Ninimiel’s gossip – LOTRO news from the Falathlorn’s Town Crier #002
Ninimiel* is one of LOTRO’s Town Criers, helpfully not being that helpful from the Falathlorn Homesteads. In an occasional series of updates, he’ll bring you the latest news about LOTRO.
Sunday 18 April 2021
We have a lot of LOTRO things
happening in the next week – Update 29.5 brings the Wastes to the Legendary
servers, the first “Further Adventures” mission-based story (staring Bilbo
Baggins!), the curator returns and the Anniversary Festival starts. In
non-LOTRO news (but connected), the upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO being designed
by Amazon Games Studios looks to be cancelled, more information below. And the
paper and pen RPG The One Ring RPG has reached the pledge manager stage.
Update 29.5
Will be released on Monday 19th
April 2021.
Release notes: https://www.lotro.com/en/content/update-295-release-notes-0
Includes:
- The Further Adventures of Bilbo Baggins
- Legendary Serves – the Wastes, level cap to 105
- Anniversary festival (starts Wednesday 21 April 2021)
Upcoming Events
Information for any upcoming in-game events.
LOTRO Anniversary Celebration
Event type: festival
Date: 21 APR – 12 MAY
(4/21/21@10am to 5/12/21@3am)
LOTRO was released on 24 April 2007.
Each year the game celebrates – in 2021 it will be the 14th anniversary.
Information from Update 29.5notes:
- Starts 21 April through 11 May 2021
- 14th Anniversary!
- New rewards include cosmetic torches wielded by player characters
- 2021 anniversary yearly gift will be awarded to the first character you log into your account between 21 April 2021 and 30 March 2022.
LOTRO wiki information:
https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/LOTRO_Anniversary_Celebration
Housing items:
https://en.dcodumilieu.fr/festivals/anniversary-celebration/
Guides:
https://fibrojedi.me.uk/lotro/lotro-anniversary-event/
“Further Adventures”
The first of these, focused on Bilbo Baggins, is expected with U29.5 (week of 18 April 2021). The best information we have about this new mission-based quest arc comes from the Executive Producer Letter from February 2021:
“A short time after the Wildwood update, we are planning to release the first of our 'Further Adventures,' quest arcs that make use of the Mission system to explore new stories involving major and minor characters in Middle-earth. The first of these involves one of the most famous of all the Hobbits: Bilbo Baggins. If you enjoy it, we're open to doing more 'Further Adventures' later in the year. Suggestions for characters you'd like to see in these narrative mission sets are welcome!”
More information has been revealed in the Update 29.5 notes:
- Level 20-130
- Free to VIPs
- Available in LOTRO store but
- FREE for a limited time – how will be revealed on Monday 19 April 2021
- Begins with Celeblír in Rivendell (not far from the Last Homely House)
- 10 missions
- Deed to complete all – title, virtue xp, Tokens of Further Adventure
- Tokens of Further Adventure – gained by running Further Adventures missions, bound to account, go in Barter Wallet, cap of 500
- Tokens barter: level-appropriate rings, cosmetic items, housing decorations
The Curator
The figments of splendour barterer, known as the Curator, returns for a limited time on 19 April and stays through 2 May 2021.
The Curator can be found at the following
locations (info from LOTRO wiki):
- Bree, Bree-land, by the Boar Fountain [30.3S, 51.1W]
- Twenty-first Hall, Moria, southeast of the Milestone [5.9S, 105.1W]
- Galtrev, Dunland [80.2S, 16.8W]
- Skarháld, Ered Mithrin [34.7N, 45.5W]
Housing items from the Curator:
https://en.dcodumilieu.fr/figments-of-splendour/curator/
Player events on Laurelin
You can find some great player
events at Laurelin Archives:
https://laurelinarchives.org/
I will advertise my upcoming events on this blog.
A player on Laurelin, Lil, is
currently getting a massive amount of hits on their YouTube video of them
walking from Forochel to Erebor. You can see that here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ75ZQtIoms
+Cord of the Rings
SSG Community Manager Jerry “Cordovan” Snook live streams playing LOTRO and updates players on the latest news from SSG.
+Cord of the Rings Chat with
Sev from 16 April 2021
SSG Executive Producer Severlin
(Rob Ciccolini) and SSG Community Manager Cordovan (Jerry Snook) chat and do a
Q&A with players.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovI8BNTGt88
Some notes from Sev taken from
the above chat about the “Further Adventures” design process:
- Further adventure – set of missions
- Stories that have happened that we can explore – characters that aren’t relevant to current epic story
- Bilbo Baggins – story thread you can follow – fun and explores and builds on previous stories and opens up new options for stories that otherwise they would not normally be able to tell
- Missions – anyone from any level can play it – does not feel iike missions normally – story thread like instances
- First one (Bilbo) is a little longer – twice as long as shorter threads do in future
- Introduce players to the concept
- Several shorter ones vs one longer one
- Repeat it and get rewards from it
- Play on different alts
- Shorter play experience
- Designers given chance to open up avenues to explore stories they might not otherwise have chance to do
A casual stroll through…
SSG Senior World Designer Scenario (Matt Elliott) takes us on a continuing tour of the various areas of LOTRO and gives insights into LOTRO landscapes and the world building process. The upcoming tour will be voted on by players in the near future via a thread on the official forums.
A casual stroll through
Forochel
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/979103536
A casual stroll through Angmar
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/944402944
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErN4ry7OpRo
A casual stroll through Wildwood
(U29 preview)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/918094892
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRWgcteLQ6k
The LOTRO Beacon is a weekly update from Cordovan bring you player news and highlights as well as any official SSG news and also information about the weekly sales and promotions.
The latest issue of official
LOTRO news was published by SSG on Thursday 15 April 2021:
#200: https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/lotro-beacon-issue-200
Cord provides a forum post
giving a list of the current expected events for 2021.
https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?646193-LOTRO-Events-Schedule
Here on my blog, I’ve formatted
to a more UK/EU friendly format:
https://greenbookofthewhitedowns.blogspot.com/2021/01/ranatuors-lore-official-lotro-events.html
A selection of helpful general
links.
Wildwood
https://lotro.com/en/wildwood
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F676ubO8LuQ
LOTRO Wiki: https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/The_Wildwood
D&Co du Milieu Wildwood
housing items: https://en.dcodumilieu.fr/reputation/wildwood/
Executive Producer Letter from
February 2021
https://lotro.com/en/game/articles/letter-executive-producer-rob-ciccolini-0
Mythgard in Middle-earth with
Corey Olsen aka “The Tolkien Professor”
The Tolkien Professor Corey
Olsen lives streams
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/972740919
You can find more about
Mythgard here:
https://mythgard.org/lotro/
https://tolkienprofessor.com/
News that isn’t necessarily
LOTRO but is about gaming within Middle-earth and thus noteworthy to players of
LOTRO.
Amazon LOTR MMO no more.
It looks like the upcoming potential
competition to LOTRO in the form of an Amazon Lord of the Rings MMO under
license to Athlon Games/Leyou (now Tencent) is over. It appears Amazon and
Tencent could not find a mutually agreeable ground to move forward with the
project after Tencent bought out Leyou.
News broke from Bloomberg (appears to need registration to read fully) and
has been doing the rounds across various gaming websites: IGN / The Verge /
Kotaku
Please note the Amazon MMO had nothing to do with the Amazon TV series. The TV series comes from an agreement with the Tolkien Estate whilst the MMO was through Middle-earth Enterprises, two totally different entities.
The One Ring RPG reaches Pledge manager
Free League’s second edition of the One Ring RPG (first created by Cubicle 7) has now reached the Pledge manager of it’s Kickstarter. If you did back what looks to be a fantastic game set in Middle-earth, check your inbox (and spam folder) for an email regarding the Pledge manager.
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