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Dropped.

*******If you havent played Mordor and plan on playing it please dont read on******** I havent seen anything here about the Mordor exp besides some release notes. With a character at level 105 from last year and enough Turbine Points in the bank I was able to purchase the Mordor expansion. I was extremely surprised and somewhat upset at how early in the game flow and how easy the "destroying" of the ring event happened. Im in a semi social kin so game play is fun as are my kinmates but in now way shape or form was I ready for this event nor did I know it happened so fast and painlessly. It was the one thing I really ever wanted to do in Lotro since I stopped playing and to have it happen when it did was quite a stomach punch. I have kinmates at the cap doing 120 endgame stuff and actually thought they were still working their way towards the ring event. Anybody else taken back by this? Im glad this didnt cost me any money, I'd surely be upset if the "climax" of this game were to be in the first area of the expansion and I actually paid real world dollars for it. Im still going to trek through Mordor at a leisurely pace and finish up, but the fact that what I am playing for happened quickly and easily in the beginning still gnaws at me. After 11 years this is the best they could do?

Two posts from this thread: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?667628-Embers-Instances-amp-Locks to sum it up: Doing instances once a day for guaranteed good rewards like we had in Mordor now seems like a pleasant thing of the past, with this horrible new system they've cooked up. Here's what currently happens on Live: For clearing a T1 instance, on opening the chests: Final boss: If player has a Favoured pull left, they get [100 Embers of Enchantment], some ILI consumables and a chance for a purple gear piece. If the player has no Favoured pulls left, they get 0 Embers of Enchantment and a (low) chance for other items. Regardless of Favoured or non-Favoured, every chest will award some [Coin of Grárik] to every player. Other bosses: Every player, regardless of Favoured pull or not, will receive Coins of Grárik. Supposedly, Favoured pulls have better odds of dropping actual gear, but that's not really happening. Even on favoured drop rates, gear drop rates are absolutely horrendous. There are no ILI consumables or Embers in any of these chests. Only the final boss chest awards Embers and ILI consumables. For clearing a T2 instance, things look pretty much the same except you get 150 Embers from final boss chests instead of 100. T2 Favoured openings are limited to two per week per chest. T1 Favoured openings are limited to five per week per chest. After that you get another 20 chest openings with lower drop rates for the rest of the week. This information can be viewed per character by using the /raid locks command. None of the drops are disenchantable. Not from t1, not from t2, not from favoured and not from non-favoured pulls. Nothing. So... Do all your weekly favoured pulls, you end up with 500 (5x t1 thrumfall) + 500 (5x t1 glimmerdeep) + 500 (5x t1 thikil-gundu) + 300 (2x t2 thrumfall) + 300 (2x t2 glimmerdeep) + 300 (2x t2 thikil-gundu) = 2,400 Embers. For 21 full instance runs. A single piece of teal gear on the vendor costs 3,500 Embers. A purple piece costs 2,000 Embers. A single lootbox drops between 250 and 1,000 Embers + a piece of disenchantable gear (usually a purple worth 200 Embers) -- so at least 3 t2 instance runs' worth, even if you get unlucky. Crafted gear requires ridiculous amounts of materials, as well as multiple very rare Dwarrowgleam Shards. It's kind of obvious what the devs' preferred path towards gearing your characters is. Then again, that's hardly a surprise. Response to this post: Jesus, this is fubar. I'm glad I haven't gotten to the instances yet. The entire delayed barter system for the loot was to encourage people to run the content. Instead, they're punishing people for it. This is pathological. ----------------- My thought: SSG is digging an increasingly deeper hole. Instead of salvaging when it still had some resemblance of the game we knew, we are now left with an empty shell, in which everything you do is punished. You want quality upgrades? We will give you 7 Bullroarer rounds, because we don't have any testers left, and then we release a completely unfinished and messed up 'expansion' to you. You want VIP to have value? We don't, we want you to spend a lot more money because the game doesn't supply gear anymore. You want value for the 1995 LP you just spent? Too bad, you either become a hamster or you give us more money. You want to collect tokens or ashes or motes? Capped. You want to trade festival cosmetics? They are untradeable after you take them out of the box. You want to gear up? You can't craft it, you can't get it from questing, you can't get it from instances, you can't buy it in the AH. You want to collect keys in game for lootboxes? You no longer can, they will only come from the store. You like to quest and you paid for the quests? You will need xp axcelerators all the way through and it will not be enough to get to max level. You want to enjoy your instances? You can't. You get punished for playing the game, for wanting gear, for wanting to help your kin, your friends, for wanting to have fun. There are some new rules: 1. You will play the content. 2. You will not be rewarded for 1., but will buy your rewards in the store. 3. You shall not enjoy what you are doing - you will not receive anything 'good' from playing the game. You will only be satisfied when you show SSG the money: for keys, for a chance at something, from a box. 4. It's ok if you don't want to play the content, you can buy everything you want, in the store. Someone called it a 'loo-box'. I'll call it Lord of the Loo-box - Edition: one shit too far.

It was entirely anti-climatic. The sale price of Mordor also was the point where SSG turned the corner and where the trouble with lootboxes, black keys, ash, etc. started. Plus gameplay, at least for me, is 'completely up in the air'... what or who are we fighting in Mordor and beyond? Yes, I know SSG gives a nice explanation for it, but does it ring real/true? For me it doesn't. I say, players are fighting SSG. Look at what they are doing now, with the newest addition to the game, released this week: the game is, as predicted when f2p started, unrecognizable. Game play directs to the store. Quest content is so little that players can't reach level 120 without heavy use of xp excelerators. Rep tokens are now capped and are for level 120 items at kindred level only. But players either max out the number of rep tokens long before they reach level 120 and kindred, so the use of xp excelerators is stimulated there too. The AH has no armor drops between level 116 and 120 for sale, but plenty of the new loot boxes. Keys can only be obtained from the store - have been completely removed as quest rewards. Drop rates of armour within the raids are ridiculously low and what does drop in T1 and T2 can't be 'moted'. SSG is trying to pull players' focus away from enjoying end game to 'mote hunting' and has made that a very slow process. Players are posting on the forums - the enjoyment of the game is gone. Also, SSG thought it a good idea to go back to all earlier levels and adjust: monster strength and all armour stats. This last thing didn't go very well and now there are players running around who are up to three times as strong as they used to be. There are also items that drop without a minimum equipment level, which means a level 5 can equip items meant for level 105. There are a number of capped kins - at level 50, 65, etc. Their game experience has been completely ruined. With their 'updated' armor, on level, they clear out entire 6 (maybe even 12) men raids on their own. They are unequipping their jewelry to get a game experience that approaches 'normal'. SSG = too greedy for their own good and now has a game that is utter chaos. They have shot themselves in the foot. As I mentioned above, at the introduction of the store, someone posted on the forums: 'when they are done with it, you won't recognize the game'? We have seen it slip and slide over the years. Many of you have quit over it and we have now hit the lowest point ever. I am sure it will go lower still.

I guess they are counting on players skipping Moria these days (of course they are, with the $$$ from Aria of Valar) who would eat this up as excitingly new without recognizing where it's been nabbed from. *sigh* Reusing game assets is one thing... but plagiarizing ICONIC features is just self-rape. As someone who spent over a year questing in Moria with an experience disabler, didn't have to think twice to name the exact sources. The miners' arch is an architectural feature unique to Anazârmekhem as you leave the hub heading South. Its uniqueness is highlighted by featuring it on the Flaming Deeps map as a landmark. The cluster of three dwarf heads is from the Gate of the Seven Fathers, a distinct landmark featured in one of the discovery deeds, though if you cut off the other four heads you can't ever prove its origin, eh. The mindlessly reduplicated statues directly beneath is a copypasta fest of the statue of Helgi Goblinbane standing just outside the Chamber of Crossroads. You know, the one so distinct that a whole quest arc is devoted to locating and reassembling its pieces. I'm not even pissed or angry, just plain sad outside of any heated emotion. Resignation perhaps. Hell, whoever is tasked with "worldbuilding" in this update probably never played through Moria themselves. I mean, there's plenty of generic decor there to reuse outside of plagiarizing full on historically unique tourist attractios. What a sad carousel of rotating crews, half-baked intentions, and patchwork no one even bothers to at least polish for the vets who can see the proverbial emperor is butt-ass naked. When it comes to Lotro, it's not the pay-to-win, microtransactions, or the grind that turn me off... it's this mindless rotating carousel of little interns with tunnel vision who keep patching on their own little flair without respecting what came before, without addressing previous holes, and without any pretense at consistency. Not a doomsayer myself, but damn hurts to see it so mismanaged.

Yeah, Martin made the mistake of thinking he was cleverer than he is. He tried to set up twists and plots that he thought would be good, but because he was so slow at writing he gave his fans too much time to mull it over. I'm fairly certain now that he's been outclassed by half the fan theories that have come up, or they've been accurately guessed so he's trying to change it last minute to not get caught out. He painted himself into a corner and doesn't know now how to tie it all up without showing he was very, very lucky in his success with his first couple of books. It was pretty clear he messed up with timing of his plots too, since it should've all really ended after the War of the Five Kings.