Renkosi's Guide to the Siege of Mirkwood

As promised I put Parallels and LOTRO through their paces on my MacBook over the last weekend. For the record I have a late 2008 model aluminum MacBook with 2Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, and 2GB of RAM. I started with Windows XP fully patched and installed in a 15GB partition under BootCamp, along with a patched copy of LOTRO.

First the good news, LOTRO ran flawlessly under Parallels Desktop 4. I did not need to do anything more than tell Parallels where the BootCamp partition was, wait some time for stuff to be installed and then reactivate Windows. Once Windows booted inside Parallels I was able to double click on the LOTRO icon and I was in game! I played for some time in a number of areas, with no crashes, oddness, or problems. This is at first a great way to play LOTRO on a Mac, no rebooting required, and no user created launcher.

So now the bad news. (Booo!) The frame rate is rather jumpy, and at times low. I was able to play in a small fellowship in low graphics and a sensible frame rate (around 20-30 fps). This was in the Giants area in the Trollshaws, I was also generally OK running around Echad Mirobel although I got a lot of stuttering running around the ruins. Lastly I visited the Shadows Concert at the Party Tree, where the frame rate was unacceptably low, in very low graphics. So I would not recommend going near areas where there are many players.

So is it playable? Yes, but be prepared for a serious slow down, if you are looking for a play session, BootCamp is still your best friend.

You can still get Parallels in the MUPromo bundle for the next 10 days.

I’ve been running LOTRO with varying amounts of success on my Macbook under Windows XP in Boot Camp. Whilst LOTRO runs fast under Boot Camp it also frequently crashes for no apparent reason, although I suspect the graphics drivers. Yesterday mupromo.com started a cut price deal on Parallels for $50 along with some other applications.

My first impressions of Parallels are good, LOTRO  runs ok, but not quite as smoothly as under Boot Camp, and so far ‘touch wood’ no crashes. Frame rates in Echad Mirobel seem to bet between 10-20fps in high and a little higher in medium. I’m going to be running LOTRO like this over the weekend to check for stability over time, and will report back with my thoughts.

However to take full advantage of the mupromo offer you’ll need to buy the bundle quickly as some of the applications are only available to the first 15,000 customers. If you want to ask any questions, twitter me!

Ten Ton Hammer voon interview with Jeffery Steefel has been posted for download:
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/67749

Some interesting comments about book 8, although most have already been discussed elsewhere now.

Eurogamer recently interviewed Alan Maki and Jeffrey Steefel, in their two part interview (part 1, part 2) they covered much of the same old ground and discussed the upcomming volume 2, book 7 and book 8. We’ll be seeing some more attention made to the lower levels (15+ book 7 dealt with 1-15) in the Low Lands and North Downs. Looking further ahead (book 9 and beyond) the Trollshaws will get the new player experience makeover and there will be some revision of and new content to bring great player experiences in short play times. One instance of this appears to the Epic story line which will be made more fluid and the level gaps (I’m guessing here that they are referring to the last quest in Bree where Gandalf sends you to Radagast the Brown at the start of volume 1, book 2- an 8 level jump)

But what caught my eye was the following quote, something to look forward to in volume 3 perhaps?

Alan Maki: Unfortunately it has to stay a secret, because some of the things we have planned for the future are going to be evolutionary probably even in the way that MMOs are handled. We’re really looking forward to it, but that’s all I can say at this point.

And the whispers of a console MMO are definitely true but:

Adam Mersky: We’re not really saying what we’re going to be releasing, but we are working on one – it’s more than just talk.

For now though, book 8 will follow in the “early summer“…