Nemo Nisi Mors

Codemasters Online today unveiled The Lord of the Rings Online™: Siege of Mirkwood, the digital expansion to the award-winning massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG).



Siege of Mirkwood will expand the online world of Middle-earth where players will join forces to press further eastward into the dark, foreboding and treacherous forest of Mirkwood and take part in the epic conclusion to Volume II of The Lord of the Rings Online.

Siege of Mirkwood will be available as a digital download this autumn and provide players with an increased level cap, a new region including the legendary evil fortress of Dol Guldur, major enhancements to combat and Legendary Items and the introduction of Skirmishes, a new system where players will train customizable soldiers and take them into battle as part of the War of the Ring.

“2009 has been a year of unprecedented growth for The Lord of the Rings Online and the launch of Siege of Mirkwood will end the year with a bang,” said Jeffrey Steefel, Executive Producer of The Lord of the Rings Online. “As the game expands east of the Misty Mountains, players will face the raging war and shadow that has spread across Middle-earth and the new Skirmish system will thrust players and their soldiers into the War of the Ring.”




NEW FEATURES:

• The Epic Conclusion to Volume II: Mines of Moria™ – Under the command of Celeborn and Galadriel, players will fight through vast armies of Orcs alongside the Elves of Lórien in a battle that will take them to Dol Guldur, the fortress of the Ringwraiths. This update includes Book 9 and the Epilogue to the sweeping epic tale begun with the award-winning Mines of Moria expansion.
  
• Increased Level Cap — Players will be able to advance their characters up to level 65, gaining access to new traits, virtues, skills and class quests.
  
• Join Epic Battles On Demand! — Jump into battle with the new Skirmish system. Skirmishes offer endless action in repeatable, randomized instances for up to 12 players. Create and lead your own army of customizable soldiers into battle, training them to greater skill as you earn victories against the forces of shadow. Stand and fight wherever violence erupts with the ‘World Join’ feature, which lets you and your friends band together to fight Skirmishes from anywhere in Middle-earth.
  
• Take up Arms! – Infiltrate the dark jails, deadly arenas and savage stables of Dol Guldur, the fortress of the Ringwraiths, and strike a blow against Sauron’s forces in new 3 and 6-player instances. Call upon your fellows to adventure into the most deadly 12-player raid yet and face the ultimate challenge – the Nazgûl Lord!
  
• Major Gameplay Enhancements – Turbine continues to improve the award-winning experience of LOTRO with major improvements to the combat and Legendary Items systems. Players will experience improved responsiveness when in the heat of battle. Players will also be able to create and craft their own customized Second and Third Age Legendary Items from raw materials and grow their weapons’ power to level 60. Achieve new Legacies, new titles, and a fourth Runic slot that will make Legendary Items even more unique and powerful.

Details of Codemasters Online's exclusive European Siege of Mirkwood pre-order and package offerings will be made available soon.

From IGN:

With the expansion, the level cap is being raised to 65 and legendary items' power can grow up to level 60. Players will also be able to craft second and third age legendary gear for the first time.

One big feature being introduced is the Skirmish system. Skirmishes are repeatable instances that can be customized to the party's level and size (1, 3, 6 and 12-person). A difficulty level can also be chosen. Party members can get into the skirmish from anywhere in the world and they will return to the location from which they entered after the battle. These are meant to be quick battles lasting from 30-40 minutes each.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of skirmishes is the soldier, an ally that you can create and customize as far as race, role and appearance, and who also levels up through skirmish points obtained every time you complete one.

Various other existing features are being enhanced as well. The main one is the combat improvement, which now allows auto-attack to be interrupted any time a skill is invoked. The sluggish feel of combat in LOTRO has always been a complaint among players. Mounts will be converted to skills so you don't need an inventory slot for every horse in your stable and a new mount will be introduced. Players will also have access to a shared storage space across all characters in the account.

More new from the Developers:

• Siege of Mirkwood will have a base price of $19.99. As with Moria last year, we're going to have a set of early upgrade offers that are very compelling. We're not quite ready to unveil those details yet, but we'll keep you posted.
• The epic story continues on in Volume 3 as a regular content update early next year.
• Some of the improvements to the game coming with Mirkwood will benefit everyone, but the key features will require the Mirkwood upgrade.

Account-wide Storage Space

Also on the list of changes is the addition of shared storage space for accounts. Currently, shared storage space appears to be limited to 50 items, though this was likely to increase over time in a similar manner to purchasing further storage space for your character's Vault.

It is unconfirmed if this is a sign of "bind on account" items being on the horizon.

And just like vaults, what's put in at one vault NPC can be taken out at another. As long as the characters are all on the same account. [source]


Overhaul to mounts and new mounts:

Mounts are being changed over to skills, not items. This means you will no longer be required to carry a mount in your inventory. In your skills panel, there will be a "mount" tab, which will list your current stable of mounts -- your horse, your other horse, your goat. And, because of mounts becoming skills, a number of issues with mounts will simply cease to exist: You will now be able to pass into instances and new zones while on your mount; you can now interact with NPCs (including vendors) from your mount; and you can now use emotes on your mount. In other mount news, there's a brand new goat, the Wild Goat. [source]

You can have multiple horses. Each is a seperate skill, but there is no limit I am aware of on the number you can have. There will be a Dev Diary on the new system, so that should give you a ton of info when it's published. [source]


New Raid: Dol Guldur:

The new raid does require Radiance. Not been stated how much and how easy/hard it will be to obtain the said amount of radiance. The primary raid will be in Dol Guldur, and will feature a multi-boss instance culminating with a fight featuring both a battle against a Fell Beast and, finally, the Lieutenant of Dol Guldur, second-in-command among the Nazgul. The TentonHammer video shows the raid ingame. [source]

The new raid will also contain a cluster of smaller instances with both 3-man and 6-man spaces.

Map of Mirkwood - First Glance:

Developer Diary: Mounts 2.0

Quote from Codemasters

You Can Lead a Horse to Water…
…But you cannot make it drink. Until Volume II Book 9: Siege of Mirkwood, that old proverb applied very well to the mounts of Middle-earth. Every rider knew it was all fun and games until you wanted to interact with your environment; every door in Middle-earth was closed to you, every NPC uninterested in your business, and every skill you learned completely blocked while riding. It didn’t take long after buying your first mount to feel just how unforgiving and restrictive the system could be.

To understand why the system was so restrictive, you have to look at the technology behind it; the channeling system. It’s the same system originally developed to deliver pies across the Shire and pour buckets of water on fiery blazes, and it was later leveraged to saddle players onto mounts. The channeling system was an adequate solution during a time when developing a new system was out of the question, as development was coming to a close for the launch of Shadows of Angmar.


No More Horsing Around
Following the launch of Mines of Moria, we started discussing the prospect of giving mounts their own system and embarked on some basic investigation to understand the scope of what it might take. There was really no safe method of tacking on more features or special conditions to the channeling system to get everything we wanted from mounts. In fact, doing so would likely contradict the original intent of the channeling system and still not guarantee a satisfactory outcome. The decision we made was to give mounts a system of their own with two main goals to guide its development:


Restrictive, then Flexible
One of the first things we decided to do when developing the system was to maintain all of the restrictions of the original system. The day we flipped the switch there was literally no difference between the two. Little by little, we eased the restrictions to test usability, file bugs, and polish the experience. This worked out fairly well as we were able to separate the design into components and concentrate work on one feature at a time. If we ran out of time then we could simply keep some restrictions in place and polish the features we had completed in time to ship.

Lastly, to save development time, we wanted to re-use as many of the previous assets and scripts as possible without having to reinvent the wheel. We were able to re-use items, icons, animations, sounds, content, and underlying scripts, again allowing us to focus almost entirely on usability. In the end we were able to provide a system that allows you to live life fairly comfortably while saddled to your favorite mount.


Extendable
One never knows what the future will bring, so the system should support incremental changes without risking stability or the original design intent (as we undoubtedly risked if we augmented the channeling system further).

A Horse of a Different Colour
Getting down to the brass tacks, here is the list of new features and improvements thanks to the new mount system:

Mounts as Skills
Mounts are now toggle skills! They can be quick-slotted like other skills or executed directly from the new Mount panel (Character Journal -> Skills -> Mount). A new keyboard shortcut can be set to promptly access your mounts panel (using Key Mapping Options). Since mounts are now skills, you can feel free to collect all of the available varieties without having your packs fill up – no more having to choose between festival horses or exchanging them at a vendor!

One Less Item
Even though we still rely on a mount-item in your pack, it’s a temporary item used to grant the appropriate mount skill to you. Once used, the item will grant a skill to you and be deleted. If the item is quick-slotted, it will be replaced by the new skill. Regardless of what mount item you purchase you will receive the correct mount type for your race. Gone are the days of mistakenly purchasing the wrong mount for your race (“But I wanted a pony!).

Item Usage
Some items can be used while riding, such as food, potions, and other miscellaneous items. Even your Map Home item can be used while mounted and you will appear at your destination still riding your mount.

NPC Interaction
Almost every NPC can be interacted with while you are mounted. There are two exceptions to this:

1. Stable-masters will still require you to dismount before purchasing a ride. You can still talk to stable-masters while mounted to view the list of destinations.
2. Bards will automatically dismount you when managing your traits.

Door Usage
Every door can be opened and passed through while mounted. If the door leads to a place that does not allow riding, you will appear inside dismounted from your horse. Some special types of ”doors” may not be usable while mounted, such as ladders.


Skill Usage
Depending on your class and level, you may have skills that can be used while riding. Hunters and other classes that enjoy swift travelling can use these skills while mounted. In fact, almost every class has at least one skill that can be used on a mount. No combat skills can be executed while mounted, as that would constitute mounted combat and that’s a horse of a different colour!

Crafters will be particularly happy to hear that tracking skills can be toggled on/off while riding (although gathering resources while riding is not allowed).

As a side-note, some skills may become unusable while mounted in the Ettenmoors to help preserve a level playing field. Currently, only the Hunter’s tracking skills have this restriction. Hunters can still enjoy tracking on horseback while riding outside of the Ettenmoors.


Player Emotes
Several popular emotes will now animate you while mounted, and even more, while not animated, are now allowed while mounted. The following emotes have animations for when you are mounted*: Bother, Bye, Calm, Cheer, Drink, Eat, Munch, Fidget, Followme, Hail, Look, Lookaround, Salute, Think, Wave, Cry, Roar, laugh (lol), SwordSalute, Shakefist
*Some of the animations are reused with the hope that unique animations can be made over time.

A majority of the other emotes do not animate, but are allowed while mounted. In these cases the player does not animate but the emoted text is broadcast to those nearby.

Horse Emotes
While sitting idle you can make your horse/pony/goat randomly play one of three different animations. Simply hit the spacebar.


Mount Health
Your mount’s health will now regenerate over time. Just as in the old system, getting hit will reduce your mount’s health and critical hits will knock you off your mount. Unlike the old system, you can stay mounted as long as you don’t get knocked off, or fall into a deep body of water.


Mount Display Panel
A new mount display panel will now appear after summoning your mount. The panel displays the mount’s name and health.


Renaming Your Mount
Every mount arrives with a personal name that can be changed by right-clicking the Mount Display Panel and selecting the “Rename” option. Unlike pets, your mount’s name is not visible to those around you.


Mount Discount
Along with your first level 35 mount comes a new trait granting you a discount on all other common mounts. The trait is granted to you even if your first mount happens to be a reputation mount or pre-existing festival mount (new festival mounts will not grant this trait). The discount itself only applies to the common mounts sold by Eogar, Son of Hadorgar.


My Little Pony (or horse)
Players can now gain access to their first horse or pony at level 20. This is a slower version of a normal mount and has less health, but gets you saddled up sooner in the game. The cost of this mount is 220 silver and looks the same as the Founder’s Bree-horse. As a result of this change, Founders can start riding their mounts at level 15!


Grey Horse/Pony
If you deleted your Grey Horse/Pony to make space in your pack you can purchase a replacement from Eogar.


Mustering & Summoning While Mounted
Tired of telling your fellowship to dismount before mustering them? Never fear, they can now accept your request without dismounting.


If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride
This update focused on making mounts more enjoyable to use rather than adding all new functionality. Before you ask if you can lop off orc heads from atop your favorite ride, remember that was never a goal of this update. File this one under “Quality of Life” improvements.

Enjoy the new mount system!

Developer Diary: Shared Storage

Quote from Codemasters.

Shared Storage is a new storage system designed to enable sharing between all characters on a given account! Until now, your only options to share items between characters were to mail them individually, deposit them into a personal chest at your home, or have a friend hold them while you switched characters.

Shared Storage can be accessed by visiting any Vault-keeper and opening the standard Vault interface you are already familiar with. A new button, “Open Shared Storage”, will be available on the Vault interface:



Any items currently in your standard Vault can be easily transferred to Shared Storage and vice-versa, simplifying the process of sharing items with your other characters.

Shared Storage Interface
The Shared Storage interface has new features to help you manage your shared items. You can sort items alphabetically by name (A-Z, Z-A) and filter by item type. The list is populated dynamically from the items in your shared storage space.



Filtering items is as easy as selecting the Filter drop-down menu and picking the item-type to display:



For your convenience, bound items can be stored in Shared Storage -- but only the character they belong to can retrieve them. The Filter Bound Items option will hide items that don’t belong to your current character. Unique items cannot be stored in the Shared Storage.

This new feature should make managing items across multiple characters much easier!

Info on pricing in the US, and the Adventure Pack, an additional addon with mounts for all your characters and shared storage. I am yet unclear how this all ties together.
Official Post: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=293697

Compilation of Q&A on it: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=293911

Quote from Codemasters

We recently asked players to submit questions to the dev team. We had originally planned to publish 10-12 of the most common questions and their answers. Due to the number of questions we received, however, we’ve decided to publish several sets of questions and answers over the next few weeks.

General

Q: Is riding a horse going to become a toggle skill in Siege of Mirkwood? If so, can we use the track resource toggle skills at the same time?

A: The ability to use resource tacking skills while mounted is just one of many changes coming for the mount system with Siege of Mirkwood. We’ll have an entire Developer Diary on all the changes to mounts!

Q: Are there any plans to open up the UI to customizations and plug-ins?

A: We do not have any plans to open up the UI to full customization and plugins at this time. However, we do have some changes that will allow for more personalization coming with Siege of Mirkwood that we think players will appreciate.

Q: Is there any chance of a shared bank slot for easier trading among characters on an account?

A: We recognize some players want to be able to move materials and items between characters on the same account without having to use the mail system or using housing chests, and it’s something we want to make available to players. We’ll have full details shortly.

Q: Will we be seeing any improvements to the mail system, like multiple attachments?

A: While we do not have plans to add multiple attachments at this time we are adding a new feature to the mail system!
Mail dropdown: When typing into the "To:" field while composing mail, you will now get an auto-complete box which contains a filtered list of people that match the letters you've typed into the box. These people are pulled from your friends list, your kinship list, and your alternate characters on the current account.

Gameplay

Q:Why is the combat system set up the way it is? It sometimes feels laggy and unresponsive.

A: We’ve heard a lot of feedback on the combat system and we’ve been looking at ways to improve the feel of the system for some time now. With Siege of Mirkwood, we’ve had an opportunity to address this. Look for an upcoming dev diary to explain all of the changes and improvements to the system.

Q: Why do the drops for Legendary Books and pages seem to be more difficult to find since Book 8? Is this something that will be addressed soon?

A:We’re reworking how legendary books and pages are acquired for Siege of Mirkwood, and we’re looking at giving players multiple ways to finish these quests.

Raids/Instances

Q:Why was the decision made to go the route of radiance gating? Were there other options on the table other than gear? Couldn’t it be placed on a trait?

A: The team wanted a means of gating content behind a progressively difficult barrier that could be overcome. At the time a popular method to gating raid content was to require players to go through long sequences of quests strung throughout instanced content. Instead LotRo chose to have players acquire tangible rewards in the form of radiance-statted gear.

We think that the look and the attributes of our “Tier Sets” are rather rewarding in and of themselves. That they further unlock the ability to acquire even more powerful gear is a big plus. Trait-based gating feels less rewarding as players progress through the various milestones of the process so we’ve decided to stick with using radiance gear to gate access to our raids.

That said, there is a rather significant change to radiance coming with our next update that should give players a better means of gearing up to more easily defeat the encounters of our raid zones:
Players will no longer cower at anything greater than 8 dread levels. Starting at 8 dread players will cower at the same rate as they currently do at 5 dread on live. All current penalties to attributes and skill levels still apply as they do currently on live though so you’ll still have to do some level of gearing prior to entering the new raid zone. Only the cowering behavior is being modified to allow for greater discrepancy between the radiance level on a player’s gear and the gloom level of the raid zone.

Further, content is planning to somewhat relax the amount of gloom experienced throughout raid zones while incrementally increasing it for boss encounters and challenge modes. The amount of gloom experienced from cluster to cluster will gradually increase as it has in the past; but it should be easier to gain initial access to raid zones as well as overcome the gloom of a given raid zone in order to get back on the hope side of the scale via consumables.
Coupled with the upcoming changes to make dungeon-rewarded radiance gear more easily obtainable, we hope that this change to our dread system provides an easier ramp-up to those frustrated with the old means of radiance gating. At the same we expect to provide a suitable challenge for top-end kinships looking to push the envelope. Again, more success should equal more gear which in turn should equal an easier time overcoming our raid content.

Traits and Deeds

Classes

Q: Why can a burglar be attacked and seen while in Hide In Plain Sight? Is this a bug or working as intended?

A: Please bug occurrences of this – include the monster names of what saw you, what level you are, what level the monster was. You can file a bug report by typing /bug while in the game, or use the Report a Bug link on the LOTRO-Europe forums.

Q: Is there a reason for the freeze animation during minstrel heals? Is there a chance that it will be changed so we can heal on the move?

A: Minstrel heals were not designed to be used on the move, and we have no plans at this time to change it.

Combat

Legendary items

Q: Is anything being done to reduce the randomness of the Legendary Item system, specifically in regards to legacies and relic crafting?

A: We have significant changes to the Legendary Item system in the works for Siege of Mirkwood. We’re taking a look at everything from the experience required to level items to how legacies are added. We’re also planning on revamping the selection pools themselves to remove some of the less desirable legacies entirely.

Q: Will Lore-masters ever get legendary swords?

A:Every class has two legendary items to slot – Lore-masters have staves and their books. If we allow this for Lore-masters, they would have a third legendary item to slot, breaking the balance of the system.

Q: Are there any plans for Guardians to be able to have legendary Shields?

A: As with the Lore-master, the Guardian already two legendary items: his weapon and his belt. We don’t have any plans to provide a third item type to all classes at this time.

PvMP

Q: What are your plans for the effects of PVP changes in the PVE game world and vice versa? Can a PVP zone simply disable or alter character settings while in that zone?

A: When making changes to PvMP, we’re very careful to not impact the PvE game. While we have some effects in place that give benefits to the PvE world as a result of successfully meeting goals and objectives in the Ettenmoors, we choose things that are least likely to upset our PvE-only players.

Our current tech does allow us to disable various skills or settings while in PvP zones. For example, cosmetic gear is disabled in the Ettenmoors to prevent players from hiding their true class under another class’s armor type. There are also skills, such as the Hunter’s Desperate Flight, that are disabled within the Ettenmoors.

Q: Can we look forward to a new PvMP zone soon?

A: Currently, we have no plans for a new PvMP zone.