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2015 Content?
Athisar
Member UncommonPosts: 666
On this week's live stream, Frelorn said that the producer's letter was going to be delayed to the first week of January because there were a few things that had to be ironed out first. Interestingly though he said that, without giving any specifics, there was going to be stuff that would very much interest people about 'contested' topics. I'm assuming that means raids? There've been complaints on the forums about a lack of any new ones.
He said there'd be a lot of changes for 'traditional' play, group content, PvMP, etc. as well as code clean ups and so on.
It sounds quite interesting to me. It's around the time for the transition period for the new exec producer to be in, so it could mean a bit of a shake up for things.
Comments
Don't let the raid-tinted glasses showing you stuff which is not there
or as Paragonian wrote "Hope for the best, but plan for the worst".
Btw. every year there's a thread about the raids, and every year it raises less and less interest. The most 'contested' topic of the last few months was about the f-ed up Music system changes, hands down. So what if he referred to that topic?
At this time there's only one thing which is certain for 2015, since it was stated already, that they won't go back to the "1 big expansion at the end of the year" way, they will stick to this year's "2 updates during the year" method. Which is good for Vips, since the updates are free to them. (ok, expansions too if they buy it from the stipend, but with updates they can spend the stipend on elsewhere so it's better I guess.)
Is now a bad time to ask if this game is worth a try as a free player who never played it before :P
kinda sick of everything else and need something fresh to play.
Why would it be a bad time? if you have some free time it definitely worths a try
(though it's 7.5 years old, so not exactly something fresh to play.)
Actually there's an increased activity on the lower regions right now (beornings are on sale for the first time so you can see plenty of low-level bears, and there's the Yule festival too which is a good place / time for starting alts).
"Try" is pretty much free, but as a fresh newcomer you'll bump into the restrictions at around lvl30-32. Still, with an average play (so not powerlevelling) it lasts for 4-8 days of free fun.
I'm not really bothered about raids myself. I just have seen a lot of complaints about it on the forums. I'd like to see big improvements to the grouping aspects to make it easier to do existing instances (the instance finder is basically useless) and improvements to kinships, in finding them and making them more part of the game.
I'm not expecting a massive change next year, but as the new producer is now settled it's likely to be somewhat different.
It's fine to start out now. Server choice is important. Unfortunately Turbine gives no figures about populations so you have to find this out yourself - Brandywine, Gladden and Crickhollow are the busiest and therefore probably best for brand new players. The default recommended server for most of this year was Gladden, I think this has now changed.
If you enjoy it then look out for offers on the boxed Mithril edition. It includes lots of account unlocks, a few areas, a fancy mount and 2,000 Turbine Points. I got one a couple of weeks ago for £6 (~ $9).
I feel the same about raiding.it's one of the reasons i considered playing i have heard how new raids really isnt a focus of the dev team anymore. mmo's need group content but raiding has been the same ole same ole for how long now? but thats a whole other topic.
I might as well just try it out since it dont cost anything to try as others have stated worse case i hate it and run away best case i have fun and decide to throw a few dollars at it.
Yeah, if you start in Bree for example, you have the whole of Breeland (covering the Old Forest, Barrow Downs, etc) without having to spend anything, and that'll get you beyond level 20, probably up to about 25. The Lonelands (20-35 ish) is also completely free. That's not including any of the other major starter areas like the Shire.
You also get Turbine Points for completing deeds, which are basically achievements. Just playing regularly rather than grinding can easily get you 100-200 a week.
The current festival event is an easy way to get a mount, a bit of cosmetic gear, plus some deeds.
Exactly, for free you have the 3 starter areas, Bree (which contains one of the starter areas, and also it's the lvl15-20 area for every race), and Lone-lands for going forward until lvl30ish.
If you simply questing through them (without any focus on grinding TP, just earning them during simple gameplay) you can easily getting more than 100 TPs, which is enough for the riding skill, just for the more convenient travelling's sake
and as Athisar wrote, the festival is an easy way to get a cheap steed (the regular steeds are cheap too, but festival ones are looking much better).
Raids are not in the focus since Helm's Deep, 2013. It doesn't mean there's no group content, in that matter I used to argue a lot with folks
like
All the group content (group quests, instances, raids) are still in the game. The only change was that since HD no raids were added, and that the existing group content is not mandatory anymore. But you can still play them if you want, a lot of players do. Which reminds me, pantaro, for free you have two instances available, GB (all parts of it are 6-man) and GA (3-man and 6-man parts). Those are frequently runned instances, both the scaled version for lvl100 as the on-level questing versions (lvl24 and lvl32 respectively)
True, the instance finder is pretty useless nowadays, but sticking to the facts it doesn't have much chance... since nobody is using it, we can't tell whether it was fixed since its launch or not. No tool can form a group from an empty queue
edit: by empty queue I just mean the instance finder's queue, not grouping of course. Just folks are using the good ol' LFG-yelling instead
and when the group is gathered, then using the instance finder (as a group) to port inside the instance. Convenience... or lazyness.
sounds like enough to get a good feel for the game and decide if i play for about a week or longer.
thx for the info
Oh, one more for riding, after the tutorial you'll get a gift box with lots of goodies (consumables, tomes, potions, etc, you can open new stuff from it every level), it contains a gift horse for 24 hours after opening. Don't look into the mouth
I mean don't open that red box in the beginning, the starter areas are pretty playable on foot too (actually back in the pre-f2p era you couldn't even get a mount below lvl 35, then later lvl20). Save it for later use, when you get to Bree, the distances there are much bigger.
Reason, if the 24 hours expires and you don't have yet the 95 TP for the riding skill, that can be tough... fast travelling everywhere is pretty addictive, being on foot again can be felt like a setback
Yeah, I'm not one for forcing anyone to play in groups, I think people should be able to play the way they want within the limits of the game. On the other hand if people do want to group up, the game should do everything possible to help them.
I don't know whether the finder works technically or not (I assume it does), but it's effectively useless because you'll sit in a queue all day and not get matched. If it's just a case of nobody using it (because nobody uses it...) they should look at a way to change that.
In the festival I won a fancy dress from a box. It's one of the few games where you can wear what you like, so my male character can quite happily look ridiculous in his dress.
I think they tried, when you received reward bonuses by using the IF, but it wasn't a life-changing success
and now with /world it's even more practical to just yelling LFG, groups can gathered and formed pretty fast, so the IF is reduced to a travelling tool, a convenience, quality of life upgrade. Honestly I don't even remember when was the last time I used it the "regular" way, by queue-ing up with a role. (and I used to queue a lot in STO for example, or CO / Neverwinter. Occasionally for some flashpoints in TOR too 
)
Agree with the first part too, I praise the Inspired Greatness since its introduction. I used to say, option is king... even if I rarely use it, it's good that it's in the game for those who feel like going on solo for a bit. Forcing anything onto your customers is never a good practice I think. If grouping is still there as default (and it is), I don't mind if there's an option to avoid it. Let the players decide, don't force them into one way.
edit: for festival and dresses, never forget the first time I saw a dwarf in a dress
turned out she's a female dwarf (playing by a female player). Even if you can only roll male dwarves there are plenty of dwarven ladies in game (not while ago there was a dwarf wedding on Laurelin), so it's good that there's an option for wearing anything on any character - again, as above, option is king 
The most important thing to do is add an option for full levelscaling in all the content... Solo and grouped and raids... Let players choose to level down to the level of the open game world area at will .. And let splayers and raids and dungeons scale to max level ..
this game is about commnity and playing/ helping eachother
and for the rest, we are getting closer to Mordor... Lets hop they have plans for this game after the one ring has been destroyed... There is so much more to middle earth
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)