LOTRO Reporter Podcast

Welcome to our annual "Best of" episode where we take our favourite moments of 2012 and put them all together into one convenient package. Enjoy! Listen now:

Cari and Layanor cover server down times update 9 and cosmetics. Listen now: What We Did This Week ; Layanor- Finished Layanorvill Have done all of the new 3 mans Tried to do the new Tier 2 swordhalls Building up 300 gold to buy a new second age weapon. ; Cari- Ran Carn Dum with my guild. I can’t imagine how people ran that on level. Did some more questing in the Wold Tried to update the game on Monday. Ended up doing a clean install. ; News ; Hotfix Today Server Downtime: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=6577965#post6577965 UPDATE: Sapience has given reasons for the quick schedule and the update in a forum post They had two options to fix the new 3 man instance quests. Today or as late as January. They decided to do it as soon as possible and not make everyone wait. However the LOTRO community is reporting many other reasons why the the server is down. The elves were too drunk. Rivendell Tuesday rave is doing a vampire theme this year and the server just could not be on during that. It is very lore breaking. Rowan has decided to make the game run at 48 frames per second to match the theme of the hobbit movies. This broke the server and they have since cut him off from the spiked eggnog table. Gandalf was throwing a bring your own brown bag party. You shall not! Play beer pong. Sapience ran out of marshmallows for his cocoa and close the place down till he got back. He then got caught up in a flash mob at the mall and was last seen at Walmart dancing to "Call Me Maybe" Aragorn was hitting on to many women in the house of healing again. "Hey baby. Come here often? Hail to the king baby." jewahe @Layanor Bugud went to see The Hobbit. a hacker caused shirtless, hotpants wearing dwarves to spawn endlessly around middle earth ; Twitter Developer Chat Coming Dec 20 http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=6577596#post6577596 Casual Stroll to Mordor is going to ask the devs some questions over twitter. The devs are Senior Producer Aaron “Rowan” Campbell Lead Systems Designer Matt “HorseDev” Zimmitti World Designer Matt “Scarycrow” Fahey Senior Content Designer Lauren “Budgeford” Salk Senior Content designer Joe “JWBarry” Barry LOTRO Community Manager Rick “Sapience” Heaton They ask that you make the question short so they can tweet the full question back with a answer. ; Dev Diary talks about the Travel to Quest Giver Mechanic https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/travel-quest-location-behind-scenes Explains what the new system is and how it works. In your quest tracker you can click a new icon to travel directly to your NPC to turn in that quest. The item you need to do this with is called Traveller's Writ and can only be bought in the lotro store. This article also talks about how ho x1: 20TP, x5: 50TP, x25: 225 TP ; Instance Cluster Part 1 Dev Diary http://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/update-9-riders-rohan-instance-cluster-part-i Gives background story and design ideas about Webs of the Scuttledells, Seat of the Great Goblin, and Iorbar’s Peak. Also talks about Dol Guldur, and the new loot in chest rule changes. ; Update 9 Combat Revisions Dev Diary http://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/update-9-combat-revisions Interrupt Revision Interrupts will now cancel the induction and disable the interrupted skill for 4s They want interrupts to be something used at key moments, not just another rotation filler. Burglar Addled cooldown has been increased from 15s to 20s. Champion Clobber cooldown has been increased from 5s to 10s Hunter lindside cooldown has been reduced from 20s to 12s. Warden Boot, Onslaught, and Wall of Steel share a 15s interrupt cooldown. Reaver Gut Punch cooldown reduced from 15s to 10s. Warleader

Layanor and Cari are all alone this week. Chris was kidnapped or something. We have an official pronunciation for Hytbold from Turbine. Listen now: What We Did This Week   Cari- A new Title has been bestowed upon you, you may now be known as Alinniel, Master Ascender! Level 79 1/2 Received an Orc Head on a Pike from a War-band box. Finished Warg Pens Challenge Mode and had to leave the elves in the Dungeons until next week. Layanor- Slowly working on Layanorville Played on the test server most of the week. I’m enjoying the new instances. News   LOTRO Reporter talks to Turbine about Update 9 No plans for Mounted Combat Instance at this time. Hutbolt (Long U) Closed instances will be back open. 3 mans are about as long as Roots of Fangorn but I'm told Scuttledells is longer. Devs talk about each section of the two 3 mans we tutored. Walkthrough of Bree. The Lord of the Rings Online - Update 9: Against The Shadow Released some Pictures of the instances. See the bottom of this post. Riders of Rohan Instance Pack – Road to Erebor Follow in the footsteps of Middle-earth’s most famous hobbit as you experience these three brand new three-man instances: Webs of the Scuttledells Seat of the Great Goblin Iorbar's Peak Dol Guldur Scaling Moria Revamp Part 2 New Steam Pack http://store.steampowered.com/app/213179/ Steely Dawn Cosmetic Armor Set: Prepare yourself for adventure with the Steely Dawn armor set. This cosmetic set pairs bright white armor with dark grey trim for a very cool look. Evendim Quest Pack: Explore the ruined city of Annúminas on the shores of Lake Evendim and aid Aragorn in re-forging Narsil, the Blade That Was Broken! Five 100% XP Boosts: Build your legend even faster with these five boosts that grant you 100% additional experience on quests, monster kills, and more for 60 minutes. 500 Turbine Points: Customize your experience in Middle-earth with 500 Turbine Points. Buy cosmetic gear, rare mounts, experience boosts, buffs, and more. $19.99 Correction Cari misspoke last week when she said Evendim was included in the 1-20. It clearly is not.   XP Disabler will be in Update 9 http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=6561631#post6561631 Pocket Item 495 TP On par with the price of the XP bonus items It appears people are still not happy with crafting XP Steed of the Warden Coming Soon(tm). Christmas is coming Lotteries for the Class steeds may come along with them. http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=6556929#post6556929   Maintenance December 10, 2012 http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=6561758#post6561758 No Patch Notes Ten Ton Hammer article SWOTR vs. LOTRO FTP Models http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/246685?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss Layanor - Did You Know™   A while back there used to be a site called MMORSEL. One of the many great features they had was a Legendary Item simulator. You could put in all your legacies you wanted and build it up to see how the stats would be, and how many points you needed to spend. The site has stopped updating and that tool is no longer useful anymore. Well I have found a updated one! It is a plugin that was recently updated from LOTRO Interface. You can bring this up in game, and build a “virtual” legendary item and play around with the stats on it. This even covers bridles. Later on they plan to add relic support as well. http://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/info567-LIP-LegendaryItemPlanner.html   Community   Cari - Pineleaf Checks out the Necromancers Gate Fix on Bullroarer (and mentions us in his post) http://cstm.mymiddleearth.com/?p=70350   Cari - Interesting Post on the Possible Future of LOTRO by the Kazad Guard http://thekhazadguard.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/the-future-of-lotro-and-the-path-ahead/  

Chris, Cari, and Layanor talk about Crazypants, Update 9, and Hobby Horses. Listen now: What We Did This Week Cari- Tried Barad Guldur again. We needed more tanks. Did some questing in the Wold and followed the Epic Story some. Played in the Saturday night BBB concert. Did that epic quest called Downloading Bullroarer. Did some poking around on Bullroarer. Layanor- Still rebuilding Layanorville. Missed a few days in a row so it will take longer. Did /played and realized I have almost been playing 1 character for a years worth of in game time. “You have been playing for: 11 months 3 weeks 1 day 16 hours 35 minutes 39 seconds”. My new PC build can handle more than two 24 man moors raids going head to head on ultra high without a hitch. Chris- Working my way through The Norcrofts. Story has picked up the pace. Still not a fan of the “Help X, Y and Z and come back” quests. Am I just old and bitter?   News Rohan Public Instances Closed http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?491155-Temporary-closure-of-specific-Public-Instances The public instances that are closed are: Public Instance: The Siege of Eaworth Public Instance: Defence of Faldham Public Instance: Defence of Walstow Public Instance: Defence of Harwick The Farms of the Norcrofts Players were summoning low level alts to sit inside of the instance to keep it open past the intended amount of time. They would sit in spots and kill easy mobs that respawn quickly for cash and some rare recipe drops. Were told this was 80gold per hour, 100g if you were fast at grabbing a lot of mobs.   Turbines new 50$ Trojan horse http://biobreak.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/turbine-shark-jumping-and-50-horses/ Syp’s thoughts on the Dev post about the 5000 TP hobby horse on the test server. Turbine’s introducing a toy hobby horse to the store (at least on the test server) that costs 5000 Turbine Points Turbines response is “Any rants about how evil Turbine is for making store items, even those that are entirely optional and up simply for the fun of those who are willing to pay for them, will be disregarded. This item is an experiment item. We simply want your feedback on the type of item presented and what might be added to it or done to it to make it a better item. We are not forcing you to buy it. No one is forcing you to buy it. It’s something to be there and be fun for those who may want it.” This post basically means they have made the item and will use it. They only want feedback on how useful the item will be. The horse will be around 62%-68% speed. Turbine seems to be throwing anything at us lately just to make some cash. http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=6557058#post6557058 The developers have been following this feedback over the weekend. The Hobby Horse will now not be going live with that price point. xRaina - They are experimenting with items and pricing on the store. This test was, as is obvious from your feedback, unsuccessful. The feedback was somewhat expected. xRaina - The reason I don't read the rants is that I can't figure out what to tell the developers you don't like from rants. Is it the idea? Is it the implementation? Is it the sparkle effect? Is it the pig noises? In all seriousness, I love reading detailed posts, even if your overall thoughts are that you absolutely hate something. Rants and complaints are two different things. Rants accomplish nothing, while complaints give the developers a stepping point in improving things and making them more rewarding and enjoyable. Bullroarer Patch Notes http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?490766-Update-9-Against-the-Shadow-PRELIMINARY-Release-Notes%28B2%29-SUBJECT-TO-CHANGE All quests in Frostbluff and the Festival Races are now daily quests and can be reset with Festival Tokens. The Eating Contest advances your festival completion deeds on the first step, but will not grant a free retry on failure.

Chris, Cari and Layanor talk about the new instance cluster, lawsuits, Bullroarer patch notes and high fashion. Listen now: What We Did This Week Cari- Epic story and some session play Ding level 78 Working on the deeds for the Mirkwoo...

Layanor, Chris and Cari talk about some Breaking News brought to us by a listener, and how awesome Layanor is as a possum. Listen now: What We Did This Week Cari- Quested in the Wold. Killed a War-band no goodies. Decided to go back to the epic quest. Layanor- Rebuilding is now very slow. All quests at kindred take 10 tokens to rebuild something. It will be awhile. Jumped back into the moors and had fun! Renown was low but the commendations were flowing like syrup on pancakes. I got two rings and new boots from the NPC and that brought my morale down to 15k but boosted my Physical Mastery to almost 20k Did some testing for later Did You Know™ Chris- Continuing to quest in the Wold. Busy week was busy. News Breaking News Argendauss reports that Fornost Wing: Earth is shut down as of today 11/20 with no advance warning from Turbine. People were exploiting the boss by resetting and returning into the dungeon. Players could get 600 marks, 150 medallions and 6 seals every two minutes, and a Seal of Empowerment about every five. Turbine Point Cards Update Gamestop pulled them all and they have been “pennied out” which means probably destroyed according to my source. The Bullroarer Test Server Will Be Up Again Next Week to Test Update 9 Some of our “instance questions” will be answered The XP Disabler will be in the build and has been revamped based on feedback in the Riders of Rohan Beta. Open Tapping will be spread throughout Middle-Earth and may have some new changes. New Samwise Gamgee Starter Pack in the LOTRO Market http://store.turbine.com/store/turbine/en_US/pd/ThemeID.28979900/productID.258048600 The Bay Steed & Riding Skill 4th Inventory Bag Currency Cap $9.99 Turbine says it’s a $25.00 value Applies to all characters on an account! The bag is an account unlock of the bag. That’s a pretty good deal since the bag unlock is 995 TP per character in the store. Steed of the Captain 1995 turbine points Skin color is wrong and will be fixed in update 9 The War-steed equipment appearance is different than the regular steed. Out of the store 11/29/12 Did You Know™ Two features I like to use in the game are not mapped out on the keyboard. You have to go into your key settings to set them up. The first one is the mount and dismount key. Open up your Key Mapping panel in Options and do a search for Dismount. You can set the key to anything. I never use the strafe keys. I strafe with my mouse. So I have changed the Q key to mount and remount. This option will put you on whatever horse you had last. Even your War-steed! The next did you know is a adjusted suggestion from Lindendir.  Rohan introduced more quick slots for us to use. You can hit the arrow on your UI to switch between them. This is useful for Rune Keepers that want their healing and dps skills separated. It is also useful for guards to have when tanking or dpsing. Turbine did not set these to any hotkeys. Open the option panel again and do a search in key mappings for quickslot page. You have two keys here. Quickslot page up and Quickslot page down. I put these on my page up and page down keys because they were assigned to page up and page down on the chat window, and I never use that!  Community Pineleaf Returns to the Necromancer's Gate http://casualstrolltomordor.com/2012/11/pineleaf-returns-to-the-necromancers-gate-video/ He updates what the Fell Beast does Layanor has some experience with this. The poor thing just needs landing lights. War-Steed Healing Guide Part 3! “Return of the Minstrel” http://warsteeds.com/2012/guest-post-healing-during-mounted-combat-part-3/ Major Legacies Minor Legacies Dedicated DPS and Healing Bridles LOTRO Classic Video Bad to the Bone - Bywater Style From Formulatroll in 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNWpMOkw6qw Posted by Patience on her twitter account

Chris, Cari, and Layanor talk about griefers, exploits, power leveling, and oh year War-steeds. Listen now: What We Did This Week Cari- Reached level 77 Actually used my War-steed. It makes me dizzy. Sig from Warsteeds.com has offere...

Chris, Cari and Layanor talk about LOTROmac, Steam, and oh yeah War-Steeds. Listen now:   What We Did This Week Cari- Attended Archet Aid on Laurelin Got my War-steed no clue what I’m doing yet. Level 76 Leveled a Lore Master to 11 Played let's patch LOTRO with Steam Monday night Layanor- Finished up three deeds for daily quests but the a quest was glitched so I didn't get the fourth deed done. Started working on my legendary weapon and ranking up my legacies Got some of the new raid gear Chris- Still working through level 77. Gained some levels for my steed though, and I’m enjoying the way in which the traits for War-steeds are set up. Whole family was sick, so not much game time.  News LOTROmac Is Out! http://www.tuaw.com/2012/10/31/lord-of-the-rings-online-gets-a-mac-client/ Not many MMOs have Mac clients. WoW, City of Heroes, EVE online, EverQuest 1, and Runescape to name a few. 16gig download Turbine plans to bring the client to Steam once it is tested out more. LOTROmac support link http://forums.lotro.com/forumdisplay.php?710-MAC-Technical-Support Direct download link http://download.lotro.akamai.turbine.com/largecontent/lotro/Mac/Live/u08_0/highres/LotroLauncher.dmg Turbine Point Cards Possibly Discontinued http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?487425-Turbine-Point-Cards...-no-longer-in-stores-right-before-the-holidays! Players on the forums asking for Turbine cards to be in stores for the holidays Stores do not carry them anymore A employee at WHSmiths in UK said they had some but they are discontinued and no longer in the plan for shelf stocking. Researched and found Wal-mart, Target, and Gamestop no longer have them on the websites. Cari noticed there were no Turbine cards on the shelf last week at Target and just assumed they were out of stock again.Though thinking about it there wasn’t a place for them either. This Week's Patch Did Some Weirdness With Steam. Steam did a small update to convert to a more efficient format Then proceeded to download 12G worth of LOTRO files. According to a comment on CSTM lot's of steam games are having the same issue Lotteries Were Down Over the Weekend. http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=6507330#post6507330 There was an issue with the lotteries. They should be up by Tuesday. They still aren’t up as of recording. Did You Know? Did you know that Turbine doesn't know what 32bit is? http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?425425-Workaround-for-Client-Crash-to-Desktop-in-32-bit-Windows 32 bit players have had a crash problem for over a year now. Windows 32 bit allows a program to use 2 gigs of memory to run it. After the great river area was released,  The game pushes for more than 2 gigs of memory. . Windows does not like this and ends the program. The workaround is a windows tip on how to make your 32bit system go over 2 gigs. My crashes still happen but it has improved a lot. 2 hours of play to 5 hours of play. The game constantly stops and pauses like it wants to crash. I only recommend doing this if you have no other option and are dedicated to playing the game. I myself have formatted the computer to get this to run better with no improvement until I have tried this workaround. The other workaround is to buy windows 64bit  Community A Look at Legendary Bridles, Part 2: Legacies http://warsteeds.com/2012/a-look-at-legendary-bridles-part-2-legacies/ Covers Fury Bonus numbers and what they mean Legacy percentages and how they affect you War-steed Also gives some tips on what you should do before finishing the epic quest and get your second age bridle. Also on War-steeds.com a War-band Locations Guide http://warsteeds.com/2012/warband-locations/ Shows all the names The places they spawn and wander around. The type of reward box they drop "Secret" Crafting Level http://docholidaymmo.

Chris, Cari and Layanor are joined by Amanda the winner of the CSTM Fellowship's Walk Auction. She may never be the same. Listen now:   What We Did This Week Amanda - Rebuilding Hytbold Warband hunting with kin Participated in CSTM Fellowship’s Walk to Echad Dunann Cari- Still No War-steed Ran North Cotton Farms with an unusual group makeup Entertained or abused (depends on your definition) the children of Rohan Layanor- Rebuilding Layanorville Finished all slayer deeds Finished all location deeds Finished guild rep crating Took some forum advice and did a fix to windows so the game crashes less. I am fully testing it out for now. Chris- Got my War Steed! Yeah! Running around trying to get used to it, and doing some quests before I hop back onto the Epic Story. Ding 76. News   Turbine Lays off Employees (Damn it Lay! You jinxed Turbine last week!) http://www.boston.com/business/innovation/2012/10/25/needham-game-maker-turbine-lays-off-workers/XiH2pLrqfN1GDZlNlcbT9H/story.html Turbine has 400 - 500 employees Warner Brothers did a review of Turbine. Rumor says 50 or so employees lay offs. More than likely not just 50 LOTRO employees Major LOTRO and DDO updates have come out. They may need smaller staff when starting to plan the next major update in both games. Warner Brothers has also laid off staff from developers Monolith, Snowblind, and Surreal Software who are doing “Guardians of Middle-Earth”.   Lotteries are back! Now with better odds! WOW!!! http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?485535-Lotteries-are-coming-back! Lotteries will now be 10 levels each instead of the previous 14 levels each. Odds go up with fewer characters in each lottery. They are also adjusting the number of winners per lottery slightly to improve the odds. Lottery days have changed http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?423980-Lottery-FAQ-and-Schedule-Update-10-24-2012   Alien abductions in LOTRO? http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?&postid=6501640#post6501640 Players get randomly ported to their original starting areas In some rare instances, your character could just fall into the ground and keep falling until your ported somewhere. If this happens make sure to bug this right away with your time and location. It has been reported that this doesn’t happen to dwarves. Must be the neekid chests or they are too heavy for the aliens to pick up.   Layanor’s Did You Know? What to do if you get hacked. This was covered by LOTRO reporter in a older episode but this is something that needs to be repeated. If you are hacked, you have 10 days to report it. You will get most or all of your stuff back. If you don't get everything back, they will try to give try to give you something close to what you lost. http://support.turbine.com/link/portal/24001/24001/Article/180/I-believe-that-my-account-has-been-hacked-or-stolen-What-do-I-do The best way to protect yourself is to change your password every month. Bill has covered some password protection programs before, so I will tell you what I do. First I slam on all my keys a lot until I have a very long mess of letters and numbers. Example: jhgfiuf34982389tyufjuuytt6t56e45ey3ehk3rp050t3r89y877y7637i84uyrt3y8983y799ox04898954u58y78368xb98364678ui40o04i9t7589tyn78y794um 9039p049048u903i0ci849u89yn5cu094u58vy79u9c003co0304ci904i03i03ci403ic Then I will start to copy and paste small chunks of this into a new line for my password. The reason why I do this is if you have a key-logger. It will track what you are typing. If you just type a large line of font, it will just see all that and not know what you are doing. Example: 7y7 4i 646 8y7 cu0 ty Next thing I do is take that new line I made and just copy and paste it around to mix it up some more. I may uppercase some of these as well. Example: 78y7 cU y7 4i 640 ty 6 8y7 Cu My new password is: 78y7cUy74i640ty6

Chris, Cari and Layanor try to figure out where Chris' War-steed might be. We think it might be in New Jersey. Listen now: What We Did in Game Layanor- Hit level 85 on Wednesday. Layanorville is looking awesome. Joined a scraid and crashed at the end of it. Crashing constantly. Cari- Did some of the Rohan Epic story, Did the epic-est of epic scraid, Crafted and cleaned out vault and shared storage. Rohan has lots of stuff that needs to be stored. Chris- Ding 76 Going through the Eastern Wall section, following the epic story. Where’s my War Steed? I want it NOW! News Layanor - Release Notes Update 8.0.2 Turbine tries to fix the crash problems (Le Lay Rant) A client crash that would occur on some machines with low video memory has been fixed. A client crash that would occur on some machines with a 32-bit OS has been fixed. A game server crash that would happen in rare circumstances has been fixed. Forum Post RE Undocumented Changes in ROR http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?483086-Undocumented-Changes/page2 Some of the fun stuff that’s been reported: moon has phases now sky / weather / lightning different LI only glowing while fighting Vault in the Moors Some of the cloaks changed levels. The different stances are disabled when you are on a horse. It takes a second or so for the correct stance to kick in. Turbine hires some new directors http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10/19/turbine-hires-rolston-game-industry-veterans-for-high-level-pos/ Ken Rolston - Director of Design role at Turbine His works include - Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - (executive designer) Morrowind - (lead designer) Oblivion - (lead designer) Alan Villani - Vice President of Technology and responsible for driving "online engagement and monetization." His works include - Mortal Kombat Jai Singh - Director of technical operations Former manager of Zynga who has done - Turbine plans to remove the extra 20 cosmetic slots in update 8.1 "VIPs were incorrectly awarded an additional 20 shared wardrobe slots with Update 8. Due to this error several store offers for shared storage are not working correctly for VIPs and have been disabled. This issue will be resolved in Update 8.1. The additional slots will be removed from VIPs and the correct store offers returned to the LOTRO Store. We strongly encourage all VIPS to not use the additional slots as items stored in those slots may become unavailable when 8.1 goes live." The theory is, if you have 106 of 110 slots currently as a VIP. It will change to 106 of 90 when update 8.1 goes live. The only functional difference for you is that can not add anything to the wardrobe unless you buy 20 more slots. You can use the 106 items any way you like. You remove an item. You will go to 105 of 90. You can't put a replacement item under to reach 89 of 90. This is not confirmed tho and only a theory. Some have said those 20 slots will lock. Others say those 20 will just be deleted. Even if something is in the slot. Palantir private preview program is taking applications http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?485028-The-Palantir-Private-Preview-Program&p=6485950#post6485950 Palantir program has changed. If you get in, you will be a member for 6 months. When that time is up, you can not reapply for 6 months. Price of cosmetics for War-steeds 595 for four colors Per character. Did You Know Resource instances *Or crafting instances* Everyone is playing Rohan right now and are wondering where the heck are the three new crafting instances. What you need to do is get to level 84. This will let you start questing at Hytbold in the Sutcrofts. This will lead you on a quest chain to rebuild the entire town. Once you do some of these quests, you can pick what to rebuild. You want to pick one of these three. Rebuild Library Rebuild Lumber mill Rebuild Metalsmith

As part of our continued coverage of Elder Scrolls Online, Harry and Chris sit down and discuss many different aspect of the game in a Question and Answer format. Everything from the "Elder Scrolls-iness" of the game to combat and character progression are discussed as we try to decide if the game shows potential. The answer? You'll have to listen to find out! Listen now:

At the recent preview day for Elder Scroll Online at the Zenimax studio, we sat down after our epic gameplay session to talk to Paul Sage, Creative Director, to talk about some different gameplay elements, including combat and character progression. In the next few days, we'll be releasing a podcast with more information about the preview day, as well as some detailed thoughts on the game itself! Audio Version: We also sat down for an interview with Matt Firor, Game Director, which you can find here. Click on the more link to check out some screenshot!

We recently visited Zenimax's studio in Baltimore to take part in a preview event showcasing Elder Scrolls Online. With some presentations and most importantly, tons of hands-on game time, we had a really good chance to get a sneak peek at the game's potential. In the next few days, we'll be releasing a podcast with more information about the preview day, as well as some detailed thoughts on the game itself! We sat down at the end of the day with Matt Firor, Game Director, to talk about what the game brings to the MMO space. Head over here to take a look at our interview with Paul Sage, Creative Director for Elder Scrolls Online. In the next few days, we'll be releasing a podcast with more information about the preview day, as well as some detailed thoughts on the game itself! Audio version: Click on the more link to check out some screenshot!  

Cari and Layanor were left alone this week to host the show while Chris was away. We discussed LOTRO underwear, shirtless dwarves, and a little thing called Riders of Rohan. We may never be left without adult supervision again. Listen now: Wh...

Layanor, Chris, and Cari discuss the Riders of Rohan soundtrack, living in Canada or not, and their history with video games. Listen now: What We Did This Week Layanor - I got to play beta for 10 minutes. I got to confirm that you do NOT get experience for your War-steed outside of Rohan. They also do not get exp in skirmishes or raids. After that I formatted my computer so Rohan will be nice and smooth at launch. I watched my install bar for hours. I loaded up a screenshot from the game as my wallpaper so I would not feel too much LOTRO withdrawal. Then I got really bored. So I... MOVED TO CANADA!!! Cari - I did not move to Canada. I live close enough already. I did some Harvestmath Festival quests, two of my characters have their new festival horse, and attended Ales and Tales. I placed in a horse and rider fashion contest. With my fantastic ensemble. More about that in Community news. I bought the Riders of Rohan soundtrack from ITunes. Chris - Epic story continues in the Great River region. Just a few more books! News Goodie bags expire soon! Turn in your goodie bag codes by the 15th or they expire! Rohan Soundtrack on ITunes! It comes out on Oct 9th Sounds of Rohan Video came out at the same time as the sountrack. http://www.youtube.com/embed/_NNlmNiluPQ?rel=0 Chris' Visit with Turbine Recap Asked about the delay, and Turbine’s thoughts on the implied “Contractual Obligation” that pre-order gave to players. Asked about mounted skirmishes: “Maybe later” Asked about the XP Disabler, which we talked about last week. - Post today says this won't be available at launch Looked at different areas around Rohan. The video of the visit will be uploaded soon. Did You Know Skirmish Raids Skirmish raids *or scraids* will be very important in Riders of Rohan. Just like the last expansion, they give the best jewelry in that game, some updated gear, and a chance to get a new token for a second age item. As far as I know, all the gear from level 75 skraids will be upgraded to level 85. This means you will have to get all the gear all over again. To help with this, I am posting a gear guide in the show notes that covers gear from scraids and Helegrod at level 75. This list will help you find the scraid you need to earn the item again. http://www.rangersoferiador.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=668 Also for whatever reason, Turbine still will not list the scraids in your raid checker. So if you did a scraid and forgot that you have already done it, you will get no warning until the end when you are locked out of the loot. For that reason, I am recommending a plugin that I posted in the show notes to keep track of them. . http://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/info630-SkirmishRaidTracker.html This is basically a manual skraid tracker. You open it up, check off the skraid, and close it. It will save you lots of paper every week! Just make sure to click the “reset all” button every Thursday at 3pm eastern (server time). That's when all the skraids reset. And that was did yah knows! Community Community Update October 8, 2012 Nothing much in this video that has not been said other than the Rohan Soundtrack will be on sale on ITunes. Sapience describes the war room. 15 computers 3 Projection tv screens Community managers Customer service reps Engineers Developers They will all be in the war room called *The Ettenmoors* for launch. Ready to break down any bad situations and help with and concerns players have. Quadrille Dressage Demonstration Windy Acres Ranch put on a Quadrille Dressage Demonstration at Monday nights Ales and Tales http://windyacres.mymiddleearth.com/?p=2832#more-2832 They were in almost perfect formation while riding. Something unique to Middle-Earth. Windy Acres Ranch also hosts horse races often. http://windyacres.mymiddleearth.com/?page_id=2 Warsteeds.com Update Warsteeds.