Release 85 now.

[GrinAlready]

While I've been through all this content multiple times, I have friends that joined Angmar so they could experience things beyond SoA for the first time. When I play with them, we read all the text and take things at their pace. While I have other characters that are at 75, geared up and doing instances, newer players/characters are experiencing the game at first-timer speed and may not be through Dunland, yet.

Besides, I stopped playing live servers when legendary servers came out, so I'm hoping I'll have time to experience what will, to me, be new content that's come out over the last few years even though it'll be years old by the time we get there.

I hope we'll let the new folks (and the old folks who are experiencing things for the first time) enjoy the ride, too.

clink, clink

 

[Gazoline]

Just FYI ppl, we are 14 months in to the server and the caps has been raised a third time now.. 50 start, then 60, 65 and now 75.
That is not as many have said, 3 months per cap...
is 3 months was to apply it would have been:
November 1st 2024 level 60
Febuari 1st 2025 level 65
May 1st 2025 levek 75
August 2025 1st level 85
November 2025 1st 95

Well you get my point, we are behind..

 

[GrinAlready]

Just FYI ppl, we are 14 months in to the server and the caps has been raised a third time now.. 50 start, then 60, 65 and now 75.
That is not as many have said, 3 months per cap...
is 3 months was to apply it would have been:
November 1st 2024 level 60
Febuari 1st 2025 level 65
May 1st 2025 levek 75
August 2025 1st level 85
November 2025 1st 95

Well you get my point, we are behind..

Not behind at all.

Perhaps some folks you've listened to said 3 months per cap, but before this pair of legendaries opened SSG said we could expect them be faster than Treebeard (6 months each cap), but slower than Shadowfax (3 months each). You're basing things on Shadowfax's schedule.

In addition, they have not given any kind of advancement schedule, so they aren't locked into anything and can change things from region to region.

clink, clink
GrinAlready

 

[Player1]

3 months per cap is too short, unless the intention of these servers is to please only a small faction of the community. I highly doubt that is the goal, though.

 

[FeanorDidNothingWrong]

This is a laughable request now, but it was absolutely insane 2 weeks ago. People that don’t play LOTRO all day every day should get a chance to experience the legendary servers at each level cap. 3 months is just fine. Isengard is one of the most iconic raids in the game. It doesn’t need to be rushed through.

 

[istvana]

The plan all along has been to start off taking more time for the initial waves of content. Then get a lot faster for some of the expansions but not necessary all of them. That is why content release was billed as variable rather than every 2 months as in Shadowfax or every 6 months as in Treebeard. History says that Treebeard was far more popular than Shadowfax so that whether or not you feel impatient - most players probably feel otherwise.

 

[Gazoline]

When the server first opened, we had around 1,500 to 2,000 players online daily.
Now, we’re down to about 200 active players, barely 10% of what we started with.


Sure, some joined just to check out the 64-bit client and then moved on. But the real reason most players left is simple: the progression has been far too slow.


The majority of people came to the Legendary Server to relive the old content or experience it properly for the first time with their favorite class. They didn’t come here to grind five or six alts to cap, complete every deed on every character, or treat this like the main/live servers. So once they finished the content on their main, they ran out of reasons to stay.


You could see this pattern clearly in many kinships, they filled up fast, everyone ran the content together, and then one by one, they disappeared. That’s how we went from thousands to a couple hundred.


Some people argue that three months per cap is too fast. But for the 90% who already left, and the many more who’ll likely leave around level 85 or 95, it’s been painfully slow.


If we keep stretching caps to six months or more, the population will keep shrinking until the server becomes a ghost town. At that point, either the devs will close it, or the remaining few won’t have enough people left to run group content at all.


For reference, the 65–75 cap took me about 10 days to finish completely: leveling, all deeds, instances, landscape, and gearing. Nobody really wanted it to be that easy, but after enough people complained that the content was “too hard,” the devs overcorrected and made it trivial. So now, most players log in, clear everything quickly, and then disappear until the next cap.


Each cycle, more players skip coming back entirely.
And if that continues, the server will die, not because of lack of interest, but because of pacing.

 

[Player1]

When the server first opened, we had around 1,500 to 2,000 players online daily.
Now, we’re down to about 200 active players, barely 10% of what we started with.


Sure, some joined just to check out the 64-bit client and then moved on. But the real reason most players left is simple: the progression has been far too slow.


The majority of people came to the Legendary Server to relive the old content or experience it properly for the first time with their favorite class. They didn’t come here to grind five or six alts to cap, complete every deed on every character, or treat this like the main/live servers. So once they finished the content on their main, they ran out of reasons to stay.


You could see this pattern clearly in many kinships, they filled up fast, everyone ran the content together, and then one by one, they disappeared. That’s how we went from thousands to a couple hundred.


Some people argue that three months per cap is too fast. But for the 90% who already left, and the many more who’ll likely leave around level 85 or 95, it’s been painfully slow.


If we keep stretching caps to six months or more, the population will keep shrinking until the server becomes a ghost town. At that point, either the devs will close it, or the remaining few won’t have enough people left to run group content at all.


For reference, the 65–75 cap took me about 10 days to finish completely: leveling, all deeds, instances, landscape, and gearing. Nobody really wanted it to be that easy, but after enough people complained that the content was “too hard,” the devs overcorrected and made it trivial. So now, most players log in, clear everything quickly, and then disappear until the next cap.


Each cycle, more players skip coming back entirely.
And if that continues, the server will die, not because of lack of interest, but because of pacing.

I would argue, and have been, that the population decline was primarily due to SSGs ineptness of "difficulty" changes, beginning with Mines of 'Morale'-ia (or Mits and Morale-ia, whichever you prefer), which they ended up backtracking on. Toss in a completely overtuned Turtle, which honestly should've been the easiest raid of that expansion cap, imo. Those changes are a great recipe for reducing player interest and set in motion the population decline. It's a shame because group activity was actually very alive and well for most of MOM.

That said, they never addressed class balance and tome balance issues before rolling content out, so you had extreme views of whether it was a success or not, and that fed into more difficulty issues with Mirkwood and ITA. This caused a huge drop, probably the biggest 'permanent' population loss. SSG released raids and dungeons that didn't provide any benefit to running, and severely limited which players and classes could run the t2 content successfully. I'm no genius, but even I can see how removing any incentives and/or fun away from a playerbase will lead to them stop playing. It wasn't that content was too slow, it was non-existent.

While I do feel some of the 'perma-lost' players came back to TOO, not all of them have. Population actually looked good again for a few weeks, but they can't undo that back-of-the-mind feeling that future SSG decisions will be made poorly.

One of those decisions could very well be moving forward too quickly so that accomplishments in the current cap are wiped away too hastily.

 

[Gildoriel]

I would argue, and have been, that the population decline was primarily due to SSGs ineptness of "difficulty" changes, beginning with Mines of 'Morale'-ia (or Mits and Morale-ia, whichever you prefer), which they ended up backtracking on. Toss in a completely overtuned Turtle, which honestly should've been the easiest raid of that expansion cap, imo. Those changes are a great recipe for reducing player interest and set in motion the population decline. It's a shame because group activity was actually very alive and well for most of MOM.

That said, they never addressed class balance and tome balance issues before rolling content out, so you had extreme views of whether it was a success or not, and that fed into more difficulty issues with Mirkwood and ITA. This caused a huge drop, probably the biggest 'permanent' population loss. SSG released raids and dungeons that didn't provide any benefit to running, and severely limited which players and classes could run the t2 content successfully. I'm no genius, but even I can see how removing any incentives and/or fun away from a playerbase will lead to them stop playing. It wasn't that content was too slow, it was non-existent.

While I do feel some of the 'perma-lost' players came back to TOO, not all of them have. Population actually looked good again for a few weeks, but they can't undo that back-of-the-mind feeling that future SSG decisions will be made poorly.

One of those decisions could very well be moving forward too quickly so that accomplishments in the current cap are wiped away too hastily.

With all the instance changes they did I decided to run instances on the Legendary Server only as many times as is necessary to get all the legendary rewards I want. Otherwise I just level up, do the epic and then do lower level regional stuff for deeds to cap my virtues. Then I'll wait for next cap and be happily playing on my normal server.

 

[Gazoline]

https://lotro-wiki.com/wiki/Legendary_Server

For Angmar, we haven't stretched the caps to six months or more in ANY of the releases thus far. None of the releases are even a full five months. I mean, you're just spouting hyperbole to make your point.

SoA: August 1, 2024
MoM: December 4, 2024
SoM: April 24, 2025
RoI: August 27, 2025

Even if its 4 to 5 months, its still to long.
Level 85 to 100 has very little end game content. You can disagree if you want, bit the evidence is in previous Legendary servers.. .if you dont speed it up, the server dies.

 

[Hierok]

Good is relative... .

Well, 75 to 100 has no content, so yeah haha.

 

[Norbert]

Well, 75 to 100 has no content, so yeah haha.

You should visit an optometrist then.

 

[Gazoline]

You want level 85 content released now FOR YOU. It has nothing to do with the health or longevity of the LS,

Not true.
In my kin for example, nobody os online as everyone has cleared all content. In kins i have friends in, same story.
So, i want the update for me and the servers health.

 

[Hierok]

Not true.
In my kin for example, nobody os online as everyone has cleared all content. In kins i have friends in, same story.
So, i want the update for me and the servers health.

Rohan is always the breaking point cause there is just nothing to do. Erebor is yawn, epic battles suck and the leveling is very slow haha.

 

[Gazoline]

Rohan is always the breaking point cause there is just nothing to do. Erebor is yawn, epic battles suck and the leveling is very slow haha.

And maybe now youre starting to understand why it needs to speed up the level caps.

 

[Player1]

I can imagine it's yawn if you've done it before, but fortunately there are players who have not that can keep the server alive.

 

[Hierok]

And maybe now youre starting to understand why it needs to speed up the level caps.

I always understood that, and that is exactly the reason I have not played on the legendary servers past Milkwood.

 

[Ragar0th]

Not true.
In my kin for example, nobody os online as everyone has cleared all content. In kins i have friends in, same story.
So, i want the update for me and the servers health.

sorry to tell you dude 85 will just be worse, so will 95, and 100. Even 105 that everyone is looking forward to will be a joke. 115 will be even easier than 105. I can't speak to 120 since they basically skipped that cap on Treebeard, but 130 was the only semi-balanced cap throughout the whole legendary server experience. Whatever few players left by then will likely quit anyway because the content is "too hard" lol.

the most humane thing SSG can do is just rush through all the caps and let these servers die a quick death, then bring the Nazgul system to live servers.

I probably sound jaded but after so many failed experiments with these legendary servers it's pretty clear that SSG just doesn't have the resources to do them properly.

 

[Gazoline]

The pace of Angmar and Mordor through Rohan in particular is something we are discussing. We will almost certainly not "skip" a level cap increase, but we might well speed up the pace of deployment to help get people past it and onto other content.

Cord wrote this on discord... think he might have listened...

 

[Coharie]

You knew what you signed up for when you joined the legendary world, I've done quest and crafted more than I ever did on the regular servers, I've been playing 15 years and don't feel rushed to make level or buy gear for gold, on Angmar I reach level cap in a timely manner and then work on that chars crafting, move to the next char do content somewhere else, reach level cap and so on, I liked that I had to start fresh and worked for my gear and rely on my main for handouts, speeding up the server is a bad idea in my opinion, I even tried a new class Runekeeper and rather enjoy it