In my earlier predictions I did hit a couple of points dead on, but also quite wrong in some areas. Kate Paiz does lay out quite a bit of information in her Producer’s Letter.
Her comments on how they’re looking to develop things going forward was quite welcome as it echoes the thought that this is a new life for LOTRO and Turbine needs to shift its methodology to match that.
- They’re stressing that the need to listen to their players and also find good ways to better solicit that feedback.
- Continue to optimize the store, which I’m becoming an even bigger fan of so I’m excited to see what is planned.
- Quality storytelling is key, and this for me has always been a strongpoint for LOTRO and I’m happy to see this continued.
The other part, and this is one piece I got wrong is that they are splitting up the Epic Quest line from their updates. I’m a bit mixed by this but I can understand why they’re doing it as it will allow them to split gameplay from story and do smaller updates more often. I’m optimistic that this will work out, but I can see it as a potentially bad thing.
As for the update, it is slated for November (score one for me) and will include:
- Tasks which is a new content type for early in the game
- I have NO clue what this will be but it sounds intriguing
- Vault revisions
- I know many hate the new vault, I’m ok with it but wouldn’t mind some tweaks.
- Lore-Master and Rune-Keeper updates (yeah for me again)
- Changing Moria and Mirkwood such that you can follow the epic line through these zones WITHOUT paying for them! This is VERY cool as it basically opens up all the land-mass to everyone but makes the quests outside of the epic line what you need to pay for.
I’m a little bummed that we’re not getting any new land-mass but if this split allows them to get out more content on a more routine basis I think I’ll be ok with it. So put me in the cautiously optimistic group.
More dev diaries are on the way including a vault and tasks one, and I’m assuming one on the class changes but good stuff in the works!