LOTRO digital expansion, the epic finale of Volume 2! Coming this fall!
http://www.lotro.com/mirkwood/
Level 65 toons. Level 60 legendaries. Crafting, battles, raids, etc. I’m curious about the new skirmish system. Nothing on price.
Seems to be a bit more info out now. On top of the Mirkwood expansion there is also an Adventurer’s Pack that comes with a goat, and cloak, 2 extra character slots (heaven and hell for altaholics), and a shared 20 slot storage for all your toons.
The funny things is that lifetime members can buy the Adventurer’s Pack for $20 and get Mirkwood for free. People who aren’t lifetime members can buy Mirkwood for $20 and get the Adventurer’s Pack for free. Cute
Also the lifetime membership is now available again for a short time.
AIUI Lifetime membership has always been available. The price went up to $299 for a while. It is now available at the original $199 for a limited time.
I didn’t hear the latter. I heard that people who aren’t lifetime members can buy multi-month subscription to get Mirkwood free, but that still leaves 20 bucks for the adventure pack. Yeah, that’s this one. They may be doing the other one too (Non-Lifetime, buy Mirkwood get Adventure Pack Free), but it would seem it’d cut into the incentive to order a multi-month subscription.
If you have a multi-month sub or change to a multi-month sub, you get Siege of Mirkwood free and can buy the Adventurer’s Pack for $19.99.
If you have a lifetime sub, you get the Adventurer’s Pack free, but must pay $19.99 for the actual expansion.
If you pay month to month, or use the subscription cards, then you get to pay for both if you want them.
And those are only pre-order deals. After 10/31 both Mirkwood and Adventurers Pack will cost $20 for everyone (supposedly)
It’s definitely a weird setup. Multi-month subscirbers get the best deal IMHO. A free cloak, goat, a couple of character slots, and a shared stash seem unecessary. In comparison, the lifetime sub guys are pretty much going to have to buy the expansion to keep up.
The shared storage will save me lots of time and money. I want this as much as the two character slots and Mirkwood itself.
I guess, it depends on your style of play…
– cookroach
Right now, the expansion itself doesn’t really appeal. My main is currently level 44 and unlikely to hit even level 50 by the end of the year at the expected rate of levelling. The content seems to be aimed primarily at the level 60+ player so no need to get it yet. The skirmish mode doesn’t really appeal to me either. Seems like it would get repetitive. I may still pull the trigger if I can get it free through a multi-month deal. I pay founder’s pricing ($9.95/month) and I’m unaware if they even have multi-month for that.
The adventure pack, though, is right up my alley. I’m an altoholic so having more character slots and shared banking would be a blessing.
You should be able to do this. I didn’t get founder’s pricing until this summer, but last week my subscription auto-renewed for 3 months at the $9.95/mth rate. I also received Mirkwood free because the multi-month renewal occurred before the end of October.
I agree with you, though, that the adventure pack is more appealing that the expansion, given my level. Too bad they didn’t allow subscribers to choose between receiving either Mirkwood or the adventure pack.
My three month subscription was $29.97 which is $9.99/month. I don’t see why Russ couldn’t go with the regular 3 month sub and get the expansion free, for basically the same as the founder’s price.
I bought the year membership at $9.99 per month over summer. I’d actually consider upgrading to lifetime, but discovered I can’t get the remaining part of my subscription to be credited toward a lifetime membership. I reupped for another year.
I can’t see myself playing the game longer than that. Besides, Guild Wars 2 will be out. I’m still active in GW1, but since I’ve already plucked the low-hanging fruit there and am unlikely to do a lot outside of my PvP group, I want something else for my gaming. LotRO is appealing, and I’m looking forward to the expansion. :)
If they pull off the skirmishes I think they’ll be really fun.
They haven’t said anything specifically (they’ve hinted though) but I’m hoping that all future instances will use the system and be scalable. That would be really nice for content that can be hard to get a full group together for.
Purchased my upgrade this weekend. My main is only lvl 52 so I don’t expect to get to Mirkwood before the expansion hits but I’ll get there eventually. I just got my first Legendary Item yesterday. Holy crap is that a complex confusing system.
Okay, I changed my billing to multi-monthly and there is a slight decrease from the $9.95/month rate with the amount of decrease depending upon whether you go 3, 6, or 12 month. So, free Mirkwood for me. I also pre-ordered the adventure pack. I guess I’ll be adding a guardian and minstrel to my collection of alts.
Skirmishes start becoming available at level 30, with more opening as you level up; they’ve got enough random variables in how waves of enemies spawn to be enjoyable. They won’t get old unless you grind them very hard; there’s a daily quest(s) per skirmish to encourage you to do different ones on the same day.
Future epic quest instances, starting with Volume 2 Book 9 are likely to use this skirmish system, but they have no intentions of going back to add skirmishes to prior epic quest books.
You can take up to a full raid (12) people into half the skirmishes at launch, and eventually all of them; all skirmishes will likely support 1, 3, and 6 players at your selected enemy level both at launch and in the future.
However, these aren’t meant to replace dungeons/instances, but to complement them. They’re a different beast. Shorter time and you warp instantly to them and back while waiting to do a ‘real’ instance.
Excellent, I’m looking forward to this one. It should be a lot of fun.
I bought a lifetime sub when the game was first released and it’s been one of the best £100 I’ve ever spent.
A fantastic game and it just keeps getting better.
Turbine is definately my favourite MMO game developer. They’ve recently given lots of love to Dungeons and Dragons Online and have made it free2play (kind of - in game store - micropayments)
It’s a different beast to LOTRO but well worth a look. The ‘twitch’ based aspect really adds to the immersion.
One thing I’m going to really enjoy with the new LOTRO expansion is the mount improvements.
You will no longer have to dismount just to chat to an NPC or pass through a portal - something that was irritating me no end.
I got the email informing me I’ll be getting Mirkwood free thanks to my multi-month recurring sub (I pay under $10 a month). I think that’s a pretty nice deal. I haven’t logged in much over the past couple of months, but probably will start playing my main on Arkenstone again to get him prepped for Mirkwood. Anything there has to be more fun than Moria, god does that place get old and fast, especially without a regular group to play with.
I still ove LotRO though, more than any other MMO save perhaps the original EQ, and that was more a love of the people I played with and the novelty of the genre in it’s infancy. I think LotRO is better balanced, more immersive and a smoother flowing game than any other MMO I’ve played to date, and that’s just about all of them.
As a casual player who doesn’t get a chance to do a lot of the big instances, I think they’ll be perfect. It’ll also be nice to have more content that will be duo-able because that’s how I usually play.
Really looking forward to the mount improvements and other quality of life stuff they are doing too.
I pitched in for a lifetime sub the other day. The game’s just lovely and the gameplay isn’t terrible either. Given how much I’ve spent on games in the past it seems wise, if belated, to just pony up now and stick with this one when I need an MMO fix. They’re all basically the same beast once you get past superficialities so culling it down to LoTRO, paying once, and letting it pay for itself over time seems like a good move.
I would like LoTRO to take a clue from SWG in a couple respects though.
Housing really needs to be improved and players should be able to pick where they want to live not just one time but whenever they feel the need. Player cities in SWG may not be what they once were but there are always three or four on Starsider that can be fairly active because players decide to all move in together and start up a community. The neighborhoods in LoTRO are true ghost towns because you’re stuck in the place you moved into and odds are it’s not the same neighborhood as any of your friends or your Kinship because those neighborhoods are already full - but nobody hangs out there anyhow because most of them are inactive.
LoTRO also really needs something like Storyteller tools or Architect from CoH. There are players who love, really love, making content for other players and given you’ve got all these long term players in LoTRO it would make sense to give them some toys they can entertain themselves with while waiting for the next expansion to come out.
Skirmish mode will help in a big way for a while but taking it to the next level would be nice.