Thread: Update 7 content

Originally Posted by Jadzi

It's up now. And already, I found the single best thing from this update.

Hm. I have no idea how I don't have that title. >.<

Is the Monday downtime for Update 7?

Two interesting additions:

1) Bonus quest within an instance that activates an additional boss;
2) Berserk timers.

I like the idea, truly - I'm absolutely in favor of taking good ideas from other games.

Originally Posted by Esselnor

Is the Monday downtime for Update 7?

It says maintenance. This usually does not involve updates.

Originally Posted by Esselnor

Is the Monday downtime for Update 7?

No. U7 will be around early June, I believe

Originally Posted by Uron

No. U7 will be around early June, I believe

Actually, I would wager it'll be much earlier than that. With U6, Bullroarer was up for a relatively short time before launch, not to mention that Turbine tries to release new updates every month.

May's will be U7.

Originally Posted by Lestache

Two interesting additions:

1) Bonus quest within an instance that activates an additional boss;
2) Berserk timers.

I like the idea, truly - I'm absolutely in favor of taking good ideas from other games.

Those aren't additions. Those have been around for years.

Originally Posted by Jadzi

Those aren't additions. Those have been around for years.

In LOTRO? Perhaps I've just lost the memories of how some of the SoA instances worked way back when, but which instances in the game have had either of these mechanics?

From the BR release notes:
Increased bag space!
Players have long requested additional bag space for their characters. We appreciate that storage is always at a premium and more space is always better. It’s also a very complicated thing to make happen. Engineering requirements, server performance, and database space all have to be considered. We’ve looked at the request from every angle and we’re very happy to report that a sixth inventory bag will be made available as part of the Riders of Rohan pre-purchase.

Translation:
We are making a major game improvement that players have asked for for a long time. But we are not giving this to all players (we don't improve the game for free any more). VIPs will not get this. You can buy it in the store. But we will make it seem like you must pre-order RoR to get it just to increase our sales of this expansion. We will also not tell you how much TP it will cost, again to trick some people into pre-ordering just in case this is a better deal.

Or maybe it's: this will be available to everyone after RoR comes out (for TP), but you can get it now if you pre-order RoR.

Originally Posted by Cindir

From the BR release notes:
Increased bag space!
Players have long requested additional bag space for their characters. We appreciate that storage is always at a premium and more space is always better. It’s also a very complicated thing to make happen. Engineering requirements, server performance, and database space all have to be considered. We’ve looked at the request from every angle and we’re very happy to report that a sixth inventory bag will be made available as part of the Riders of Rohan pre-purchase.

Translation:
We are making a major game improvement that players have asked for for a long time. But we are not giving this to all players (we don't improve the game for free any more). VIPs will not get this. You can buy it in the store. But we will make it seem like you must pre-order RoR to get it just to increase our sales of this expansion. We will also not tell you how much TP it will cost, again to trick some people into pre-ordering just in case this is a better deal.

Or maybe it's: this will be available to everyone after RoR comes out (for TP), but you can get it now if you pre-order RoR.

I suspect the latter, unfortunately. Sigh. Anyway, was going to pre-order for one of my accounts so will get it with that. I will wait on my 2nd and use my 500 points monthly to buy it.

Originally Posted by Lestache

In LOTRO? Perhaps I've just lost the memories of how some of the SoA instances worked way back when, but which instances in the game have had either of these mechanics?

Bonus quests that enabled additional bosses? The original Fornost had that. You couldn't fight Zanthrug unless you had completed the quest to kill the leader of Dol Dinen and gotten the quest Leader Unveiled. Leader Unveiled gave you a breastplate you had to take to Fornost and place in a courtyard. Then and only then would Zanthrug come down from the ramparts.

A similar mechanism was used in Moria for the class quests. You had to complete a quest chain to get a quest to go into an instance and use an item, thus summoning an extra boss.

As for berserk timers, if the fight with Fruz (in the Rift) went over 15 minutes, he'd be able to use Execute to... pretty much execute people. More directly, the Morroval Task-mistresses in Lumul-nar got Morroval's Rage, a 1000% increase in damage if their fight went over 45 seconds.

I had to log in to plus rep this:

Originally Posted by Jadzi

Here's the thing about the whole "but you're killing the story!" angle.

-What- story?

...

Fornost was an odd man out. A very odd man out.

The story of Fornost is the story of the past of SoA. Amarthiel had a number of guards pledge their immortal souls to her, and used that to bring ruin to the city. Amarthiel falling, the Witch King being routed by Earnur. All of these things set up the backstory of the Epic. And yet, they're only touched on very lightly by the quests. There's one quest to gather the morgul swords, and it mentions in passing the story of what happened at Fornost. But most of the other quests are focused on very niche things. Routing a goblin camp. Felling some bears. Finding some arrowheads to prove hobbits fought at Fornost. All of this tucked away in the farthest corner from civilization. Half the quests didn't even go into the instance, but merely dealt with the landscape portion. It did very, very little to build the feeling of Fornost's significance, and ultimately left it just a big spooky castle.

The epic only took players to the gates, and there was a healthy walk through the ruins to even find the local camp with most of the quests. If you wanted to do Darkness Within, you either had to have picked it up and kept it, or you'd have to march all the way back to Esteldin to get it. Even if someone shared it, it required you to go back and talk to a historian to get a brief of the backstory. Then there's Collar for the King, where you had to pick up a collar off a warg in Dol Dinen, cart it to Esteldin, cart it to Amon Raith, and then hang onto it until such time as you got all the way to the last tower of Fornost and descended to the basement to find Krithmog. And then there's Leader Unveiled, where you had to complete a chunk of the Esteldin quest lines, the Dol Dinen quest lines, beat the commander of Dol Dinen, and then cart a breastplate off him all the way to Fornost to even be able to activate a particular boss.

And even then, most of the bosses were dull and completely forgettable, lacking much if any personality. Sambrog has a persona, it's built up during the Epic and during the approach to his lair. Ivar has it in spades, helped out again by the Epic, and also by some of the Agamaur quests. Naruhel's tale, the tale of nature corrupted by the refuse of war, and a fallen sister of Goldberry at the heart of it, is very nicely done. So what exactly is Remmeneg's tale, outside of the blanket "he's a random guy that swore his soul to Amarthiel" the four tower bosses share? Where's his personality? Ultimately he's a suit of armor stuck on a tiny balcony in a rain storm. Einora and her dogs have more personality than that.

A story can be told perfectly well in installments. It can have a beginning at the area hub, a number of installments in the middle, and an end at the final boss. And no, the instance really need not entail the tale of how you spent an hour wading through faceless foot-soldiers. That can be accomplished perfectly well by the landscape, thank you.

About 5 months ago I ran a level 75 toon through Fornost solo to finish up some old quests and work out some last bit of Esteldin rep. I actually saw for the first time the room where the palantir was kept. Wow, did they ever get that one aspect WRONG! Many years ago when I ran Fornost with groups, by the time we reached this roon, we'd been in the instance well past 2 hours, (and with some groups past 3, not to mention the groups that broke up long before reaching that point.) Anyway, we always skirted the outside of the room to avoid all the mobs and I honestly never saw the palantir stand in all that time. I wouldn't expect to look for it in a lower room entirely closed off by exterior walls, so I just assumed it was a detail they never added.

To my shock, it is there, albiet a terrible location that really fails miserably to convey how palantirs actually function. There is a reason why the stones are located at the SUMMIT of Weathertop, ATOP an Elvin tower on the white downs, in a HIGH domed tower of Osgiliath, and so on. Lets not even get to discussion of how the story and history of that annuminas stone is utterly missing.

All the story associated with Fornost is this thin and/or non existent. To folk who know the histories of middle earth, that fore-knowledge might make this location significant. That said, if I had no clue what Fornost meant in the scheme of middle earth, this former instance failed (& FAILED UTTERLY) to convey the tale of its place & history in middle earth.

The architecture, even in ruins was underwhelming. The layout was so obviously telegraphed to force you to spend that amount of time moving through the maze to get that first key. I somewhat get back when Fornost was new and places like Evendim, Forochel or anything past Eregion wasn't in the game, they may have needed to waste gamers time consuming the little content available. I don't accept that excuse now.

If you want me to spend that long in a game, if you actually want to aim for an epic experience, DO NOT fill a place with hours of trash mobs, and linear forced paths to specific points of interest. Instead, step up your game and enthrall me with architecture and visuals that tell as much of the story or more, than quest dialogue would. Make the fights interesting and varied and not reliant upon gimmicks. Us gimmicks, by all means, just don't make the core of the experience dependent upon those gimmicks.

Anyway, I am getting ranty. There is a story to Fornost for certain. That former instance did a VERY poor job of telling it.

Originally Posted by devintownsend

what is the big deal over the fornost revamp? After a year and a half+ w/ 1 lvl 75 and 2 other toons well on their way, I have never experienced fornost since I never see requests for it and there's never any interest since it's too long w/ no good reward. this will be a welcome addition so I can finally play it

Originally Posted by ColorSpecs

You still won't have played it. You'll be playing the wing that is deemed the quickest for the most reward. Playing "fornost" in this manner is like saying completing the Rift skirmish is experiencing the Rift.

Sorry you never had the opportunity to play Fornost.

my last words on this topic.

I'd say you didn't miss anything but a very long slog through trash mobs, in underwhelming architecture, to fight forgettable bosses, all the while being feed a very thin story that barely pays lip service to the history and lore of Fornost.

So don't worry about it.

Originally Posted by MoonwalkIntoMordor

Fornost was really not an absurdly long instance, unlike what most people try to make it seem.

Yes it was.

The more you experienced the instance, the faster it got, but to do the entirety of the instance from scratch on level with 5 others on level took a minimum of 3 hours. If you did it in less than that, you didn't do every quest, or you skipped something, or you weren't on level.

A new group never having experienced Fornost would take much longer. Every new group I've ever participated in, broke-up by the time we got to the key drop. MOST new groups broke up before that.

Having to return to kill Ramael after freeing 20 spirits (originally could not share with group members) who was behind the gate and the 2 routes to him beyond a slog through mobs and a maze that was just copypasta architecture... please.

Fornost was absurdly long.

Originally Posted by BINKLEY1

MISSING: Fix Music

<snip>

Regards,
Gloimli @ Windfola

This gets my vote. I find it very disconcerting to hear birds chirping in the 21st.

Regarding Fornost, I went through it with some kinmates when we were all 65, and it still took about 2 hours. And it was 2 hours of slogging through annoying mobs, especially the trolls. I really enjoyed the boss fights, but getting there was a huge hassle. That said, I would prefer that the revamp was merely going through the instance and reworking the quest levels, enemy types, etc. while keeping the main shape of the instance intact.

My two cents. Feel free to agree or not at your leisure.

Originally Posted by Vandervahn

Yes, because, as you said, it was the only accessible method to get s4m. Has nothing to do with the instance being chopped up or not.
Having the instance chopped up means that you have the choice of running parts or all. Wether or not the developers remove certain elements that people consider "epic" is entirely unrelated. The only functional difference between a crawl and having it in parts is that you have to visit the instance join panel in-between.
That is the ONLY concession one has to make for having a more functional experience. Every other gripe is a result of more or less logical content design decision and unrelated to the chopping.

The point I was trying to make was that chopping up an instance is not the only way to make it more accessible or desirable to run, unlike what some people are claiming. It's not a way to make it desirable at all. It's just a different design approach.

Also, the thing about "having the choice of running parts or all" doesn't make sense at all. That is not something mutually exclusive with an instance being a whole instead of in small bits. Before they chopped up Great Barrows, Garth Agarwen or Fornost, you could still pick which parts you wanted to run.

Great Barrows had sections. You could do the Maze or Thadur only, then leave. You could do both, then head to Sambrog. If someone in your group had the key, you could skip both of them and just do Sambrog.

Garth Agarwen also had sections. Once you got to the "courtyard", you could go to whichever side you wanted to go. Again, if someone in your group had the key, you could head directly to Naruhel.

Fornost, not surprisingly, also had sections. You could do Megoriath or entirely skip him. You could head diretly to Rhavameldir or skip him and head to the stronghold if you had the key to the shortcut. Zanthrug and Krithmog were both optional as well.

Carn Dum and Urugarth also have tons of shortcuts and skippable, optional fights. You can clear the whole thing if you want, or you can take the shortest path to the boss you want to fight.

Do not tell me that you have to chop up instances to give players the option to pick and choose. Early SoA instance content tells me otherwise. The developers are destroying the sense of scale and non-linearity. For what? For nothing, as far as I can see.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to MoonwalkIntoMordor again.

Great post man.

Originally Posted by Cindir

From the BR release notes:
Increased bag space!
Players have long requested additional bag space for their characters. We appreciate that storage is always at a premium and more space is always better. It’s also a very complicated thing to make happen. Engineering requirements, server performance, and database space all have to be considered. We’ve looked at the request from every angle and we’re very happy to report that a sixth inventory bag will be made available as part of the Riders of Rohan pre-purchase.

Translation:
We are making a major game improvement that players have asked for for a long time. But we are not giving this to all players (we don't improve the game for free any more). VIPs will not get this. You can buy it in the store. But we will make it seem like you must pre-order RoR to get it just to increase our sales of this expansion. We will also not tell you how much TP it will cost, again to trick some people into pre-ordering just in case this is a better deal.

Or maybe it's: this will be available to everyone after RoR comes out (for TP), but you can get it now if you pre-order RoR.

Yet another reason not to renew VIP subscriptions.


I am really looking forward to the creeps having typos fixed; can't wait for that!

no-one else find it strange that the new skirm is level 20+? seeing as the whole Gwyillion saga takes place from around level 65, and ends around 72/73ish, I would have thought that would be starting point :/ also strange for a level 20 to be in Dunland... these are minor, unimportant concerns... but it's the little things that count, right?

Personally, I think Update 7 will be a great addition for us LOTRO fans, and a sort of "shut-up" from the devs while we wait for RoR.

So apparently completion of "To the Dolven-view" will give a goat as a reward after Update 7? How does that work if someone's already completed the quest? On my Hunter, I just got into Moria and I'm fairly sure I completed that quest a few days back. :| The currency cap (I'm Premium, so 5g) prevents me from obtaining a goat otherwise, so if they aren't... mailing live goats to people or something, I'm gonna be kinda irked.

Originally Posted by Geindir

no-one else find it strange that the new skirm is level 20+? seeing as the whole Gwyillion saga takes place from around level 65, and ends around 72/73ish, I would have thought that would be starting point :/ also strange for a level 20 to be in Dunland... these are minor, unimportant concerns... but it's the little things that count, right?

Seems to be a typo in patch notes. People from BR reported it's a L70-75 one.

Originally Posted by Malachi108

Seems to be a typo in patch notes. People from BR reported it's a L70-75 one.

this has pleased me It's only a little detail, but it was important to me. can't wait for it, I personally love this storyline

Originally Posted by DurrHurfles

So apparently completion of "To the Dolven-view" will give a goat as a reward after Update 7? How does that work if someone's already completed the quest? On my Hunter, I just got into Moria and I'm fairly sure I completed that quest a few days back. :| The currency cap (I'm Premium, so 5g) prevents me from obtaining a goat otherwise, so if they aren't... mailing live goats to people or something, I'm gonna be kinda irked.

well if we can get a horse in an envelope *sniggers* we can surely get a goat too? I worked it out though, try are those thigs you add water to and watch them expand... make sure to dry them on the oven door though, nobody likes a soggy horse :-)

Small updates that make me smile are always welcomed

And now i will even bring another char through moria, since questing in the first half wont drive me insane

Thank you Turbine for adressing our complaints. Keep it coming and next give some love to Hunters (i know you know they need it ).

PS: i will not even have to set my graphics to very high brightness to avoid plunging into the depths

Originally Posted by MoonwalkIntoMordor

The point I was trying to make was that chopping up an instance is not the only way to make it more accessible or desirable to run, unlike what some people are claiming. It's not a way to make it desirable at all. It's just a different design approach.

Also, the thing about "having the choice of running parts or all" doesn't make sense at all. That is not something mutually exclusive with an instance being a whole instead of in small bits. Before they chopped up Great Barrows, Garth Agarwen or Fornost, you could still pick which parts you wanted to run.

Great Barrows had sections. You could do the Maze or Thadur only, then leave. You could do both, then head to Sambrog. If someone in your group had the key, you could skip both of them and just do Sambrog.

Garth Agarwen also had sections. Once you got to the "courtyard", you could go to whichever side you wanted to go. Again, if someone in your group had the key, you could head directly to Naruhel.

Fornost, not surprisingly, also had sections. You could do Megoriath or entirely skip him. You could head diretly to Rhavameldir or skip him and head to the stronghold if you had the key to the shortcut. Zanthrug and Krithmog were both optional as well.

Carn Dum and Urugarth also have tons of shortcuts and skippable, optional fights. You can clear the whole thing if you want, or you can take the shortest path to the boss you want to fight.

Do not tell me that you have to chop up instances to give players the option to pick and choose. Early SoA instance content tells me otherwise. The developers are destroying the sense of scale and non-linearity. For what? For nothing, as far as I can see.

I can only assume it is easier to scale chopped up instances. Its easier to debug 50 events in an instance, make it bug free and move on than 500 events in a HUGE instance and get your fingers tangled. And view it from all points of view:

Some want to do short instances and keep it fun. Or just do one part and not feel they are skipping things. Those are thrilled that the instance is now "chopped off" since there is no other way for them to do what they wanted. Their way of playing if not satisfied by a long-long instance.

Others like you want to do the instance as a story and progress through it. You can do that when the instance is in one piece, but you can also do that when it is fragmented.

So they chose the path that allows both playstyles. Having choosen the path you wanted it would only mean they would give no regard of the requests of some players. Having chosen the current path well they keep as many players happy as they can.

Originally Posted by Landrovas

I can only assume it is easier to scale chopped up instances.

Yet they scale the entire ettenmoors every time there's a level increase.

Decided to pop by and see how everyone's enjoying fornost. I can't get a single kinnie or anyone from GLFF to run it, personally.