LotRO's radiance to be run over by a train and other future tidbits revealed

I always though radiance/gloom was an extremely arbitrary mechanic that seemed way too close to the already existing dread/hope. I'll be glad to see it go.

POP-culture references in a game that is meant to be a faithful retelling of Tolkien's work seems rather stupid.

Not that I'm a fan of LoTRO but I was a fan of "Middle-Earth Online" which is what LoTRO was made from the bones of.

It's a bloody shame we ended up with LoTRO instead of a more sandbox styled game, in my honest opinion Turbine chickened out.

I like how everyone just seems to think that since they changed their subscription model to something with "Free" in that it's inherently because the :

game sucks
devs sucks
no players ...etc.

I think it will be funny to see these people on the posts here in months to come when the model works for Turbine delcaring how they love the game now.


If it was such a bad model, we would have heard about it from the testers and something would have changed.

All good.. but futurama references?? As much as I am fun of futurama... this seriously is crap... usualy I am fun of such thingies but not in Lotro.. meh

Radience was the thing that really turned me off the game I am so glad to hear they are putting it sleep.

I'd love to dust off my Captain and level him on from where I left him in Lothlorien, if Turbine also put in EQ2 quality housing I am pretty certain I will be back in.

Utakata said: "I disagree, DarkStryke. I think it began at, "The devs also admitted to slipping in a few pop culture mentions into the game, such as Firefly and Futurama references." Pink Nazgûl's with rainbows coming out of their asses is just around the corner. :( "

I agree. Personally, I plan on playing LOTRO for it's epic storyline and the interesting quests that it brings, not some silly game of golf that'll ultimately distract players from the theme of the game. I understand that LOTRO is just that - a game. However, if even the developers are taking The Lord of the Rings vision and making lite of the theme, and turning it piece-by-piece into a cartoon, of sorts, with mentions to pop culture, then it'll end up being viewed as World of Warcraft. All I'm saying is don't kill the game before it's released to the public, or even years from now. Stay true to the source material and all will be fine.

Geez, half the comments here are focused on pop culture references. Did you guys actually even read the PDF? About how the references are in item descriptions? And even then not all the references made it in because they were overruled? Talk about the snowball effect...except the snow is made of invisible retards.

Yeah I think people are blowing the "pop culture" comment out of proportion. Don't get me wrong, any blatant references to anything in pop culture would be a terrible idea to Tolkien's work. That being said though if they name an item something very, VERY subtle it's not a big deal.

Any NPC's who are named with a pun-ny name (like Haris Pilton) would be stupid and I doubt Turbine is that dumb. But tiny easter eggs that only the devs know and some huge fans of the reference get are fine and fun! It is after just a game, and it's Turbine's game at that!

But yeah, no Bapp Zannigans please! :)

PvMP skirmishes? Yaaaaaay, they listened ^_^

I still have to pay for AC :(

Wait... come on now... really? Futurama and Firefly references in Middle Earth?! I hear Tolkien spinning now... However, the removal of radience gear is awesome (but will probably be replaced by a player-run GearScore type thing... ugh) as I know that was a headache for a lot of people. Golf should be fun, though, goes along well with the England/Ireland backdrop. :) Can't wait to get home tonight and give the new LotRO a spin.

Whew!! Finally they'll be taking care of the absurd barter-item clutter!

Again, the pop-culture references are so subtle, you wouldn't know they were there unless you were intimately familiar with the referenced material.

Case in point: Firefly reference was a consumable 'fluff' item from a festival - Saffron's Lipstick - which caused your target to use the /faint emote. That's it. The tooltip made no reference to firefly, Joss Whedon or " the 'verse'".

Quit taking yourselves to seriously.

Wow! I argued long and hard against the radiance system. I even told them over time it will prove to be a major negative point to the game community. It seems the devs finally understand the points I was making and have opted to do the right thing.