Thread: Epic Story

For the people who haven't seen it.

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/2241-r...han-epic-story

edit: Contains spoilers of the Argonath, so if you don't want to see it yet, don't follow the link.

More pictures: http://cstm.mymiddleearth.com/2012/0...w-screenshots/

Epicness and pure Middle-Earth feeling! All those over the top Tyria-Azeroth-Bla-worlds cannot compete with that feeling.

Theoden looks very good as well.

The Argonath look so great that i almost cried. Just absolutely epic and breathtaking. I have a feeling that the session play with Boromir's death will be amazing as well. This update has alot of potential and i really hope it reaches it.

"Take up arms alongside the lords of Rohan as they seek to defend their lands in three new Books of LOTRO's Epic Story."


Well, this is quite a contradiction to the recorded livestream, where Aaron Campbell is asked, how many new epic books will be featured and he states the following:

"Puuuuhhhh.... A LOT, the epic story's going to be huge. There are at least 6-8 books out there."

Bravo Turbine... Either your senior producer is badly misinformed about key details of his work or he lied to the community.

Edit: For those of you, who want to hear it themselves, here's a link for the recorded livestream:

http://de.twitch.tv/mmorpgcom/b/325403194

It's somewhere in the first third/half, when they are riding down the Entwash-Vale, when the question comes up.

Maybe the difference is due to 3 books released in September, and the rest being released in updates over the life if the expansion. That would seem consistent with previous expansions.

Both statements could be true if you take the longer view.

The Concept Art of all the Lords of the Riddermark is amazing! I hope their models will look just as awesome!

I also think it is a little premature and also ridiculous how some people just seem to wait for a moment to scream "They lied".

Originally Posted by Farbolo

"Take up arms alongside the lords of Rohan as they seek to defend their lands in three new Books of LOTRO's Epic Story."


Well, this is quite a contradiction to the recorded livestream, where Aaron Campbell is asked, how many new epic books will be featured and he states the following:

"Puuuuhhhh.... A LOT, the epic story's going to be huge. There are at least 6-8 books out there."

Bravo Turbine... Either your senior producer is badly misinformed about key details of his work or he lied to the community.

Edit: For those of you, who want to hear it themselves, here's a link for the recorded livestream:

http://de.twitch.tv/mmorpgcom/b/325403194

It's somewhere in the first third/half, when they are riding down the Entwash-Vale, when the question comes up.

They talk about it at 0:32:02, and the real quote is. "Uuuuh, a lot, the epic story is really long, aaeehh... six, eight, i don't know, it's a big one."

Originally Posted by Farbolo

"Take up arms alongside the lords of Rohan as they seek to defend their lands in three new Books of LOTRO's Epic Story."


Well, this is quite a contradiction to the recorded livestream, where Aaron Campbell is asked, how many new epic books will be featured and he states the following:

"Puuuuhhhh.... A LOT, the epic story's going to be huge. There are at least 6-8 books out there."

Bravo Turbine... Either your senior producer is badly misinformed about key details of his work or he lied to the community.

Edit: For those of you, who want to hear it themselves, here's a link for the recorded livestream:

http://de.twitch.tv/mmorpgcom/b/325403194

It's somewhere in the first third/half, when they are riding down the Entwash-Vale, when the question comes up.

I actually thought about this when i saw that too, I don't know if they mean 3 books in Rohan itself ? Are there a few before we get there, and 1 or 2 in fangorn ?

Originally Posted by Caileen

They talk about it at 0:32:02, and the real quote is. "Uuuuh, a lot, the epic story is really long, aaeehh... six, eight, i don't know, it's a big one."

Yeah, when I heard that I decided not to take it at face value, as he clearly didn't know the official number.

He probably would have been wiser to have said "We're not revealing exact numbers yet, but there'll be plenty."

Given we had only one book last time, and only two books (one and an epilogue) for Mirkwood, three books is plenty. Of course, the Isengard book was huge, so it really does depend how many chapters are involved in these three books.

Moria had six books, but many of them were very short, some with just 5 chapters. The Isengard book had many more chapters, but also many quests per chapter in some cases, which I'd expect to see again.

If we did get six to eight books, I'd expect much shorter ones. The content would probably be the same, except it'd be divided into a larger number of smaller chunks. I'd rather have three decent-sized books than one super-long one or eight super-short ones.

We will almost certainly get future books in new updates too, such as the one in December, like with RoI.

-Bel

Would be interesting to see a breakdown of Epic books by actual number of quests in them. Isengard had 1 book, but with 30 chapters, so at least 30 epic quests (or more if some chapters were composed for several parallel quests). How many epic quests did the 6 books released with Moria add up to?

Edit: OK after a little bit of checking, Moria was launched with 54 Chapters (and a little more than that if you count indivudual quests within those chapters)

Chapters went up to 69 with the addition of books 7 and 8 later. Mirkwood launched with 30 chapters counting the Epilogues.

With Isengard the structure of Epics changes a lot. While in previous Epics a chapter roughtly/generally equates to 1 quest, in Isengard you have chapters such as Chapter 7: Aiding Tûr Morva, with 14 quests.

In my opinion, the Isengard book (III.4) will remain an oddity, mostly because the expansion was released a little bir prematurely. I remember some developers' statements that the original structure for books 4 and 5 was the story to be split in three books, but since not all of the material was ready, they decided to throw eveyrthing in a single book. After all, it makes more sense to have three books in the place of books 4 and 5, as the story has three distinct episodes: first you go around the Dunlending tribes, then you are taken elsewhere (prefer not to give spoilers), and finally you aid the Rohirrim. I hope this time eveyrthing is ready in time, so those three new books will be probably with normal length.

Regarding otherbepic books, my guess would be that the additional 6 to 8 ones refer to the entire remaining region of Rohan. This would conclude Volume III, with 12-14 books in total, which is comparable to Eriador, considering that you have less landmass to cover this time. My guess would be that West Rohan should be fully fleshed out next year, though I'd be eager to see what solution they will have for the first really large battles coming up, like Helm's Deep.