:

That's been there since this particular sub-forum launched.

Yup, guess I'm blind and too excited for the next 20 questions. Time to go get that eye-doctor appointment.

[Armaius]

That's been there since this particular sub-forum launched.

[Sapience]

Don't know if anyone else noticed, the description for this forum is now:

''Launches in Fall 2013''

Or maybe I'm just blind and never saw that.

But otherwise, good to know it won't be a 2014 expansion.


Edit:



Yup, guess I'm blind and too excited for the next 20 questions. Time to go get that eye-doctor appointment.

We're going to have to go with "B". It's been there since we created the forum.

[whheydt]

We're going to have to go with "B". It's been there since we created the forum.

Given some of the...less than precise...speculation, can we get a bit of clarity on:

What dates Turbine considers to be "Fall" and what calendar does Turbine use for determining launch dates?

(Those questions not as trivial as you might imagine. I was in Australia for a couple of weeks one year and I discovered that they date the beginning of their Spring (Northern Hemisphere Fall) from 1 Sept., and NOT from 22 Sept. And for the second, I should note that that there still some organizations running on the Julian Calendar, rather than the Gregorian in addition to countries that do not run on a Roman-derived calendar at all with regards to years OR details.)

[bohbashum]

What dates Turbine considers to be "Fall" and what calendar does Turbine use for determining launch dates?

September, October, November

although technically it can be from September the 21st to December 20th.

I really wouldn't be surprised if turbine released it same day as the next hobbit movie which should be December the 11th. which would completely make sense for *completely_not_working_togeth er_legally_marketing* as we know turbine and the hobbit movies are not working together in reality.

EDIT - is it just me that seems a derpy space in "together"? honestly, thats not a space, I'll /bug it

[Daniangi1]

is it just me that seems a derpy space in "together"? honestly, thats not a space, I'll /bug it

No, no, my friend. I see it too. And I don't understand, so...

...KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!!

[Alex53]

I just prefer to forget about the launch date and be surprised when it happens

[Chris91]

My guess is early December

[Felisleo]

The thing to remember is the Middle Earth Seasons don't actually line up with ours!

We had the Spring Festival in May, the 1st of which is official start of the British Summer.

The Summer Festival is in August which is the start of Autumn.

So logically if the date for Helms date is Fall, we'll see it sometime over the Winter period.

I personally blame the hobbits for sneaking in their Farmers Faire into the calander.

[ISS_21]

The thing to remember is the Middle Earth Seasons don't actually line up with ours!

You should really check your calendar, 1st May is not the start of summer, not in Europe and neither in Boston. It is the 21 June.

August is not the start for autumn (fall), it is 22 September. And this autumn ends at 20 December. believe it or not, your are very wrong with your blames.

[Kaynith]

I was going back through my old email notifications from LOTRO, and it seems that as of June that Rohan was available for pre-order.

Same time next year with HD, and we have... *crickets* ???

Screenshots? Do we have any? Anywhere? Any info on the new class changes? Any info on any of the pre-order stuff and pricing?

I'm not complaining, I'm asking. Is any of this somewhere and I've just missed it?

This is HELM'S DEEP. You'd think that it'd be the most heralded expansion since Moria. TV spots, trailers, bing, bam, boom! Get the excitement rolling for a fall release.

But if I didn't hear a tiny little snippet here about there even being an expansion, I wouldn't even know one is in the works. The marketing seems to be falling a little short for this one.

More Helm's Deep please!

[Rothan117]

I will be very surprised if they make Fall 2013 at all at this point. No announcements and August 2nd already, no beta testing, nothing. Given the magnitude of the game system changes they are talking about, beta is certain to uncover a lot of problems. RoR beta uncovered so many problems with MC etc that release was delayed a month and it was still a laggy, buggy mess at release with horrible hitching and rubberbanding in MC.

[Felisleo]

>> You should really check your calendar, 1st May is not the start of summer, not in Europe and neither in Boston. It is the 21 June.

According to your calendar, The first day of summer is also that of the Summer Solstice or Midsummer day, which is why I tend to ignore modern calendars.

Mayday was a traditional date in many pre-Christian European pagan cultures. While February 1 was the first day of Spring, May 1 was the first day of summer; hence, the summer solstice on June 25 (now June 21) was Midsummer.

I have stood many cold, chilly Mayday mornings at the Couldron Long Barrow in Kent, waiting for the first rays of the sun to creep over the horizon at 5.32am. Sunlight bursting through the treeline, reflecting off the neolithic stones, music filling the air to greet the first Summer Sun.

That's the real first day of Summer..

But if Turbine are using some daft Calendar in Boston, at least that explains why all the festivals seem to over run by a week or so.

[Souldan]

I will be very surprised if they make Fall 2013 at all at this point. No announcements and August 2nd already, no beta testing, nothing. Given the magnitude of the game system changes they are talking about, beta is certain to uncover a lot of problems. RoR beta uncovered so many problems with MC etc that release was delayed a month and it was still a laggy, buggy mess at release with horrible hitching and rubberbanding in MC.

^^^^ This. Definitely. Even if there would not be one iota of press or pre-order info on it as there was for RoI and RoR, having HD up on Bullroarer at the very least would have been a better indication of how things are going. It is not. Last year by August there was testing on BR for RoR well underway... this year *crickets* as someone already stated. Also the original plan was for a Sept. release on RoR and after BR feedback revealed so much stuff, the release was pushed back. Considering we are currently not even in such a phase, 2013 anything seems pretty unlikely to me.

[ISS_21]

According to your calendar, The first day of summer is also that of the Summer Solstice or Midsummer day, which is why I tend to ignore modern calendars.

This is only your subjective point of view. So it is not the "official" british summer start. Modern calendars are official, thats why Turbines plans are based on them and not on your subjective seasons.


In general I dont understand that so many people doubt it when Turbine said it will come in fall 2013 (until the 20 December!). Over 4 and a half month to go, beta phase was never longer then 2 month (correct me if i am wrong). So in case preorder and beta phase starts similar at 1st October (I expect it earlier) there is enough time for being in the "fall plan". And we have just the 2nd August.

[Frisco]

I assume they use the standard September 21-December 20 calendar, since that corresponds best to the seasons in the Northeast US. They did announce RoR for the Fall and had an initial release date of September 5, though, so they may use both calendars to give themselves flexibility.

Regardless, we should expect HD as late as December 20th. The reason we had RoR information released at this time last year is because of the September 5th release date. If they plan on releasing it in November or December this year, I'm sure we can expect similar time frames for pre-orders/information--3 months prior to launch. So if HD is launching on December 20th, expect pre-orders by September 20th.

Whining about how last year by this time we had RoR information is comparing apples to oranges.

[Mausen]

I just prefer to forget about the launch date and be surprised when it happens

+1 Same here.

[Levarust]

Btw, what about 20 Quetions of August? Not today, I presume? :-/

[donxavier]

I really think this expansion won't come out until early 2014. Nothing really to base that opinion on other than the fact that it's August and we've heard next to nothing about the new expansion. Turbine has not, at least to my knowledge, been to any of the trade shows advertising or even talking about this expansion. We've had no mention of a pre-order and certainly nothing has been said about beta. There's less than five months left in 2013. They're cutting it mighty fine if they're still trying for a 2013 release date. Beta alone could easily eat up a couple of months if RoR and RoI are anything to go by.

My concern as to why they're staying so silent about the new expansion is because whatever new game mechanics they're hoping to introduce with this expansion are not working. I love LOTRO but they always seems to trip themselves up when trying to introduce new tech: Draigoch and MC being two of the most recent examples. I'm certain other game companies have the same issues but LOTRO is one of the few games I play online so I'm not aware of the problems other companies are facing with their products.

[Rothan117]

Yes, there is so little worth doing in the game now that I have pretty much moved on and have no plans of pre-ordering this time, a first going all the way back to Moria. I log in from time to time to see how the kin is doing but it shrunk to a shadow of itself. This time I am not buying until I know just what is in the expansion and if it is buggy or not.

Turbine's problem when it comes to getting me to order the next one is that I have found other things to do while this game sits in a void with nothing really to do and no meaningful information on what is coming. The content patch of Wildermoore was awful and seems to have been slapped together with little real effort or thought put into it, just slap another rep grind in and try to flog some more stuff on the store. Hytbold was such an overdone grind I could not bring myself to do it on my alts at all or even bother grinding the rep to buy the teal rings for them. Unlike previous expansions where I had all my alts to max by this point, this time I have most of my toons still sitting between 78 and 80 with only my main and two alts at max and only my main has had any real play time after hitting max, the other two, hit max and logged and not played them since.

[Souldan]

This is only your subjective point of view. So it is not the "official" british summer start. Modern calendars are official, thats why Turbines plans are based on them and not on your subjective seasons.


In general I dont understand that so many people doubt it when Turbine said it will come in fall 2013 (until the 20 December!). Over 4 and a half month to go, beta phase was never longer then 2 month (correct me if i am wrong). So in case preorder and beta phase starts similar at 1st October (I expect it earlier) there is enough time for being in the "fall plan". And we have just the 2nd August.

People doubt because a) for some, it is their nature and b) they tend to go by past experience. As pointed out, if you were on BR last year, testing actually launched end of July for a Sept release date that later got pushed back to October due to problems. It is not illogical to wonder how we can expect to have everything up and running by Dec. 20th if no testing phase date has even been announced, let alone launched since that has thus far been the pattern. Of course it is logical to point out HD is a different expansion, with different things in it, and so could therefore follow some other planning. But the question of not understanding why people point out past patterns is fairly easy to see. It is not whinning; it is merely pointing out what has so far been typically done. Since no info to the contrary has come out other than a remark from Sapience (buried in I forget which thread now), about how the expansion info will come out later than people may think, there is nothing else to base ANY impressions on. All is speculation until proven otherwise.

[dansav]

I have been playing the game since closed beta, played at least 4 times a week and preordered every expansion. When Rohan came out I liked that it did not have a raid right away since I could enjoy taking my time doing the content and not do the mad rush to the next level cap to raid. However, once the so called raids were released, they were released way to late and they were lame from my view. Now I feel the game has become nothing more than away to drive people to the store and as far as HD release date, based on the quality of the past two releases, I can only assume they are having issues.

[Lohi]

>> You should really check your calendar, 1st May is not the start of summer, not in Europe and neither in Boston. It is the 21 June.

This stuff is always fuzzy. Different uses have different definitions. Ie, typical summer holidays usually start end of May, and the general public does call that "Summer". Likewise, most people will say that all of December is Winter. You really can't get scientific with these designations or point to generally agreed upon standards that cross all contexts.

[Cadd_EU]

Here in Sweden I don't think we even have an official date for start of a season. Summer solstice is known and celebrated (yes, it's a holiday) as Midsummer so I very much doubt anyone here would accept any sort of "official" date as summer starting at that point. We do have specified that at minimum 3 weeks of vacation should be available in the summer months of June, July or August so I guess that's the most official "start of summer" we have here.

[GregJL]

No, no, my friend. I see it too. And I don't understand, so...

...KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!!

Nah.

Nuke it from orbit.