LOTROStream Q&A with Severlin and Cordovan – Friday 19 February 2021 - notes
On Friday 19 February 2021 SSG Executive Producer Severlin (Rob Ciccolini) and Community Manager Cordovan (Jerry Snook) held a Q&A with the LOTRO community on Twitch.tv via the LOTROstream.
Like with the recent world building chat Scenario (Matt Elliot) did, I’ve taken some notes (less extensive this
time) and you can read them below.
As usual, any errors are my own, apologies in advance.
NOTES – taken 20-21 February 2021
The chat is available on
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIxI9U_XiyA
- Twitch.tv: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/920332007
Hosts
- Severlin (Rob Ciccolini) - Executive Producer
- Cordovan (Jerry Snook) - Community Manager
Working on
- Producer’s letter
- 2021-22 plans
Wildwood of Breeland – next
update
- Middle level content
- Missions for end game players
- Round out map
- Pricing – regular quest pack, free to VIPs
- Release? Next month some time (March 2021)
Gundabad expansion
- Later this year – after Summer
- Continuing main storyline
Guardian class update + tank class
balance – ongoing
- Brawler class – large piece of work
- Brawler will be part of the pre-order for Gundabad
Content scheduled between
Wildwood and Gundabad?
- Update 30
- End game
Communication between community
and SSG team?
- Needs improvement
- If they can answer, they will
PVMP
- Resources – modest amount of changes
Scrolls of Empowerment
- Want players to be rewarded for playing content on their level
- Want content to be challenging
Legendary items progress
- Apologised for the situation
- Regrets the progress
- Need to be better
- Large amount of engineering
Wardrobe/vault spaces
- Sev will look into it
- Cord – in general they want you to have as much vault space as you like, restrictions are due to other factors
Transfers from closed worlds
- Happening in relatively near future
River Hobbits
- After Gundabad
- 2022
Tier 5 rewards
- Prestige achievement
- High difficulty content – love/hate for players
- Should be rewarded but not so other players can’t participate in getting “cool loot”
Valar item
- Possibly at 130 – but not going to commit
LUA API
- No plans to put resources into expanding it
Preview on Bullroarer
- Next week
2021 Anniversary
- Content planned
- Social media stream
Crafting system
- More resources to work on crafting system
- Not before Gundabad
- But “cool crafting stuff for Gundabad”
Kinship revamp
- On the list but lower priority than class revamp
EU servers
- No plans to split server structure between US and EU
Raid before Gundabad
- Smaller one in Update 30
- U30 is a normal content pack
No level cap increase
- Will not be 135 – concerns over mid level change of Ill Omens items
Normal server lag
- Needs to be addressed
Mini-expansion
- Learned a lot of lessons
- Limitations to store – new
- VIP players need better value
- Cheaper? No promises
- Upper bundles were good value but not great value expected from bigger expansions – needs to be addressed
War of Three Peaks
- Pricing connected to e-commerce considerations
- Looking into price
Stat squish?
- Rebalance entire game
Balance of broken/need fixing
vs new content?
- More investment in systems that will fix things
SSG goal
- Want players to have something cool to do every 13 weeks
- Unfinished Tales – small story content between big updates
- Like “Wildwood” (Note: Not Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales book)
Engine improvements
- Investment into the graphics of the game
EG7 (Enad Global 7)
- Excitement seen in a letter to investors how they wanted to invest in LOTRO
Background: Swedish gaming company EG7 announced the purchasing of Daybreak on 1 December 2020. Daybreak became the new publisher of Standing Stones Games (LOTRO & DDO) on 19 December 2016 after Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment dropped the games.
Chat connect/disconnect issues/stuck
on load screens
- Move chat server onto a different space – a master server
- Careful rollout
LOTRO market – gifting
- On the agenda
Working at SSG
Number of positions open (USA only):
Senior Character Artist
Art Team, Needham, Massachusetts
Job ID: 5086244002
https://www.daybreakgames.com/careers?job=5086244002
Senior Game Producer
Production Team, Needham, Massachusetts
Job ID: 4936752002
https://www.daybreakgames.com/careers?job=4936752002
New raid
- There is a new raid, but no details as yet
Sale on three Minas Mogul
bundles
- Nothing at the moment – Black Friday/Holidays potentially
What gets priority in being
made?
- Data behind the scenes on what is doing well
- How players are engaging with the game to make decisions
Next legendary server
- In next few months
Landscape difficulty NPC
- Not as stealthy as they should be!
- Will allow players to have more challenge as they go through solo content
- Deployed on a larger scale, not just PVP server
Harad or Khand
- Would love to visit
- Nothing to announce
Housing
- Would love to do more housing for different race specifics
- More housing – maybe (nothing scheduled before Gundabad)
- Likely to be a Non-human form of housing because more human housing done recently – elf, dwarf or hobbit
LOTRO future?
- Wil never talk about anything related to IP or legal
- Sev – “We plan on having LOTRO going for decades and more. We want it to go on forever, so. And we don’t see anything that would prevent us from doing that.”
Branching questlines
- Expensive
- Need to be careful
- When players get to that choice point – players feel they don’t have enough information – players feel bad if going to one ending and don’t like it and lost opportunity of other ending
64-bit client – make default?
- Constantly developing to be better
- 32-bit client a long-term choice – want to keep it
GM help
- Tools added to GMs – capability to get more account information upfront
- Help people when offline
- Help more quickly
Tanks
- Want them to feel valuable
- Long term ongoing goal
PvMP work in 2021
- More resources on it
- Changes to end game
- Scaling doesn’t work as well as they like
- New gear can throw balance off
Character appearance
- Hair/faces customisation in the works
- All races to have more options
- Before Gundabad?
- Some extra ones in
Visual C++ at launcher
installation
- Check to Launcher deprecated by Microsoft
- Old Service Packs can make launcher fail
Graphic improvements
- Lot of graphical updates to add
- To improve engine – eg Ray tracing
Skills cancelling themselves
- Like to address
- Linked to animation issue
Server performance
- Change hardware
- Chat server
Producers letter
- Goes to translators next week
- Expected within next month
- Partners need to see it – there is a process
Ill Omens and Buried Treasure
- Seen they are popular
Websites
- Revamp to be looked at
Twitch
- No plans to integrate Twitch API into LOTRO game client
- Support Twitch streamers
- Giveaways etc
More communication
- Plan to do more Twitch chats
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