Renkosi's Guide to the Siege of Mirkwood

In “From the Book” Goldenstar discusses the significance of in game people, places and things that were part of the book and excluded from the movies so you can understand their importance and appreciate them! Today’s topic is the little village across the Brandywine River by the name of Crickhollow in Buckland. While a small Hobbit community, you will find this village in the far west of your Breeland Map. Past the Bucklebury Ferry and on the edges of the Old Forest. The significance of this area is a house on the edge of town. If this house has a name ... [click title to read more]

Back in the day I was a bit mean about Warhammer’s ‘live expansion’, calling it a mere update. People are already saying the same about Siege of Mirkwood. Both undoubtedly add content to the game, one through digital download and payment, the other through a summer of added content. The Warhammer one was free, deservedly so, as the game needed the changes it brought badly. The Mirkwood one will only be available to purchase as a download. Not seen either before in my MMO-ing, but that IS limited to Dark Age of Camelot and World of Warcraft before either of ... [click title to read more]

When out in the world you will discover that people with quests for you identify themselves with rings over their heads. There are several ring types available and I thought I would take the time to identify them all. Flaming Ring Quest givers with a flaming ring over their head are not super common. These quests that are apart of an epic storyline. Make sure you read them carefully or you may accidently launch yourself into an instance before you were ready! Gold Ring Quest givers with a plain gold ring over their heads have ordinary everyday type quests for you. These will ... [click title to read more]

If any of you follow me on Twitter you'll know that my LOTRO client has been crashing. So, this is just an FYI to the rest of my readers that I haven't been able to log into LOTRO for the past week or so beyond a few minutes (the time it takes for the client to crash). I'm in contact with Turbine Customer Support but this can be a lengthy process and right now they're studying my problem. Hopefully I'll be back up and running soon. I unfortunately missed the Massive Hobbits storming of Weathertop. Oh well.EDIT: I needn't have ... [click title to read more]

What draws a new player to an MMO like Lord of the Rings Online? For some of us, the draw of MMO’s is that of the people who are playing the game.  Friends and family are a strong influence on others to purchase a game and start playing it; most people who were not gamers before [...]

Psychochild, a game developer named Brian Green, has put up a blog post evaluating the Legendary item system in LOTRO and what could change to make it better. I thought I'd point it out and respond.He points out two problems with the system. First, its randomness, and second its negative affect on crafting. I whole heartedly agree with his assessment visa-vie crafting. Lucky for us, Siege of Mirkwood will expand the current craftability of legendary items. Depending on what is implemented, this could be a moot point. On the whole, I feel the randomness is generally well balanced, especially with ... [click title to read more]

We are starting over in iTunes and removing our current listing.

Jeffrey Steefel, Executive Producer of LotRO, was interviewed at PAX by TenTonHammer regarding newly announced expansion, Siege of Mirkwood. Watching the full video of the interview yesterday, I picked out that the expansion will add the following end-game instances: 2 x 3-man instances 1 x 6-man instance 1 x 12-man instance (Dol Guldur) In case you aren’t aware, that’s exactly the same amount of instance content that was added in Book 8 – a free update, no less. In contrast, Moria launched with 7 x 6-man instances and a lair raid. So what’s the deal? Is this what end-game will look like for several ... [click title to read more]

A poll has been added to the right navigation pane on our web site. This week's question: Are you excited for Siege of Mirkwood?

2 High Road is starting an interesting experiment using a third party program to parse the combat data in LOTRO. There's a preliminary post up now outlining what exactly this program does, and some of the limitations. If you're at all interested in min/maxing your characters, do check out this post and the follow up ones as he continues to look at damage output, etc. I know that one lacking area in the LOTRO Blogosphere is "hardcore" analysis and theorycrafting.