Updated Avatars a Possibility in 2017 + Mordor Expansion! - Lord of the Rings Online - MMORPG.com

SBFord · December 2016

Updated Avatars a Possibility in 2017 + Mordor Expansion! - Lord of the Rings Online - MMORPG.com

Lord of the Rings Online News - Now that Lord of the Rings Online is off on its own, developers are looking at some long-requested features for the game. In a thread discussing things players would like to see, Executive Producer Rob "Severlin" Ciccolini wrote that the team is looking into new character avatars in 2017, though with some trepidation.

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SBFord · December 2016

New avatars and the hope for new combat animations and I'd be back in a heartbeat and would never leave.

Yes, I'm that shallow. :P

Sovrath · December 2016

hmmmm ok I'm listening ...

If only their gear didn't look like "Clown" gear ...

Sovrath · December 2016

Torval said:

By the way the game has had an animation revamp at one point and it was met with mixed reviews. It was a very limited pass and not a complete revamp, but some people like their familiar things. He makes good points.

I didn't think the animation revamp was "all that".

waynejr2 · December 2016

Sovrath said:

hmmmm ok I'm listening ...

If only their gear didn't look like "Clown" gear ...

I don't like the selling point of "possibility". It is meaningless. Heck, it is worse than meaningless if someone takes action they wouldn't otherwise do assuming it will happen and it doesn't.

Sovrath · December 2016

Torval said:

Sovrath said:

Torval said:

By the way the game has had an animation revamp at one point and it was met with mixed reviews. It was a very limited pass and not a complete revamp, but some people like their familiar things. He makes good points.

I didn't think the animation revamp was "all that".

I"m not sure what you mean by "all that" or clownish above.

It was a limited pass on animations to fix the most glaring issues. Like I said they didn't revamp the entire system. The point being even the small changes like that were met with mixed reviews. People get attached to their characters warts and all.

Some of us would like model and animation updates for sure, but there will a lot who don't like it either.

I've never liked the gear, I always felt it looked ridiculous. Including the weapons. There were others who felt the same way as we were giving our opinion of it since the early closed betas. I think the first time I saw something decent was when they made the Rohan expansion.

In truth, I get more of a Middle Earth feel in Shadow of Mordor.

"All that" is just an expression meaning it's not that great.

ste2000 · December 2016

SBFord said:

New avatars and the hope for new combat animations and I'd be back in a heartbeat and would never leave. Yes, I'm that shallow. :P

That would be nice.
LOTRO characters never looked as good as the rest of the graphics, if they can do that, I might give it another look.
This is a great IP which deserves the best, so I hope they will be able to refresh its dated 10 years old graphics.

By the way I hope they asked Daybreak before announcing this great news, as I am still waiting for a substantial EQ2 graphic update that never materialized, I am not that confident they gonna give them the go ahead.
But fingers crossed.

natpick · December 2016

combat animations should be a priority imo,always put me off playing another wise good game,i cant speak for others but i bet there is alot of players who think the same.

Forgrimm · December 2016

That would be a good change. At the time when it first came out, the game had some of the best environmental and architectural graphics in an mmo, but the character models were crap in comparison.

Soki123 · December 2016

Wife and I got VIP , hope it s still going to be there, I m sure it will.

flizzer · December 2016

If they could fix the lag, revamp character models, animations, oh yes. I would happily pay for an expansion even though I am sitting on tons of LOTRO points.

Mendel · December 2016

I am going to hold out on fully falling in line for this news. New models would be excellent, but right now, that appears to be developers talking. Let me see how Daybreak allocates their money before I get too excited about this. We have heard other developers who talked ahead of Daybreak's management, and we see where they're employed now.

Edit to add. New models could mean an enormous amount of art work. This game has so many costumes, it might work against the stated goal.

[Deleted User] · December 2016

The user and all related content has been deleted.

gervaise1 · December 2016

Dren_Utogi said:

64bit client would do wonders ...

At times and in some zones in particular it was a rough road - especially as server mergers were also on-going which probably (has) caused has the lag. However 64-bit is in.

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?592205-Data-Center-Launch!-1-11-2016

Data Center Launch! 1-11-2016 (i.e. 11th January '16)

We are finally at the point at which we are ready to announce the opening of the new Datacenter with all new hardware! It has been a long road as we purchased and set up new hardware with updated operating systems, transferred all the data from the old worlds to the new and had to correct systems that had trouble with the transition for 32bit to 64 bit processing. But all of that is past us now and we are pleased to announce that on January 11th, 2016 we will come down for a maintenance window at 5am EST and come back up around 3PM in our new home!

MythicMan · December 2016

Give the Loremaster character mobility in combat. Having to stand still for every skill and getting locked into CRAZY LONG animations to cast those skills in raids that require dynamic and shifting movement is just horrible. Make the skills 100% when standing still and progressively weaker the more you move so it's balanced out. Right now, the raids and pvp are such that standing still (the only class that does now) is simply ridiculous.

Dragnelus · December 2016

np

Loke666 · December 2016

It would be a good move, the avatars are way uglier then the background (which is weird, almost all other MMOs put their main focus on the avatars).

Lobotomist · December 2016

It is funny how they are cautiously considering new player avatars , because they can not be sure everyone will want them - when New player avatars was no1 request, and complain since year one.

But honestly. Turbine, LOTRO - one of the best MMOs produced in this wasteland we call genre. But only reason they split from Turbine with this "new" company, is to be closed quietly without making WB look bad.

And Daybreak is now involved. You can quietly write off LOTRO or any addition or changes.

GAME OVER

LynxJSA · December 2016

SBFord said:

New avatars and the hope for new combat animations and I'd be back in a heartbeat and would never leave. Yes, I'm that shallow. :P

As a related aside, LOTRO probably has more animations (not just frames of animations but full animations) for player characters than any two other MMOs put together.

BillMurphy · December 2016

It's funny, but I haven't played LotRO in forever. Simply by having big news like this, I'm tempted to try it again soon.

LynxJSA · December 2016

Restarted playing recently. Well, not really playing but more like dicking around in the game to pass time. Had something like 15k Turbine points sitting there so I dumped them into making a rather well-fortified flowerpicker who will soon take up farming just to be able to blow smoke ships.

SpottyGekko · December 2016

This dev team is now fighting for their jobs and lives.

There's no safety net anymore, no parent company that will provide monthly paychecks even if the game is not making enough money.

If WB "didn't want to pay for" revamp X, that money will now have to come directly out of the profit generated by Lotro. No profit, no revamps or expansions, because without profit there won't be any devs left to do the work.

LynxJSA · December 2016

SpottyGekko said:

This dev team is now fighting for their jobs and lives.

There's no safety net anymore, no parent company that will provide monthly paychecks even if the game is not making enough money.

If WB "didn't want to pay for" revamp X, that money will now have to come directly out of the profit generated by Lotro. No profit, no revamps or expansions, because without profit there won't be any devs left to do the work.

I fear you are writing this because you see what you describe as a unique situation and not SOP for almost every business ever.

SpottyGekko · December 2016

LynxJSA said:

SpottyGekko said:

This dev team is now fighting for their jobs and lives.

There's no safety net anymore, no parent company that will provide monthly paychecks even if the game is not making enough money.

If WB "didn't want to pay for" revamp X, that money will now have to come directly out of the profit generated by Lotro. No profit, no revamps or expansions, because without profit there won't be any devs left to do the work.

I fear you are writing this because you see what you describe as a unique situation and not SOP for almost every business ever.

That's because it's not at all unusual for loss-making divisions to be "carried" by the parent company.

Most commonly it happens when a division goes through "a difficult time". Subsidizing it may result in a leaner, more profitable unit after some restructuring. I'll bet Sony carried SOE for a good few years before they simply had to let it go...

Lobotomist · December 2016

Game industry in general is in Dire straits right now. ( more than ever )

And the bad situation will continue on for at least few years. Most studios are closing or shrinking. And lot of work is done trough contractors.

Daybreak, is bad news in any case. A company interested only in milking money by maintaining servers for already existing MMOs, with zero investment with skeleton crew.

Sadly, another one bites the dust. Thats all.

SpottyGekko · December 2016

Gorwe said:

SpottyGekko said:

This dev team is now fighting for their jobs and lives.

There's no safety net anymore, no parent company that will provide monthly paychecks even if the game is not making enough money.

If WB "didn't want to pay for" revamp X, that money will now have to come directly out of the profit generated by Lotro. No profit, no revamps or expansions, because without profit there won't be any devs left to do the work.

Which, although kinda inhuman, is the right way to go. Because, when you can get by doing nothing and you're paid almost exactly the same if you work REALLY HARD...why'd you work really hard again? Comfort unfortunately stifles innovation and various other things.

That's a bit harsh, lol, you have to keep context in mind.

When WB "refused to pay" for certain changes, that was most likely because those project proposals would have required extra expense over and above the existing team's monthly paychecks. Additional contractors for coding or artwork, etc.

A parent company may "loan" money to a dev team in advance so that they can do projects. That loan is then "repaid" by the extra revenue generated by the changes to the game.

Not having access to "friendly finance" makes things much more difficult. SSG will either have to find additional sources for funding, or take much longer to complete work which should have been tackled with an expanded team.

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