Novembre 2010 : les infos de la mise à jour

[Gortack]

Le patch note officiel est en ligne

http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Release_Notes_November_2010_Update_Official

[Gortack]

ah tiens, un truc qui ajoute un peu de motivation aux escarmouches

Reputation has been added to daily quests as follows.

    * Men Of Bree reputation to “Defense of the Prancing Pony”
    * Men Of Bree reputation to “Thievery and Mischief”
    * Thorin’s Hall reputation to “Siege of Gondomon”
    * Elves of Rivendell reputation to “Ford of Bruinen”
    * The Elgain reputation to “Stand at Amon Sul”
    * Mathom Society reputation to “Trouble in Tuckborough”
    * Malledhrim reputation to “The Battle in the Tower”
    * Malledhrim reputation to “Assault on the Ringwraiths' Lair”
    * Malledhrim reputation to “Breaching the Necromancer's Gate”

Sachant que la réputation "frère" va permettre d'obtenir quelques chouettes montures (voir posts précédents )

[Gortack]

Le journal de dev concernant le revamp de l'Ered Luin (zone débutant pour les nains et les elfes)... où l'on apprend qu'il y aura pleins de nains poings bourrus différents désormais !

http://community.lotro-europe.com/news.php?search=yes&keyword=&id=10913&type=Dev%20Diaries

[Medhavati]

Ca ne change pas grand chose... Moi, les nains je les préfère morts !

[GorothTur]

Ca c'est plutôt sympa, ça participe à l'immersion je trouve, des ethnies différentes dans les races.

Ils ont fait pareil pour l'Eregion à l'arrivée de la nouvelle région.

Il faudrait qu'ils fassent pareil pour nos persos, genre un Nain des montagnes grises différent d'un des montagnes bleues, les Hommes du Gondor et ceux du Rohan, etc.

[Gortack]

Amis Maitresses et Maîtres du savoir, voici les photos de votre nouvelle ménagerie   Happy face les amis !

http://www.casualstrolltomordor.com/2010/11/lore-master-pet-talismans-guide/

[Glawdys]

Enfin la fin de ces plaies qu'étaient les amulettes !

Quant à ma salade, le seul skin qui me plait vraiment est celui du store. Snif.

[Walm]

Interview résument ce qu'on savait déjà...
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/interviews/58065/Lord-of-the-Rings-Online-Rise-of-Isengard-Interview

VE: What can you tell us about the Rise of Isengard expansion that we don't know yet?
Adam Mersky: This is a digital expansion launching next fall and we've been pretty high level and somewhat cryptic about it on purpose so we have something to talk about next year. The level cap will increase to 70, and we're going to add three new regions - Dunland, the Gap of Rohan, which I would like to emphasize is NOT Rohan. I know people are very excited about Rohan and I don't want to disappoint them.

Aaron: The Gap of Rohan is guarded by the tower of Isengard there. Isengard is the (third) region, which includes Saruman's tower Orthanc.

VE: What state will Orthanc be in this expansion? Will it be before or after its destruction?
Aaron: It will be before its destruction. In terms of the story, we're still very much towards the beginning of The Two Towers, the breaking of the fellowship and such. But from the player point of view, they're journeying with the Grey Company to meet with Aragorn to walk the Halls of the Dead. So much of their travels right now in the storyline are really focused around their first encounter with Saruman, journeying down the great road that leads to the lost kingdoms of Arnor and such. Not to confuse the issue, Saruman is the main character, you are journeying southward toward the Misty Mountains into Dunland and then into Isengard.

VE: Are they going to venture into Fangorn Forest perhaps?
Aaron: In terms of the lore, we know only a few sentient beings who have ever been to Fangorn and returned so players are not going to be able to see Fangorn quite yet. You will be seeing the White Hand, which is Saruman's army, at their strength.

VE: What can you tell us about the planned monster play changes?

Aaron: One of the big things that's important for us is that we're going to give the players a new monster play area. They've been living pretty much in the Ettenmoors so we're giving them a new space to fight over. We still haven't made a final call on the exact details of that. Certainly the area around Isengard and maybe special spaces is an option too. We think it's pretty exciting and we're also going to be expanding the opportunities for monster players to skill up and gain new advancement paths.

VE: The expansion is coming out about a year from now. What sort of updates can we expect between now and Fall 2011?
Aaron: We got a wide range of things planned. Adam would like to start with this year.

Adam: Yes, we have the aptly named "November Update," which is launching on the 29th of November. That will bring a lot more free content into the game. Right now, one of the great things about the game is that you can go all the way to level 50 and have access to the epic quests but we kept the expansion areas gated for you to purchase. We still believe that expansions are an important part of growing LOTRO and we don't want to do it piecemeal ("Oh, here's the front door of Isengard..."). When you go to Moria, you want to go into it and not just stay in the foyer. So we're still going to keep that kind of content expansion but there will certainly be several updates throughout the year.

This November update is the first chance we got to address a lot of the feedback that we got since we launched free-to-play.

Aaron: The big change that's coming out with the November update is that we're opening the landscape of the world to all players. Players now will not be stopped at the gates of Moria. You can journey through it and through Mirkwood and all players will be able to level up to 65. The epic quests for Volumes 2 and 3 will also be free to those players. Much like it is in Eriador now, if you want to do the (other) quests in Moria or Lothlorien, you can buy the quest packs.

VE: Will this also be true of the Rise of Isengard expansion?
Aaron: I very much expect so yes. I expect we will continue doing that.

Adam: Yes, the epic storyline will continue through to 70.

Aaron: So the definition of what an expansion is certainly changes in the sense that we want to allow players flexibility. So with Moria and Mirkwood for example, we say you can either buy the Moria expansion or you can buy a character slot here, a class here or a quest pack there. It's the players' choice and they can pick and choose what is useful to them and what they would like to purchase at the time. The flipside of that is the same idea that Adam was talking about. LOTRO as a game still benefits greatly from having these really epic iconic locations that are important to us so we look at those as expansion packs, for growing the game and expanding the level cap or adding new, really substantial features to the game world. But we would like to allow players access to all this landscape, and access to all the quests for the epic story.

VE: What else is included in the November update?
Aaron: We are introducing a system called Tasks, which is fairly much in beta but it amounts to a couple of things. Roughly 250 new quests that are free to all players and that are spread out through Eriador. These are low to mid-level quest ranges and really allow players the opportunity to advance reputations, and to get rid of a few trophy items they might have picked up on the landscape and might otherwise have sold to a vendor. It's for a wide range of players but mostly for free players. Additionally, they also have deeds and titles for these tasks.

VE: Any particular reason why you're opening up more opportunities for free players?
Aaron: We think it's important to sustain the growth of the game and for people to continue to play the game for free.

Adam: You've seen us doing the same thing in DDO in the past year. We continue to add new items for people to purchase in the store because we're running a business, but at the same time we also continually add free content. There has to be a balance, right?

Aaron: One of the other pieces we're touching on too, is that with F2P launch, we reworked a lot of the story content in the Man and Hobbit areas but with this update, we're going to do the same for Dwarf and Elf areas. So we are focusing on the fiction, streamlining it, and highlighting the dramatic points. In this case, we're actually bringing in new appearances and changing the world a bit to reflect how the Dourhands are corrupted and why these dwarves are bad for Thorin's Hall and why it's important that they be ousted.

Another thing our designers are very excited about is the technology we developed since we launched three years ago. We've added a new capstone to that introduction experience. You're going to go into Skorgrim's Tomb and we have really fun, scripted encounters there, a pretty epic battle sequence, the whole place comes down around your head... it's a lot of fun!

VE: Are you going to introduce regular scheduled updates to the game the same way you have been doing in DDO?
Adam: We do have a schedule in mind but we're not sharing it yet. But I'll trade you that and share with you a couple of new things that we're bringing in next year.

Aaron: There's a lot coming between now and Isengard. It's not an empty landscape. We are changing our cosmetic system, adding new types of cosmetic items and outfits, adding more slots to store outfits, allowing you to customize and change out your character's appearance.

We are also adding non-combat pets for all classes.

We're adding new raid and instance content. The raids and instance content will be targeted at high level players but we're also adding instances for players right around level 30-40 so mid-range as well.

With the raids we're also unlocking First Age legendary weapons.

Adam: We've had a big year this year. As far as F2P goes, it's been a really successful move for us here in the States. Europe's off to a great start and we're ramping up a China launch early next year.

VE: Did the F2P move meet or exceed your expectations?
Adam: Last year, when we launched DDO, it blew away all of our expectations because we had nothing to base it on. So we took the cautious route in our projections and it just blew everything out of the water. Every month we had to redefine what we could do because it just kept growing. With one year of DDO behind us, we had a lot of data and were able to make a more educated guess about LOTRO. It was certainly a little better than what we thought it would be but we thought it was going to be pretty big to begin with.

VE: Did the LOTRO F2P launch affect your DDO numbers at all? ie, Did you steal players away from yourselves in the process?
Adam: Definitely not because they're such different games. Certainly we saw a lot of DDO players come over and check it out, that may not have ever checked out LOTRO before. But we haven't seen any cannibalization or anything like that. DDO is still very strong and steady and still on a growth path and LOTRO is experiencing an exponential growth right now because we just got out of the gate here.

Aaron: The November update here is our first opportunity to react to a lot of the feedback that came out of our beta and our launch process. There are a lot of new players here so there's still a lot we're learning today. There are 300+ new in-game items arriving to the store. So we're constantly making changes and updates.

VE: Anything else we might have missed?
Adam: The only other thing I wanted to mention was the Yule festival coming in December. We don't have the details on that yet but we'll reach out to you once that's ready.

Aaron: The festival is very special this year because we've been getting bigger and bigger visions for the festivals as we've gone along. For the Yule festival we went all out and actually created a new sub-region. It's an entire town just for the festival. It's probably in Breeland on a mountain side but it's off in its own little place. It's called Winter-home and it has its own set of quest lines, snowball fights, an interactive theater where players can go and be the actors and all kinds of good stuff.

Pour résumer:

Add-On:
* digital seulement
* 3 régions: Pays de Dun, Trouée du Rohan et Isengard (avec Orthanc).
* Lvl cap: 70
* L'histoire se passera avant la destruction d'Orthanc
* La foret de Fangorn ne sera pas *encore* accessible
* Nouvelle région PVP, certainement proche de l'Isengard
* Les freemium pourront avoir accès gratuitement à l'histoire épique de cet add-on (sans payer l'add-on)

En attendant l'add-on:
* Changement du système de cosmétique
* Nouveaux types de cosmétique (armes??!!)
* Changements de l'apparance du personnage
* Pets non combatants pour tous
* Nouveau raid et instances pour haut levels
* Nouvelles instances pour joueurs 30-40
* Armes 1er age 65 récupérable dans le raid
* Lancement en Chine
* Nouvelle "sous-région" pour le festival: "Winter-home"

* 300 items actuellement ajoutés dans le shop

[Mel]

- Pets non combatants pour tous

Tortue Mel \o/

[Kmachin]

- Pets non combatants pour tous

Tortue Mel \o/

Et voilà les MDS ne servent plus à rien
Ah ? ça ne servait pas qu'à avoir des pets non combattants ? arf on m'aurait menti ?