The latest Developers Diary for Book 14 of Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar focuses on the instances within Angmar itself. The three new instances Urugarth, Carn Dûm and Barad Gúlaran come with some new loot to help the heroes of Middle-Earth conquer and prepare them for the Moria expansion. The Angmar Armor set is part of the new content for Book 14.

In addition to entirely new content, players will find adjustments to existing instances and armor sets in the Book 14 update. The Annúminas armor has been tweaked so that it will match the difficulty of the Annúminas instances. Raids into Helegrod will now use barter items for armor drops within the instance.

One of the changes I look forward to is the addition of repeatable quests that encourage players to revisit Epic instances. It should cut down on the time it takes for characters that haven’t done them to gather a fellowship big enough to take them on.

For the full details on which instances will be affected, read the Book 14: Instance Updates dev diary on the Lord of the Rings Online.

With the release Book 14, The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar will be ready to advance the overarching storyline to the point where the Fellowship of the Ring leaves Rivendell. this is quite a feat as the nine members of the Fellowship are currently scattered throughout Rivendell and involved in some 51 quests. A new Developer Diary explains how this will be accomplished without breaking quest chains and with as little disturbance to immersion as possible.

Although the exact details are explained in the article, basically, the nine fellowship members will continue to exist in Rivendell. They will be moved into two out of the way time-frozen interiors so that they can be found for those quests, but they will also exist in new landscape locations in Lothlórien. Read the full dev diary to see just how complicated this simple maneuver is on the Lord of the Rings Online.

Book 14: Ring-forge of Eregion, hit the LotRO servers last night, and the influx of gamers logging on to take part in the new book caused the servers to start acting, well you know how choppy and rubberbandish it can get in Bree. It was basically like that almost everywhere. At least that is the reason some of us discussed last night regarding the server issues, but Turbine should have it fixed in no time.

Mean while, Book 14, which delivers the finale to the epic story from Volume I and adds several new storytelling mechanics combined with live in-world events, will unlock the prelude quests that will lead players to the Mines of Moria, the first expansion pack to LotRO scheduled to be released this Fall.

To advance through the story though, gamers must complete a quest which requires them to collect 5 fragments of Eregion’s Lost Lore (ring-lore). Each time a player completes the quest, not only do they get a reward, but they also bring their server closer to opening the other chapters in Book 14. I play on the Nimrodel server, and so far (as of this post) we have collected 2,111/70,000 bits of ring-lore. The good news is that you can repeat the quest every few hours which will help open up more chapters for all on the server.  So, do the quest as many times as you can!

Turbine has also released a handful of new Book 14 screenshots depicting the new Moria prelude quests, which you can view below.

For those of you Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar players who enjoy Monster Play, there’s a new guide on naming your monster on Massively. Many players go for the obvious like “Icanpwnu” and “Hobbitmuncher” or variations on a theme such as “Saruon” or “Wormtongxx.” These names aren’t inventive and make the monster a pretty easy target in PvMP. This guide is perfect for those of you interested in names more befitting Tolkien’s Middle-earth; ones that won’t single you out of the crowd.

Tolkien was a linguist. He created the Elvish alphabet and language as well as the Black Speech, which is a corrupted form of old Elvish. Most of the names of various types of monsters available for PvMP in the Ettenmoors would be derived from the Black Speech. For example, the name of the Orc in the screenshot above means “filth.”

For those of you who could care less, go ahead and name your monster “I8elf4Breakfast.” If you want to remain in the spirit of LotRO, check out Blogging into Mordor: Finding the perfect name for your Monster Character on Massively.

Turbine has just released a new batch of screenshots for Book 14: The Ring-forges of Eregion, the next free content update for The Lord of the Rings Online. The screens illustrate new and improved Minstrel animations as well as the continuation of the epic questline. improvements

Here are some of the updates you can look forward to with Book 14, and don’t forget that Summer Festivals will be hitting the servers sometime soon.

• Monster Play emotes are being introduced, complete with racial-specific emotes that can be achieved through deeds.
• Monster Play races have several improvements and balance measures, especially with the Weaver.
• New class improvements including several for the Burglar and Captain, plus the inclusion of varying instrument sounds and animations to correlate with the actual instruments being played by your Minstrel (not just the lute!)
• The Diminishing Returns system is set into place with vast improvements.
• Plus changes to Crafting, new dye, new outfits, new quests, UI fixes, new items and much, much more

Also of note with Book 14, will be the changes in the three main Angmar instances Urugarth, Carn Dum and Barad Gularan. Besides tweaks to gameplay, some cool new armor sets will be added or improved to add balance. You can get more details regarding Book 14 by checking out the Dev Diaries on the official site.

Thanks to Kinatro over at NeoGAF, gamers now have a taste of what is in the new Game Informer before they get it in the mail – well, me anyway. I never seem to get it when everyone else does. Thanks GameStop.

Anyway – good news for Wolfenstein fans (like me) because within the confines of the pages, it has been announced that the much rumored and hardly heard of continuation of Return to Castle Wolfenstein will premiere sometime next week at E3. id Software and Raven will be at the festivities, while it may also show up at Activison’s “Screw-You-ESA” party going on around the same time.

Here are some of the facts pulled out of the August issue of GI:

• Wolfenstein (360, PS3, PC)
• Pub: Activision, Dev: Raven Software/ID Software
• Takes place in WWII against Nazi’s fully dabbling in the occult
• BJ (the hero) will also make use of supernatural powers
• Game gives you a city in which the game takes place. Missions and quests take you through different parts. As you complete quests, more of the city opens up. Kind of a non-linear path
• Set piece and randomly generated activity block your path
• There is an AI resistance force that will assist you during the game at times. Think of the resistance forces in MGS4
• You will also enter “The Shroud”, an alternate reality version of the city. A dimension in which the Nazi’s are drawing power from.

Supposedly, the screens look great, the lighting is impressive, and oh hell, it is a Wolfenstein game for crying out lout that is suppose to come out sometime this year.

Looks like between this, Fallout 3, Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Far Cry 2, and the Mines of Moria expansion for LotRO heading to stores this year, my gaming dance-card will be full.

Via: NeoGAF

Turbine sent us a lovely batch of screenshots for Book 14: The Ring-forges of Eregion,  the next free content update for The Lord of the Rings Online. The screenshots illustrate The Ring Forges located in Eregion, a new region of which a portion will become available to players with the upcoming launch of Book 14.

Thanks to Massively, here are some of the updates you can look forward to with Book 14, and don’t forget that Summer Festivals will be hitting the servers sometime soon.

• Monster Play emotes are being introduced, complete with racial-specific emotes that can be achieved through deeds.
• Monster Play races have several improvements and balance measures, especially with the Weaver.
• New class improvements including several for the Burglar and Captain, plus the inclusion of varying instrument sounds and animations to correlate with the actual instruments being played by your Minstrel (not just the lute!)
• The Diminishing Returns system is set into place with vast improvements.
• Plus changes to Crafting, new dye, new outfits, new quests, UI fixes, new items and much, much more

Also of note with Book 14, will be the changes in the three main Angmar instances Urugarth, Carn Dum and Barad Gularan. Besides tweaks to gameplay, some cool new armor sets will be added or improved to add balance. You can get more details regarding Book 14 by checking out the Dev Diaries on the official site.

Via: Massively

Lord of the Rings Online Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel talks about Book 14 of the Shadows of Angmar, the first of the annual expansions and the future of LotRO in the second part of his recent interview with MMORPG.

Mines of Moria is the first of Turbine’s annual expansions for LotRO. As the last update to Shadows of Angmar, Book 14 will provide the lead in to the adventures in Moria. The new book won’t just be a prequal to the next stage in the story. It will contain some significant new editions to already rich content.

“You’ll probably see some kind of extension of the existing social systems. We’re not adding a big new social system and we’re not adding a new hobby probably until Moria,” he answered. “You’ll get more things to play with in Housing.”

“The really big focus for book 14,” he told me, “is around our live event system. That’s something that’s been in since launch that we’ve been growing [under the radar].” Being informed by their Asheron’s Call 1 team, they have built a system that will allow them to trigger events in a number of ways: a schedule, a time of day, a specific day, or in-game triggers. The festivals that have cropped up in-game in the last year were a kind of prelude to the live events system.

“We’re doing a lot more with that in Book 14,” he said, “including new areas that expand on the land control stuff that we’ve done in a couple of parts of the game.” Players are going to have to work with others to gain ownership of certain control points. Holding those control points will open up more content for the team.

For more details on the future of the Lord of the Rings Online, read the entire Jeffrey Steefel interview on MMORPG.

The latest update to the ever expanding font of knowledge on the expanded world of The Lord of the Rings Online features information on a Turbine created adversary called the Gaunt-Lord.

In the First Age, Morgoth summoned many fell spirits into his service and twisted countless creatures to his will. Among those were dire creatures called Gaunt-men. Morgoth gave the Gaunt-men mortal bodies in which to work his wickedness throughout Middle-earth. Men and Elves alike feared these creatures, for they had the power to instill other fell spirits into the remains of the dead and raise them as wights.

After Morgoth’s fall, the remaining Gaunt-men went into hiding in the realm that later became Angmar. Their power was greatly diminished, but when the Wizards arrived to lend wisdom to the Free Peoples of Middle-earth, the Witch-king summoned the Gaunt-men to his service. Among them, five gained greater power to match the five Wizards. These five, embodying death, pestilence, famine, war, and purest evil, became known as the Gaunt-lords.

This and other entries really serve as both a great reference to the world of the MMORPG and as a source of information for anyone considering running a more traditional RPG set in Middle-Earth.

You can find the article here.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest was described by Pandemic and EA as Battlefront with Orcs back in April, which not only got the gaming world pretty interested in this new title, but also wanting to know more about it.

In light of E3 coming up, which promises to have LotR: Conquest on hand, Rob Taylor over at CVG brought up an interesting thought today regarding EA’s upcoming LotR: Conquest:

“If you ever wanted to raze Bag End to the ground with a mighty Balrog’s fire whip, kick Gandalf’s wizened arse with Saruman or grind Samwise into dust with Sauron, now’s your chance.”

Yes Rob, there have been many times I have wanted to go on a Hobbit killing rampage. While trying to get from lvl 10 and up in LotRO, I had to run a bunch of errands for the furry footed busybodies, and  suffice it to say, developed a highly evolved prejudice towards them. If the game would have let me, by the time I finally finished the Shire quests, I was so enraged that I would have relished in the opportunity to turn Michael Delving into nothing short of a rubble filled crater. But enough about my anger issues.

The article goes on to say that like Battlefront, you will not only be picking a character to play such as Warrio, Archer, Scout or Mage (which we knew about) but you will also be able to step into the embodiment of heroes like Aragorn and Gandalf. Conquest will also encourage you to reincarnate as different classes should you die, in order to, as Rob put it:  “sample the sweeping variety of gameplay styles the game has”.

Speaking about the multiplayer part of the game, with four-player online campaign co-op, Hero-only Deathmatch there is the Ring Bearer quest where one has to escape Ringwraiths with your only friend being your trusty dagger Sting.

It sounds fantastic to me, and to again to quote Rob:

“If a next gen Battlefront starring outrageous numbers of Uruk-hai, Elves and Rohan Riders doesn’t put fire in your belly, you’re less of a man than Gríma Wormtongue.”

You know, I could not have said it any better myself.

Thanks: CVG