Lord of the Rings Online

Travel through the lands of Rohan will be no ride in the park according to the latest Lord of the Rings Online dev diary. Developers outlined the addition of warbands to Riders of Rohan, describing the roving mobs of mobs as replacements for world bosses. With no restrictions on size or type of mob, players can happen upon any variety of warbands patrolling Rohan, from a single troll to packs of Warg-riders.

The idea behind the warbands was to give players the feel of world bosses -- and the fight or flight feelings had when stumbling upon them -- without forcing spawn camping. When players travels bring them into the vicinity of a warband, a quest will pop up offering a quest to defeat the rampaging horde. Utilizing the open tapping method, any player will be able to participate regardless of group affiliation. Rewards will then be delivered via the quest, not loot drop, allowing players to freely assist one another when confronting these new packs of foes.

For more about Riders of Rohan, check out Massively's exclusive hands-on experience.

I have two big announcements today. The first is that Jukebox Heroes is switching from a bi-weekly to a weekly schedule, which should delight my 30 readers and cause an epidemic of indifference elsewhere. The second is that we're going to take a week off examining specific soundtracks to have a little fun with how silly MMO studios can get.

If you haven't figured it out already, this column is kind of a not-so-subtle outlet for sharing my MMO music collection with you. I don't have any firm method of collection other than I just acquire tracks that my ear tells me I'd like to hear again. So along the way, I've acquired a few oddball pieces that you probably won't find on any OST but that are notable enough to share.

In some cases, these tracks represent studios' attempts (successful or otherwise) to let down their hair and be humorous. In others, these songs are parodies or one-time special events. So let's take a sidebar to look at the whimsical and odd songs of gaming.

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I have to admit, every bit of news for Lord of the Rings Online: Riders of Rohan that has come out has been a little stab in my heart. Is the news that bad? On the contrary, it is too good! But because of my notorious uber-casual gaming style, I had little hope of seeing the content anytime before the 2016 presidential elections; stalled in my low 60s, I am ineligible to participate in LotRO's upcoming content. Suddenly, all of my time spent wandering the beauty of Middle-earth, playing music, visiting player-run events, and participating in festivals seemed a less-than-ideal way to spend my time.

But then fate intervened: I received an invitation to get a first-hand look at Riders of Rohan with a tour guided by Senior Designer Joe Barry and Senior Producer Aaron Campbell. Knowing that participating would be a double-edged sword (getting a taste only to know I couldn't have more), I still jumped at the chance. I'll just deal with the disappointment later, I thought. For a brief time, I got to immerse myself in Rohan and get a look at what awaits players when the expansion launches on October 15th. And between rebuilding an entire town, hobby horse races, and riding warsteeds, I am psyched-up to actually level and take part in all that RoR will offer.

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In a recent post about the Riders of Rohan beta, blogger Doc Holiday wrote a criticism of LotRO's lackluster class development: "Think about it, what have our characters actually gotten since Moria? Outside of revamps (which are always needed as games age and don't really count) there's been almost no progression of our characters outside of gaining morale."

For this I have two words in response: hear, hear!

I've been thinking about this a lot since last week's imaginary restart scenario and even before. There's a reason that rerolling a character in Lord of the Rings Online has such appeal, even with a mountain of content behind it. It's a character that actually develops noticeably before your eyes, not slugs through content.

Today I want to examine why I agree with Holiday about the stagnation of high-level classes and how the devs can shake up the status quo to make character development exciting once more.

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As the core feature for Lord of the Rings Online's upcoming Riders of Rohan expansion, mounted combat is understandably the focus of many player concerns and questions. To hopefully answer a few, Turbine's unleashed a horse-sized developer diary about how mounted combat came to be and how it functions in the game right now.

The diary begins by recalling the history of mounts in the game, back to the very earliest days when they were barely implemented in time for launch. The notion of mounted combat went from insurmountable to a strict on-rails system to a much more free-form system. It also dropped several ideas along the way, such as momentum, horse attacks, and purely generic combat skills.

War-steeds will take some getting used to, according to the devs: "Probably the very first thing you notice when you ride your War-steed for the first time is that it moves completely differently than your standard horse or goat. The War-steed is a large creature and its part of a much larger system, one that requires some skill, time, and practice to master."

A major component of the Riders of Rohan expansion for Lord of the Rings Online is the epic journey of the fellowship. In the latest video dev diary, developers discuss the game's return to the core of the Lord of the Rings story. It is during this part of the adventure that the war in Middle-earth gains momentum and the fellowship falls to pieces. You can watch the dev diary after the break.

Turbine has also released a number of screenshots highlighting this year's Harvestmath Festival, which is going on now through October 14th. During the festival, players can explore the Haunted Burrow beneath the Party Tree, participate in games of skill, join the horse races, and even play tricks on various citizens of Middle-earth. New Harvestmath-themed housing items as well as a new Harvest-brew steed are available. Check out the Harvestmath images below.

[Source: Turbine press release]

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At this juncture of my Lord of the Rings Online career, I have zero interest in starting over. I've attempted two fresh characters over the past six months, and while the "newness" was enough to sustain me for a while, I simply didn't have the time or energy to get them through the long, long, long journey of content to meet up with my Captain. So I've made peace with the thought that my main will be my only character through the completion of the game, barring Turbine releasing an incredibly compelling new class or severely streamlining the leveling process.

That's OK, really. I'm content. Yet I also like to engage in mental hypotheses in which I am forced to restart -- a reset scenario, as it were. If I woke up tomorrow and found that my account was completely blank, or if I were thrown back in time and had to start all over again, what would I do? Would I choose differently or the same?

So here we go: the reset scenario. Let's assume the game is more or less how it is now and I have all of my current knowledge. If I had to start from scratch, how would I forge a different path in the game?

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Lord of the Rings Online has a brand-new endgame activity coming with next month's Riders of Rohan, and it's called "Hytbold." Senior Designer Joe Barry penned a dev diary to explain just how and why Hytbold won't be like anything players have seen before.

Hytbold is the name of a burned-out village that adventurers will rebuild and restock. Through the use of instances, open tapping, remote looting, and phasing, LotRO will allow each player fix the town up and get it back into shape over time. Players have over 150 repairs to make to over 24 buildings in the town, which is accomplished through daily quests, participating in mounted combat, and even fishing.

The rewards for coming to the aid of Hytbold are significant. Turbine's prepared to hand out class and trait-specific armor sets that are comparable to raid gear, a big ending to the region's story, and the honor of being named a Thane of Rohan. The best part of this is that players can rebuild the entire town solo if need be, although there are grouping options as well.

[Update: The team also released a big batch of Riders of Rohan enemy screenshots today; we've included them within our LotRO gallery after the break.]

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Treasure hunters, prepare your picks! Folks who have been awaiting the return of Lord of the Rings Online's minigame treasure hunt event should head to The Treasure Field in Ered Luin quickly. The event is now live on all servers but will last only until September 23rd. According to Turbine's latest patch notes for the 7.4 update, there are also new rewards to be found buried deep in the ground.

Players who don't want to take the time to ride out to the field on their own can travel via the special festival announcer NPCs located in West Bree, Michel Delving, Thorin's Hall, and Celondim. More information about the event can be found in the Road to Mordor's treasure hunting guide.

Our recent post on The Secret World's potential F2P conversion featured a sub-discussion about lifetime subscriptions, and it got me to thinking about how such deals are valued and whether they're ultimately worth it. Prior to TSW, the only lifetime purchase I'd made was a Lord of the Rings Online account way back in 2007. Since I played the game heavily for over two years, and since the free-to-play switch happened well after the 14 subscription months it took to recoup my initial investment, I got (and continue to get) a far better deal out of the lifetime than Turbine did.

With TSW, Funcom would have to hold off on F2P for another year in order for me to get the full monthly sub value out of the $199 up-front charge. Even if it doesn't make it, though, I'm glad I supported the game out of the gate. The Secret World is that rare MMO with the courage to do things differently, and personally that's worth a whole lot more than 200 bucks.

What about you, dear readers? Are lifetime passes worth it even if the game goes F2P?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

The other day I was making a mental list of aspects of Lord of the Rings Online that I generally avoid. Raiding was one, mostly because I don't have the time and the acquisition of gear isn't that important to me. Crafting was another because the end results have little personal appeal. But topping the list was LotRO's version of PvP, PvMP. I think I made a monster character three years ago and ventured out into the Ettenmoors once, but that's the extent of my adventures in that area of the game.

As a result, PvMP has received very little coverage in this column during my tenure at Massively. For one thing, it's not a good idea to talk about something of which you have little experience in doing. For another, I'm fairly sure that the PvMP community, while dedicated, is a small minority of the game's population. It's always felt like a weird vestigial tail to me, an anomaly that exists within our game that many of us rarely mention or see.

So today let's talk about it. I would like to, from the perspective of a player looking from the outside in. Why is PvMP so strange to me? What purpose do I think it has in the game? And how could it become more compelling so that I would actually want to engage in it?

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The Lord of the Rings Online team is hard at work putting the final touches on next month's Riders of Rohan, and a new dev diary shines a spotlight on the expansion's star attraction: trainable war-steeds.

The article gives a brief overview of the types of mounts -- light, medium, and heavy -- as well as the trait trees that accompany them. According to the devs, each war-steed will have 32 potential traits to unlock. The good news, they say, is that retraiting a mount is easily accomplished on the fly for the cost of a few coins.

The devs round out the post by sharing a few of their favorite traits and skills that war-steeds boast. These include feigning injury to dump threat, trampling enemies, giving additional damage to attacking from behind, and boosting crit chance by a whopping 25%.

Why? Why do we die in MMOs and receive an infinite number of resurrections? Are we in a type of hell defined by endless combat and suffering, doomed to never escape the cycle? Is this a cruel experiment being performed by supreme alien beings from afar? Does that make us the living undead, immortal Highlanders, or something even more significant?

If you're looking at me with that look you have in your eye right now, I'd like to remind you that asking these questions is more in line with the core of RPGs than just mashing the 1-2-3 buttons. The rules that make up and dictate our virtual lives should have both meaning and sense, yet so many of these games expect us to just blithely accept that we can come back from the dead over and over without nary an explanation.

Well, I like explanations. Even if it's just polite nonsense, a thought-out reason as to why our characters are death-proof tells me that the devs treat their game with a higher degree of integrity than others. So here are 10 MMOs in which the endless cycle of death and resurrection gets at least a backhanded explanation instead of "shut up, just accept it."

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Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column.

I hate it when MMORPG players completely misrepresent this hobby. I cringe every time I find myself in the middle of a discussion about "MMOs" when most of the people chatting are pulling only from their experience as a World of Warcraft raider and nothing more. There are hundreds -- actually, thousands -- of MMOs in existence. Discussing MMOs without knowing about as many as possible is really talking about specific titles, not a genre. You wouldn't catch a group of "foodies" basing all of their passions on a few items from a handful of menus. The same should apply to MMO discussions if we ever want the genre to be taken more seriously by outsiders.

MMO players love to pigeonhole titles. What are some of the worst descriptions? "Hardcore" is one. What does that even mean? Does it mean a title is hard to play? In what way is it hard? Does it mean that it takes time to play? How much time equals hardcore? "Facebook game" is another term that drives me crazy, and it's often used by many MMO fans to dismiss all sorts of titles. While I know that the term generally refers to FarmVille-style gaming, using the term literally reflects how little the person knows about the variety of games that actually appear on or are connected to Facebook.

The term that drives me the craziest of all is pay-to-win.

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