Update 28 Release

[Morellian]

War of Three Peaks was released yesterday, so here's quick summary of how the past 24 hours have gone, for anyone wanting to catch up. Please do correct me if I'm missing anything or anything is not quite right.

• With the new patch, the 64-bit client no longer works for a significant proportion of people. A few hours after release, there was at least a statement from Cordovan acknowledging the issue and a suggested fix and a "we're working on correcting it as quickly as we can". However, the fix does not seem to work for everyone, and many people are having to run on 32-bit and/or on DX9 (which still has significant unaddressed graphical bugs). More importantly, this issue was raised on Bullroarer a month ago, and was not addressed or fixed before release. So if SSG have been "working on correcting" it for over a month now since it became an issue on Bullroarer and still couldn't fix the problem, why was the release not delayed? And why was the problem not mentioned as a known issue in the release notes?
  
  
• A large proportion of EU players cannot purchase the expansion. To my knowledge this has not yet been addressed or fixed in any way. The new store & payment system seems to have multiple problems, this could have been avoided if the store page had been available for purchase before release day so people could iron out problems in advance and be sure to have access to the content once it went live. EDIT: as of 22/10, the store is now broken in a new way, and will take payment for the purchase but does not deliver the content. The issue of EU players not being able to purchase is still being ignored.
  
  
• There was close to zero marketing of this expansion, many players I saw online yesterday had no idea it was even coming, many people did not know what web page to go to in order to purchase it, when you eventually do find the web page there are no pictures of the cosmetics, mounts or pets that come with the higher editions.
  
  
• Comparing the ultimate edition of WoTP to that of Minas Morgul, WoTP is missing the following: additional cosmetic outfit, additional carry-all, additional character slot, level 120 valar item, any exclusive titles, equippable XP accelerator, housing teleport item (now locked behind VIP), 5 100% XP boost scrolls, 20 empowerment scrolls, 5 reputation boosts (and new race, but this is understandable). The cosmetic outfit that does come with the collector's/ultimate edition is incomplete: it only has three pieces (chest, boots, helm), as opposed to a full set (chest, boots, gloves, shoulders, helm, cloak), so the ultimate edition essentially has half a cosmetic set as opposed to two full ones like before. The mounts are also near-identical to each other, one just has some armour on and one doesn't.
  
  
• The new "Weapon Aura of Orc's Bane" appears to be bugged and does not work as intended/advertised. EDIT: this bug does not seem to be universal, it works for some but not others.
  
  
• Despite dedicating a whole thread to asking for feedback on "Missions", none of the feedback given appears to have been listened to. Instance lock is still in place, mobs don't load into the instances properly, you still have to run back to the start to find the chest with your loot before you leave or you get no coins, the rewards are incredibly lacklustre, instances are far too short, boring, easy, and repetitive, as was explained in detail when feedback was asked for a month ago. EDIT: it seems the one thing that was changed based on feedback was having the 80 missions deed reward 10k virtue XP rather than 2k.
  
  
• Class balance feedback was not listened to. The vast majority of Bullroarer feedback about the class changes was related to Guardians and overwhelmingly indicated the changes in the release notes were unhelpful/pointless and did not address any of the fundamental problems with the class. To my knowledge not one letter of Guardian notes changed from BR #1 to live. Still no comment on Shield Use Rank which is useless still after TWO YEARS. Not a single easy band-aid fix out of the dozens suggested on the forums was applied. No update for Rune-keepers despite acknowledgement from SSG that the nerf applied to the class earlier this year was badly thought-out and left the class in a bad state. No update or comment on an LI rework/fix despite that being promised for this year.
  
  
• Ember rewards from MM/Langflood were halved, supposedly due to the "additional sources" of Embers now available (presumably, double the amount...?). However, quest reward gear from Elderslade cannot be deconstructed for Embers. So far I have gotten zero Embers from the new expansion to make up for what I'm losing in MM/Limlok (which in the case of MM, I paid for with real money less than a year ago). Oh, and the new T6 essences cost 7,500 Embers, and yes the cap is still at 10,000. EDIT: there is zero source of Embers in the new landscape content. Dailies reward some motes and landscape currency.

Let me know if there's anything I missed here, but I think this summarises the important points. I think it is not unreasonable for LOTRO players (i.e. SSG customers) to be asking for explanations for the above points.


I'll leave you with this image for those of you wondering about the quality of the update's actual quest content:

[Sovereign50]

War of Three Peaks was released yesterday, so here's quick summary of how the past 24 hours have gone, for anyone wanting to catch up. Please do correct me if I'm missing anything or anything is not quite right.

Ugh. No words. That picture completes it; generic, repetitive quests with generic, repetitive names.

ZERO effort. DBG have finally pulled on the strings too hard and they've snapped.

[HolyDuckTape]

+1 to all, this update is just one huge mess/rip-off

[Gunhard]

Only noticable change for me is halved embers, there are could be more sources for them, but in general i dont want to play twice more to get the same reward. Marketing and prices are devs decisions, if you dont want to spend 60$ or more just buy 20$ edition and move on. I see no point to complain here, coz nobody makes you buy that xpack in the first place. Other things including class balance i can mark as work in progress, ssg is limited in resources and its still corona thing around, especially in usa. Mistakes and bugs here and there happen.

[HolyDuckTape]

I see no point to complain here, coz nobody makes you buy that xpack in the first place. Other things including class balance i can mark as work in progress, ssg is limited in resources and its still corona thing around, especially in usa. Mistakes and bugs here and there happen.

Seems like they were fighting/prepared against corona for years now then lul

[Tirian-Hammerfist]

A blunt and fair assessment of many of the ways that SSG has shot themselves in the foot with this update.

The biggest one for me is the fact that not only are they trying to change the nature of VIP (moving away from giving access to content) without a single comment from Cord/Sev about this contentious issue, but they are also trying to sell the ultimate pack for the same price as Minas Morgul (labelled as a proper expansion), despite vastly less content.

SSG, you need to take control of the situation NOW and make serious amends. I'm sure people will still buy War of the Three Peaks, but I imagine it will not be in the numbers that you hope for, and that you'll also see a massive drop in VIP subscriptions when the time comes to renew.

You bought yourself a big pile of good will back in the spring/summer - but the attempt to con your customers and the appalling communication with regards to their concerns makes me really fear for the continuation of the game. I love the game, but enough is enough.

[WeirdJedi]

I just spent all day yesterday answering as many questions as I could about the expansion. I did not imagine how many people would mistake this expansion as the "Gundabad" expansion. That means people were referencing anything related to that expansion - What is the new level cap? Where are the river hobbits? Where do I get the new class?

Then there were the list of people who were confused when they couldn't access the new content. Certain individuals wondered why they were locked out of the quests. One person literally asked, "Is the expansion free to VIP?" to which I replied, "When is an expansion ever free to VIP?" I guess the idea of a mini-expansion you have to pay before an actual expansion wasn't getting through to people.

There was a sub-set of people who kept asking when the new expansion would be available. I think they got confused when they saw something about the expansion, but didn't realize it was for its own release. Then I recalled how many months beforehand the announcement was for Mordor and Minas Morgul. It was talked about for a year.

I thought there would be something more in the higher bundles. I thought that maybe they would throw in a race change token... or at least a title of some sort. I guess they can offer whatever they want at whatever price they feel like. All people have to do is not buy it. I think a part of me thinks they were just following expansion tradition by giving out three offers. Maybe it would look weird if they only sold Three Peaks for $20 or stuck everything in both higher bundles into one massive Collector's Edition.

[Laurelinarien]

[*]The new "Weapon Aura of Orc's Bane" appears to be bugged and does not work as intended/advertised.
[*]Despite dedicating a whole thread to asking for feedback on "Missions", none of the feedback given appears to have been listened to. Instance lock is still in place, mobs don't load into the instances properly, you still have to run back to the start to find the chest with your loot before you leave or you get no coins, the rewards are incredibly lacklustre, instances are far too short, boring, easy, and repetitive, as was explained in detail when feedback was asked for a month ago.
[*]Ember rewards from MM/Langflood were halved, supposedly due to the "additional sources" of Embers now available (presumably, double the amount...?). However, quest reward gear from Elderslade cannot be deconstructed for Embers. [If anyone knows how many embers you can get from the new dailies/weeklies, please let me know]. So far I have gotten zero Embers from the new expansion to make up for what I'm losing in MM/Limlok (which in the case of MM, I paid for with real money less than a year ago). Oh, and the new T6 essences cost 7,500 Embers, and yes the cap is still at 10,000.[/LIST]

I agree with everything you wrote and I wanted to add my 2 cents on these sections:

- The Weapon Aura is working, at least in my experience, upon being within 30 mts of an Orc, my Staff glows.



- The only thing I've seen regarding Missions that was addressed from the feedback thread was the rewards from the Meta deed. Some of us mentioned rewarding only 2k VXP for completing all 80 was not enough. That amount has been increased.



- I haven't gone back to MM/Limlok for weeklies. Are you referring to the dropped gear being cut in half (which it was, yes) or to the weekly wrappers? I won't be able to check those till Thursday. Besides that, the gear from the new area isn't only non-breakable, it's also bound to toon instead of account.. so it's literally vendor trash.

[Temelnosce]

I am done. I have been playing over 12 years but I am done. I refuse to pay any money for this joke, especially when it's causing even more bugs and problems -none of those have been addressed so it's doubtful they'll fix these new ones. I refuse to renew my VIP when they've trashed it. Does SSG think we're all a bunch of idiots? They are driving people away in droves.

[thinx]

War of Three Peaks was released yesterday, so here's quick summary of how the past 24 hours have gone, for anyone wanting to catch up. Please do correct me if I'm missing anything or anything is not quite right.

• A large proportion of EU players cannot purchase the expansion. To my knowledge this has not yet been addressed or fixed in any way. The new store & payment system seems to have multiple problems, this could have been avoided if the store page had been available for purchase before release day so people could iron out problems in advance and be sure to have access to the content once it went live.

The tax in the EU part of the store is zero, so there might be another error.

[Fr0striven]

Ugh. No words. That picture completes it; generic, repetitive quests with generic, repetitive names.

ZERO effort. DBG have finally pulled on the strings too hard and they've snapped.

I can't disagree with the other points, but that image is cherry-picked a bit. I played 5 hours of content yesterday and didn't have anything basic like that in what I completed and there was a decent variety so far. For $20.00 I'm satisfied, but I'm definitely not as invested as you all are being a newer player to the game and not really seeing the long term problems that exist with class balance and things like that.

Edit: I should say i ran into things like "collect this, collect that", but my current quest screen wasn't always full of just those tasks at the same time".

[Wyatt]

I am done. I have been playing over 12 years but I am done. I refuse to pay any money for this joke, especially when it's causing even more bugs and problems -none of those have been addressed so it's doubtful they'll fix these new ones. I refuse to renew my VIP when they've trashed it. Does SSG think we're all a bunch of idiots? They are driving people away in droves.

+1. I have been playing since initial SoA beta, have founder account but I will not buy this "expansion". Sorry SSG. When you released your intentions about Wo3P I decided to buy at least standard pack, but yesterday I saw the final offer and was strongly disappointed: I expected at least something added to the standard pack - zero, I expected you fixed obvious bugs that were found and submitted in the first rounds of beta - zero. And now you have some plans for Gundabad... Let me guess - it will have 1/6-1/3 size of Moria with a ton of bugs, the standard pack will be priced something around 50-60$, and ultimate will be 150$ for 2-items armour cosmetics set, 20k VXP and new rideable dog or cat... Stop it now or you will eventually ruin this game.

[Thugalvald]

since the most populated EU server can't play decently since march and ssg acting like everything is working fine i really hope folks from evernight won't buy this "new content". First because it is just 80 dailies and there is nothing fun farming a useless rep and second because we can't play, we can't get heard so just don't spend money to this company

[Moondog548]

War of Three Peaks was released yesterday, so here's quick summary of how the past 24 hours have gone, for anyone wanting to catch up. Please do correct me if I'm missing anything or anything is not quite right.

• With the new patch, the 64-bit client no longer works for a significant proportion of people. A few hours after release, there was at least a statement from Cordovan acknowledging the issue and a suggested fix and a "we're working on correcting it as quickly as we can". However, the fix does not seem to work for everyone, and many people are having to run on 32-bit and/or on DX9 (which still has significant unaddressed graphical bugs). More importantly, this issue was raised on Bullroarer a month ago, and was not addressed or fixed before release. So if SSG have been "working on correcting" it for over a month now since it became an issue on Bullroarer and still couldn't fix the problem, why was the release not delayed? And why was the problem not mentioned as a known issue in the release notes?
• A large proportion of EU players cannot purchase the expansion. To my knowledge this has not yet been addressed or fixed in any way. The new store & payment system seems to have multiple problems, this could have been avoided if the store page had been available for purchase before release day so people could iron out problems in advance and be sure to have access to the content once it went live.
• There was close to zero marketing of this expansion, many players I saw online yesterday had no idea it was even coming, many people did not know what web page to go to in order to purchase it, when you eventually do find the web page there are no pictures of the cosmetics, mounts or pets that come with the higher editions.
• Comparing the ultimate edition of WoTP to that of Minas Morgul, WoTP is missing the following: additional cosmetic outfit, additional carry-all, additional character slot, level 120 valar item, any exclusive titles, equippable XP accelerator, housing teleport item (now locked behind VIP), 5 100% XP boost scrolls, 20 empowerment scrolls, 5 reputation boosts (and new race, but this is understandable). The cosmetic outfit that does come with the collector's/ultimate edition is incomplete: it only has three pieces (chest, boots, helm), as opposed to a full set (chest, boots, gloves, shoulders, helm, cloak), so the ultimate edition essentially has half a cosmetic set as opposed to two full ones like before. The mounts are also near-identical to each other, one just has some armour on and one doesn't.
• The new "Weapon Aura of Orc's Bane" appears to be bugged and does not work as intended/advertised.
• Despite dedicating a whole thread to asking for feedback on "Missions", none of the feedback given appears to have been listened to. Instance lock is still in place, mobs don't load into the instances properly, you still have to run back to the start to find the chest with your loot before you leave or you get no coins, the rewards are incredibly lacklustre, instances are far too short, boring, easy, and repetitive, as was explained in detail when feedback was asked for a month ago.
• Class balance feedback was not listened to. The vast majority of Bullroarer feedback about the class changes was related to Guardians and overwhelmingly indicated the changes in the release notes were unhelpful/pointless and did not address any of the fundamental problems with the class. To my knowledge not one letter of Guardian notes changed from BR #1 to live. Still no comment on Shield Use Rank which is useless still after TWO YEARS. Not a single easy band-aid fix out of the dozens suggested on the forums was applied. No update for Rune-keepers despite acknowledgement from SSG that the nerf applied to the class earlier this year was badly thought-out and left the class in a bad state. No update or comment on an LI rework/fix despite that being promised for this year.
• Ember rewards from MM/Langflood were halved, supposedly due to the "additional sources" of Embers now available (presumably, double the amount...?). However, quest reward gear from Elderslade cannot be deconstructed for Embers. [If anyone knows how many embers you can get from the new dailies/weeklies, please let me know]. So far I have gotten zero Embers from the new expansion to make up for what I'm losing in MM/Limlok (which in the case of MM, I paid for with real money less than a year ago). Oh, and the new T6 essences cost 7,500 Embers, and yes the cap is still at 10,000.

Let me know if there's anything I missed here, but I think this summarises the important points. I think it is not unreasonable for LOTRO players (i.e. SSG customers) to be asking for explanations for the above points.


I'll leave you with this image for those of you wondering about the quality of the update's actual quest content:

Excellent illustration of the tragic and cynical disrespect that SSG management/ownership are showing their customers and their passionate and talented developers!

I elaborated my frustration here as one of the many LotRO fans DESPERATE to support the game yet feeling spurned away from doing so.

[Morellian]

I agree with everything you wrote and I wanted to add my 2 cents on these sections:

- The Weapon Aura is working, at least in my experience, upon being within 30 mts of an Orc, my Staff glows.

...

- The only thing I've seen regarding Missions that was addressed from the feedback thread was the rewards from the Meta deed. Some of us mentioned rewarding only 2k VXP for completing all 80 was not enough. That amount has been increased.

...

- I haven't gone back to MM/Limlok for weeklies. Are you referring to the dropped gear being cut in half (which it was, yes) or to the weekly wrappers? I won't be able to check those till Thursday. Besides that, the gear from the new area isn't only non-breakable, it's also bound to toon instead of account.. so it's literally vendor trash.

Thanks for pointing these out! Seems the weapon aura is unreliable or seems to have different effects for different people. I suppose 10k VXP is better than 2k, still that is a pretty meagre reward for such a time-consuming deed, and deeply disappointing (but somehow not surprising) that that's literally the only thing that's been changed.

As for weekly rewards being nerfed, it was my understanding that they were, but I haven't been able to check yet either. If they haven't, fair enough, I retract that point, though it's increasingly seeming like there is no way to earn embers from this new update whatsoever, so we are still losing out on embers without being given anything in return.

I can't disagree with the other points, but that image is cherry-picked a bit. I played 5 hours of content yesterday and didn't have anything basic like that in what I completed and there was a decent variety so far. For $20.00 I'm satisfied, but I'm definitely not as invested as you all are being a newer player to the game and not really seeing the long term problems that exist with class balance and things like that.

Edit: I should say i ran into things like "collect this, collect that", but my current quest screen wasn't always full of just those tasks at the same time".

I took a screenshot of my quest tracker whilst wandering through the new area because that's genuinely what it looked like. It's not cherry-picked. I think I found one quest in the whole War of Three Peaks map so far that isn't "kill x of this".

If you are a newer player then you will probably be less sick of the recycled quests than some of the rest of us, but the "plant banners in specific locations", "pan the river", "destroy enemy siege weapons", "collect supplies", "destroy supplies", etc. etc. are all carbon copies of the same quests we've been given ever since Mordor expansion.

[Elmagor]

Most of complains with pure technical problems what was created with rushed Lotro Market revamp. It can be fixed (and must be fixed) soon. If SSG don't allow some regions or contries pay for their products... well, I don't know if they want to fix it or not. Let's hope what Lotro Market working better with Gundabad. And where we can find list of regions/countires what can't purchase anything right now?

[Thugalvald]

I am done. I have been playing over 12 years but I am done. I refuse to pay any money for this joke, especially when it's causing even more bugs and problems -none of those have been addressed so it's doubtful they'll fix these new ones. I refuse to renew my VIP when they've trashed it. Does SSG think we're all a bunch of idiots? They are driving people away in droves.

dude on evernight we can't play the game since march and have been crying for almost 8 months, it's not new to us that ssg considers us for stupid cows

[Nostro44]

Good summary.

[Laurelinarien]

Another thing that's been bugging me... I remember the reaction when the crafted LI relics became gated behind a raid (Anvil)... I wonder how long it's gonna take for the backlash now that the new crafted relics are gated behind a 20 bucks "mini expansion" XD or is it not considered as bad?

[Altair6]

The tax in the EU part of the store is zero, so there might be another error.

Says it's included. If you look at the bottom of the page you see this on the UK page, "* incl. VAT where applicable" (That's the UK tax). French and German pages are similar.

This is normal for prices quoted in £ and € on the Lotro Market.

[LotroVidz]

Will people finally stop praise the devs for the amazing quest/landscape content? Epics are decent. But for the devs doing these quests, have you lost all of your imagination lol? There are other mechanics for quests you could use.., yet you ONLY use pick up this and defeat this design. We want fewer quests but of higher quality. This is such a low effort lol, I feel sick after a few minutes of questing.

[Wolfhead]

I've been a loyal customer since nearly the beginning and have bought all the expansions and packs so far, but I'm not shelling out 20 bucks for this. Sorry devs, that's a misfire.

[Morellian]

Update: it would appear that there are zero daily/weekly repeatables in the new update that reward embers. No landscape source of embers whatsoever. The only possible source of embers is the new instance & raid (only from teal items, not purple, and they have also been halved). Speaking of:

• T1 instance/raid rewards are way, way too good. SSG explicitly stated T1 was going to be a "story mode", a change actually in line with what the community wanted and had asked for, for once, but players have made clear from the start that a difficulty nerf should also come with an equivalent loot nerf. Story mode difficulty should give story mode rewards. Raid difficulty should give raid rewards.
  
  
• I highly anticipate a nerf to at least T1 loot incoming shortly for these instance ""cluster"", especially regarding the T6 essences (which drop on 'story mode' T1). Not making any recommendations either way as to what people who bought the expac already should do with that information.
  
  
• For anyone wondering about the raid, it has two boss fights taking place in one arena, (just an instanced version of the landscape Gates of Gundabad area, no new map just for the raid), kind of similar to the Halls of Black Lore fights (except that the 6man has more fights...). Extremely underwhelming even though I wasn't expecting much. T1 took about 10mins to complete.

[Palenen]

Allow me to add to the bugs.. I hadn't logged in for a couple days so last time was before the update. At character selection screen, their broken Elven Male model is further broken now with the skin textures. I only see where the head meets the neck and partially above the breastplate. That neck/head line has become prominent. His neck skin textures look to be smudged or smeared about.

Reading some of the feedback, It makes me think programmers were laid off and replaced with lesser versions.

[Bruno_Lotro]

Where's the curator??

Items

Featured Instance ...
....
The Curator now offers...

She suppose to be there ? (Bree)