DocHoliday's MMO Saloon
DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View
Yesterday’s developer twitter chat had a bit more information in it then previous ones, but I think that’s purely just because they’ve got a release ready for Bullroarer 
The majority of the real news was around Update 10. I’m not going to hit on everything, just a few items that jumped out for me. The full transcript is up on the forums if you want to check it out.
With regards to Update 10, the biggest news for me was that it will be hitting Bullroarer next week. I’ll be curious to see how long it stays there as I hope it goes through a couple of iterations considering the new instances and armor sets that historically have issues but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was some internal pressure to get it out earlier. Here’s what was announced:
- Fate will be boosted – we don’t know how, but it will be.
- With the new raids, we are getting a new armor set. No news on what will be needed to get it
- 1st agers will start dropping, I’m assuming from the new raids
- All existing instances will be getting new loot
- no new epic story
- I’ll come back to Wardens
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We also got some information on Update 11, although we have no clue when it will drop:
- Large Epic Story update
- New landmass similar in size to the Great River region
- mix of mounted combat and non-mounted combat
- something new in the works for mounted combat, but no other details given
I’m actually surprised by the Update 11 information mainly because of the mounted combat stuff as I had expected that to be the expansion. I’ll be VERY curious to see what they add to mounted combat but the fact that they refuse to allow reputation mounts as warsteed cosmetics still indicates to me they feel money is still on the table for the system. However, they did hint that after Update 10 they are adding new non-store items for warsteeds. Hopefully there will be a deterministic way to achieve them as opposed to purely random. I’m also curious where we go region wise and how that fits to the story since our Rohan storyline is pretty blocked off until we get the rest of Rohan.
Two other items before I jump to Wardens, they’re putting in the option to disable forced emotes and they’re giving it to everyone for free. This is rather shocking to me actually considering the price of the XP disabler, I was really expecting this to be a character specific store item. But kudos to Turbine for implementing this. They also teased of a housing update later this year, but I’ll wait to be optimistic about it until we see actual information. I’d love for them to do a total overhaul, but based on how they’ve done other system overhauls I wouldn’t bank on something that significant. Primarily I expect changes to the cost of houses, escrow, and a closer tie to the store but I don’t think we’ll see them make changes to the hook system as that would just take too much effort. I wouldn’t be shocked to see store options to put vendors or banks in our houses.
As for the announced Warden changes, I can see what they’re doing and why but I’m just worried about the actual implementation of it. They’re changing our primary stat from Might over to Agility such that our main defense and attack numbers will be based on our Agility. This basically just makes it easier for gear itemization such that each armor type has one primary stat (light is will based, medium is agility, and heavy is might). It just seems like keeping and creating all sorts of different gear for the different classes was causing too many issues and they wanted to make it simpler. Block and Parry will still be Might based, with Evade coming from Agility so that will even out some and for most Block has always been quite easy to cap even without our buffs. They’ve said gear will be switched over but I’m not sure if existing items you already have will be switched. If not, I at least hope there’s some sort of trade-in option for the Hytbold sets, but since they’re also incorporating a grace period that might be all we get. That period would then be where we go out and either get the new sets or re-grind for new Hytbold gear. The actual shift should’ve be that big of a deal, but with every other Warden change they’ve broken at least 2 other things and that’s what worries me. I wouldn’t be surprised if some other issue rears its head surrounding threat, maybe the Exaltation of Battle bug returns, or the Terrible Visage one. Here’s hoping this change isn’t the Warden version of the big class revamps we’ve been promised.
Overall a mix of good information and some softballs, but with Update 10 as close as it is I’m not surprised by what they did include.
