Festivals, Missions And More - An Interview With LotRO's Rob Ciccolini

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Festivals, Missions And More - An Interview With LotRO's Rob Ciccolini

As the team at Standing Stone Games celebrates another festival, this time tied to Aragorn and Arwen's wedding, we sat down with executive producer Rob Ciccolini to discuss festivals and the future of The Lord of the Rings Online.

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Sovrath

It's good to know that the wedding is still going on. I thought it was a "one off." Will try it out. Thanks for the article.

Po_gg

Nice interview, though raised an eyebrow at the several mentions of free... a bit concerning.

"And to sweeten the deal, the festival content is completely free to all players."

Just as every other festival so far - or they're planning a change in that in the future?

Also, maybe a question or two could've slipped under the radar about the lasting class changes, induced by the -soon to be closed- pvp server...

Otherwise, a great festival. Literally great, too.

I love to dive in festivals, but this one has so many quests it's crazy... the wrapper quest needs to complete 10/day, and in MT alone there's way more, not to mention the four other festival areas.

MT, on one hand I agree it was a nice gesture to show it for the low level players, but (as it was discussed in the other thread) the lag is often horrendous. And the city itself could be a maze to the fresh and unexperienced adventurers

Sovrath said:

It's good to know that the wedding is still going on. I thought it was a "one off." Will try it out. Thanks for the article.

To be honest, I'm still puzzled on that part, and probably we won't know for sure until the Midsummer ends.

There's the wedding, which is the core of U27. It has an own Book (Vol. V Book 1), it's a bit short but fun storyline about the wedding preparations, etc.

And there's the Midsummer festival, which is about helping all around MT during those merry times. For this the release notes clearly say: "The Midsummer Festival will be a yearly event."

However

the wedding takes place in the same Midsummer instance version of MT...

Similar event instances (like Frostbluff, Wistmead, the Haunted Burrow etc.) are inaccessible during the year - unless you leave your character there, but then you can just walk around within the empty Frostbluff for example.

Either the wedding will be a yearly event too, or maybe you'll be able to travel there any time of the year but it will only have the Book quests and related NPCs?

Can't wait to see which outcome will happen.

ed: (just edit, not a bump since it was my overlook )

Cordovan has already confirmed a few days before, it's the latter.

The festival will end, and then will return each year.

The Book quest line about the wedding will be accessible all through the year.

Lithuanian

Wonder what world do SSG live in?
I logged to Midsumme festival yesterday. Not peak hours. Few minutes - almost blank MT screen. Then my toon can move a little (everything still loads). Finally loaded - I have no quests, no landscape tokens.
Relog.
Few minutes to load. Almost blank MT screen. Then my toon can move a little.
Yes, it took me 5 minutes to move and enter some building. Tried to exit - almost frozen screen. Exited, teleported to Bree (around 1 minute to teleport).
This is reality, not rose-painted thing brough by developers. To bring festival to the most lagging area - well, worst decision ever.
Did I have a chance to earn festival tokens in Lag Tirith? No, I had zero chances.
Grats on such...as they put it..
"the ability to execute on festivals and such has been a strength of the game"
Ehem. Ability to put hundreds, thousands of players into lagging area and to be cool - put as much decorations and NPCs as we can - "has been a strengh of the game".

Please tell me developers were smoking their second ton of weed and talked about visions.

Po_gg

Maybe there's some client or ISP issues are involved? The situation is bad, make no mistake, just not that bad - at least on my end, with this average and sub-optimal gear.

Very laggy, rubberbanding everywhere, interacts (with items or NPCs) often do nothing, then after a few seconds of wait you try again and get the "Already in use" message - the whole situation is a mess.

But multiple minutes of loading...  never saw that bad, of course there's the possibility of me just being lucky.

My favourite so far is when I mount up, and nothing happens (gfx-wise), but I can run with mount speed. Then it spawns the steed on and around me (character runs with the head and upper body inside the horse ), and a few seconds later the character teleport into the saddle.

With the debate aside, on how bad the lag actually is (between very bad and catastrophic), generally I agree.

Lithuanian said:

To bring festival to the most lagging area - well, worst decision ever.

This.

Looks great, perfect for the lore, fit to the storyline and the current state of the game... and pretty much that's all I can list on the positive side.

The actual implementation... a trainwreck. I might be on the brighter side of the lag situation, but even that "brighter" side is just barely playable.

ed: at least I could get enough tokens for my mount-collector character to get the 4 new steeds.