It seems there’s still a bit of confusion out there on how to install plugins. Sometimes a video cannot be substituted for the written word, so I thought it would be good to go ahead and write up some written instructions to accompany my previous video.
Turbine Libraries
The first thing you need are the base libraries from Turbine. Many plugins use these libraries to call up functions so they must be installed. Go ahead and download the file and then extract it using 7zip, Winrar, or another zip program. You will then extract them to the following locations:
Windows XP: “C:Documents and Settings%username%My DocumentsThe Lord of the Rings Online”
Windows 7: “C:Users%username%DocumentsThe Lord of the Rings Online”
This will create a “Plugins” folder in “The Lord of the Rings Online” folder located in your “My Documents” folder. Underneath the Plugins folder you should see two folders labeled “Turbine” and “TurbinePlugins”. If you see this, everything is installed correctly.
3rd Party Plugins
There are three sites that I know of that are hosting plugins for developers:
I would suggest just making sure that you go to the location that has the most up-to-date plugins available. Usually this can be done by going to one of the above sites, but the Turbine Lua Plugin forums can also hold some clue as to what version your favored plugin is on. That being said, go ahead and download a plugin you want to try and then extract it to the following location:
Windows XP: “C:Documents and Settings%username%My DocumentsThe Lord of the Rings OnlinePlugins”
Windows 7: “C:Users%username%DocumentsThe Lord of the Rings OnlinePlugins”
Now you should see underneath the “Plugins” folder three folders in total . You should see the previously mentioned Turbine folders and a third one which is usually branded with the name of the plugin designer. For example if you installed BuffBars you should now have a “PengorosPlugins” folder within the “Plugins” folder. This will mean that it’s installed correctly and it will work if you go into the game and load it. That’s it!
Hopefully this makes a bit more sense than my video and will get your plugins up and running.
Creating a Shortcut
On a separate note, I’d like to post one more thing about making a shortcut for the PluginManager that we had a video on earlier. One thing that you can do to make life easier with this plugin is create a shortcut, so that you have a button on a hotbar to load your plugins. (Although you can set an alias first, I’m going to show you the lazy way on how to do this.)
So wait, what am I talking about? Well say you’re tired of going into the game and loading up the Plugins Manager by typing in /plugins load manager and you’d rather have a button to do this for you. What you would do to set this up is type /shortcut number /plugins load manager, where number is the quickslot number you’d like to have the button located. So how do you know what number a quickslot might be? I will quote from one of the Lorebook guides on the subject:
A shortcut is a command that may be saved into a quickslot location.
/shortcut # command where # is the key number for the slot you want the shortcut in and command is the full command you wish the shortcut to execute.
Each quickbar has a specific number assigned to them, which are as follows in the table below:
When using “/alias shortcut” statements, the quickslots are numbered from 0 to 71. When using “/shortcut” statements, the quickslots are numbered from 1 to 72.
And once Plugin Manager loads, it will load every plugin that it had loaded when you last logged out. Of course if you don’t want to use Plugin Manager, this can be used to load any plugin or any in-game command. Hopefully this will make things even easier for you until Plugins are further integrated into the game!
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September 26, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Thanks for posting this. Now I have a project for the hupcoming down time!
September 28, 2010 at 8:39 am
I think you’ll like the Songbook one I’ll be doing soon, Harp!
September 27, 2010 at 8:58 am
Great post Merric. I’ve posted this link on my kinships website when I realized not everyone was taking advantage of these great in-game tools.
September 27, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Thanks so much! There is a program I’m looking at that migt make it easier, but I can’t fully recommend it just yet.
September 27, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Thanks so much for the written guide! but i’m confused about the Turbine Libraries that need to be downloaded. The link provided just leads to a page full of nonsense; whats up?
September 28, 2010 at 6:12 am
The link is to a compressed file that contains all the library items. Right click the item to download it.
If you aren’t able to open the file type see the suggestions above for which programs can open the file.
September 28, 2010 at 8:41 am
GS hit the nose on the head. Sometimes if you don’t have a program that knows how to handle a file it will display it as an html/text page. If you install 7zip (free), Winrar (shareware), or something else you will be prompted to download the file.
September 28, 2010 at 8:42 am
nose on the head? Where’d I get that.
September 28, 2010 at 10:16 am
I was able to download the library zip file and extract it. However, I didn’t get a “plugins” file. I only got a file named “LuaDocumentation.” What did I do wrong?
September 28, 2010 at 10:44 am
It sounds like you downloaded the documentation zip which was put together for those who are interested in learning more about how Turbine is implementing lua or those who want to write plugins.
Download the file from here http://content.turbine.com/sites/lotro/lua/Beta_LuaPlugins.7z and then extract it to your “The Lord of the Rings Online” folder in My Documents and it should create the folder you’re looking for.
September 28, 2010 at 10:43 am
Ok, so I got it now, but still can’t get anything to work in the game. I think I’m too computer stupid for plugins
September 28, 2010 at 10:45 am
If you want, send me a screenshot of your “the Lord of the RIngs Online” folder structure and I can see if I can help out.
merric@casualstrolltomordor.com
September 28, 2010 at 11:13 am
I think I may have finally resolved the problem. Thanks for your help!
September 28, 2010 at 11:17 am
Great! I updated the post with a visual of how my folder structure is laid out to hopefully make things more clear.
September 30, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Hello. When I open the link for the base libraries (http://content.turbine.com/sites/lotro/lua/Beta_LuaPlugins.7z)
I am presented with a wall of unrecognized symbols and no download prompt. I’m on Windows XP (Bootcamp) with the latest version of 7Zip installed if that makes a difference. (Which it shouldn’t…)
October 2, 2010 at 12:11 am
Im in the same boat with Henidhor. At first when i downloaded 7zip and wasnt prompted to download, i thought i was because my desktop was running Windows XP. So now im on my laptop with Windows 7, have tried both Winrar and 7zip, but that damn wall of symbols makes me want to kill myself. I love your work guys; but….
October 2, 2010 at 10:03 am
If you right-click the link and choose “Save link as” you should be able to download the file. It’s a browser issue; it doesn’t know how to handle the .7z extension.
November 20, 2010 at 9:12 am
Merric, we’re nubs, you should have told us this piece of info right from the start, lol. That wall of text made me cry after the 6th time of seeing it.
October 2, 2010 at 10:10 am
Since there have been so many issues with the .7z file extension, I have re-packaged them as a .zip file and changed the link.
October 2, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Whee, it works!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
October 2, 2010 at 4:56 pm
I’m going to tear my hair out! I’ve been trying to get the travel bar to work and have followed these instructions to a T. Ugh. Not sure what I am doing wrong.
October 3, 2010 at 1:08 pm
What operating system are you using?
October 15, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Wow..I’m glad i stumbled across the site! Awesome guide…I didn’t even know that I could use plug-ins with LOTRO…That is the ONE thing I miss about WOW..The only thing, in fact.
Guide seems pretty straihg forward…I’m going to give a whirl tonight!
Thanks Merric!
Nephi on Elendilmir
October 15, 2010 at 4:39 pm
You’re very welcome! And if you have any problems feel free to let me know and we’ll see what we can do to get things rolling!
November 24, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Your information is marvelous, thanks for the clear instructions, video and screen prints. With the help of these tools I have managed to install the plugin manager, theonebag2 and the travel bar. Starting small, if you will… I can pull of any of these with a command in the text bar and they display beautifully, but I cannot seem to get the manager to give me the list…. what have I missed? Running Windows XP.
Thanks
November 24, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Thank you very much.
Make sure you have the correct manager.
When you get into the game load it using: /plugins load manager
Then use the following command to bring up the list: /manager
That should bring bring up the Manager window.
July 26, 2011 at 1:09 pm
I just noticed that the lotroplugins.com domain is for sale. I guess the site went away? Or maybe they just missed a payment. Sad!
July 31, 2011 at 7:56 am
Since this post was recently linked to on LotROInterface forums, it might be worth giving it a once-over to update it a bit.
Both CurseForge (technically should be just Curse, as CurseForge is the developer site) and LotROPlugins can be removed from your list of sites hosting plugins. The former has never really worked since it began supporting plugins (TonicBars is still the only plugin available). And LotroPlugins no longer exists. This of course leaves LotROInterface as the only 3rd-party plugin host