Did anyone play the Skirmish trial last night? Spill some info if you did as I didn’t get a chance to. I’m worried that Skirmish mode will be repetitive but would be glad to learn I was wrong. Also, since the NDA for Siege of Mirkwood is lifted, I’d love to hear some impressions about all the changes.
Impressions: the ability to do things while on a horse is awesome, Mirkwood is sufficiently creepy and murky (mirky?), lots of quests to do. I stopped doing quests after a while so I would have something to do when Mirkwood goes live.
The Skirmish system is fun for a while, and may last through more than a few replays, because it’s sort of random, and you can dial in the difficulty you want, and do them solo or in a group of 3 or 5. I’m not really sure how long it will remain fun, though.
I know very little about group content in Mirkwood, though, and almost nothing about anything above level 63.
Edit:I would like to add that certain areas within Mirkwood are very creepy and dangerous and confusing to move around it. I enjoyed them.
Also included in Mirkwood is a minor revamp of the Lone Lands with a few new quest hubs and some NPCs moved to new locations to make the quest progression flow better, a few new quests and some changes to old ones, a new level 50 area (well, upgraded to 50 from ~18) with some repeatable quests, and a horse route to and from that quest guy out in the middle of nowhere that a lot of people miss.
It’s arguably worth $20 and certainly worth a 3 month subscription to get it for free, assuming one is going to play the game anyway.
If anyone is interested I have some screenshots I could post.
The servers are back up after getting the official Mirkwood update. Downloading it now, so apparently Mirkwood is officially live.
Doesn’t this expansion also include the ability to do the lower level books solo now? I thought that was one of the big selling points for people who don’t have maxed characters. Since the lower levels are less populated, they were going to institute a way for your character to become uber when doing an book instance.
I hope that’s the case for all the old books. I haven’t bothered with them since book four because I don’t want to go hooking for groups. I also hope there is some way for me to get out of moria soon with my lvl 54 warden. Bored to tears by it, was so disappointed by moria after the shine wore off.
Just started this game yesterday (from level 1). So far, it looks a bit bland, but competent. And any game that has bagpipe-playing dwarf bards (minstrels, whatever) can’t be all bad!
I hope the rumours about lower-level books being made amenable to soloists are true. Not a lot of lower-level characters running around :)
Og what server are you on? There are more lowbees on Elindilmir and Brandywine.
I think that’s only books 1 and 2 with a plan to continue rolling through with solo ability on the rest of volume 1 with upcoming updates. The new Siege of Mirkwood skirmishes are all supposed to be soloable though.
I think Brandywine and Landroval (my server) are the two most populated. I generally see quite a few lowbies as roleplaying folk tend to be altaholics. Where I hit trouble was with midrange grouping quests. Sometimes a random PUG will snowball through them out of nowhere but that was rare. Still, there’s more than enough soloable stuff around so that you can level to 60 if you’re guild averse.
lots of changes.
Landroval. It’s said to be the unofficial RP server, and that’s half the point of being a bagpipe-playing dwarf. Thanks for asking.
I should be on Landroval tonight at some point (probably 8 or 9 PM ESTish). My main is Hagall (Man/Champion/60). Odds are I’ll be busy knocking around with the new content but if you have any questions I should be able to point you in the right direction. If it’s slow I think I’ve got a lower level Dwarf around who’s just cleared the intro stuff and I’ll head over. He’s a Runekeeper.
Good lord, it’s hard to get back into an MMO after being away for a while. I just spent nearly an hour reading over tooltips for my skills and gear and all the lewt in my vault and my quests and…aww, screw it, I’m gonna go play a game where I can just shoot some stuff to unwind.
I’ll be knocking around Nimrodel over the next few weeks if anyone is around. I’ve paid up on our kinship house, which was in arrears, so be sure to drop in and take a sip from the keg!
-TomDamn, Tom logged in! There goes the usurp option for awhile.
ugh my update is going so slow
Landroval is definitely the RP server. You can also contact me in game, Main: Cyllrial Level 60 Elf/Minstrel, if you have questions. I have a slew of other alts, but I’ll be playing on her until I hit 65.
Mirkwood is definitely atmospheric. Turbine may not have the best game designers, but their world builders are truly top notch. It’s too bad it’s just a sliver of the forest.
Wow a metric tonne of changes. I’m excited! But at 70kB/s I can look forward to tomorrow…
You can no longer get so drunk that you hallucinate catching fish.
I hear you. I’ve recently dabbled in Age of Conan again, and it’s actually harder to pick up and play with an advanced character then it is to start a new one. And like your reaction, I feel the same way – makes me want to play something simple. I think it shows how difficult it can be to go back to a complicated game, and MMOs with advanced characters are complicated.