It's been quite a long time since we've reported on a
House of Commons dev chat with
Lord of the Rings Online's
Turbine and
Codemasters devs, so this latest one should come as a special treat. In it, we get word of a few new features for the first expansion,
Mines of Moria, which was
just announced today to have a release date of November 18th! In order to paraphrase
this long dev chat, we've bullet-pointed what we feel is the most interesting answers to player questions:
- No pre-Moria equipment will be part of the Legendary Items system.
- After Mines of Moria, they'll "most likely" be heading south with future expansions. Although there's word of fleshing out Eriador as well.
- Capstone skills are used in conjunction with Legendary Traits and Trait sets to make mega powerful skills. These capstones come in three different types: solo gameplay, small fellowship and 6-man instance gameplay.
- You will get access to another Legendary Trait slot at level 60
- Renown and Infamy will be changed to increase the amount gained in a full group and reduce the amount gained in raids.
- The Elves of Lothlorien will not have accessible reputation until the first book update after launch
- Suggested improvements to the kinship system include kinbank, plus stablemasters and crafting areas in the kinship house.
- The entire Book 1 of Volume 2 will act as an introduction to Legendary Items, so you will get them early on.
- Following the helpful dev diaries on the Hunter, Burglar and Lore-master, Turbine plans to release guides for the remaining classes from 50-60 as well.
- Inventory problems will be alleviated with quest tokens and key rings. Quest items will be stored in a quest journal, instead of the player's inventory. Key rings will hold important keys for certain doors.
- You will not need to finish Volume 1 to access Volume 2.
- No new hobbies releasing with Moria, but there are others in the works for future book patches.
