Today, Turbine’s Kate Paiz released another Producer’s Letter on the official LOTRO website. And while there isn’t a huge amount of news about what is upcoming in the future of LOTRO in regards to Isengard (probably because a large portion of it is in flux), there were some juicy tidbits to disclose about that and some of what else we will see in the near future.
- There will be a new Anniversary Festival
- There is indeed another raid in development
- It has a “…monstrous dragon boss with custom voice-over and lip-syncing animation,”
- It will be released with Isengard this fall
- Update 3 is scheduled for late May
- It will have 2 new mid-level dungeons
- It will have 2 new Skirmishes
- All four of these instances will scale to 65
- A new store item will be released “…that allows characters to reset the Skirmish Marks spent on Skirmish Traits.”
- There will be a “…new festival-like event where players will get a chance to spend a few days frantically searching for buried treasure. It’ll have some cool in-game rewards, and will likely be open for play periodically over the year.”
I have to admit, this makes me want to know more about what is coming up. I’m also impressed that there will in, fact be a new raid coming with Isengard and that they’re looking immerse us further into the world of LOTRO with voice acting. Hopefully someone can take a video of that dragon speaking in the future!
PDF Version
March 30, 2011 at 3:22 pm
I am happy that at least they announced the corrections to the erros the patch 2 brought up, so for now I am happy with this. But upgrade 3 will surely be exciting too, all in due time…
March 30, 2011 at 3:23 pm
The skirmish mark refund will be nice… I started leveling up a protector before realising that he is a dud and would love to pick up a warrior or bannerguard instead. My luck it will be 900 TP to reset though… ah well wait fot the sales I always say
March 30, 2011 at 4:33 pm
Ditto, I really would like to use that as well. I have a couple of soldiers I’d like to switch to.
March 30, 2011 at 6:06 pm
So, so many people are in that boat re:protector. What a dud soldier. I can’t wait to refund mine
. I might even start levelling a sage in anticipation, and then just use my refunded marks for something else.
March 30, 2011 at 9:31 pm
Though it might be nicer if they just got the protector to work properly, and we didn’t have to buy the refund
March 30, 2011 at 6:53 pm
I’m actually looking forward to it too.
March 30, 2011 at 4:16 pm
Late May isn’t really that far away. Perhaps they’ll be on a tighter update schedule soon, which I wouldn’t complain about
March 30, 2011 at 9:27 pm
I agree – even though the update doesn’t sound as major as Echoes was, I’d prefer to see smaller updates more frequently. It feels like we might finally be seeing the promised benefit of the F2P switch. Let’s hope they can keep the pace up!
March 31, 2011 at 9:16 am
As many people have been thinking if Update 2 was the last one before Isengard … as far as I understood Turbine Isengard will hit the live system sometimes in fall (perhaps October) …. if we see Update 3 in May … I suppose we will even see Update 4 before Isengard?
I prefer smaller updates on a tighter schedule as well … but … I don’t like the fact that we do not have a new chapter of the epic story with each update.
March 30, 2011 at 4:41 pm
Always nice to hear what they have planned. Shame it’s a bit of a contradiction to what she said in December about getting another raid with the Anniversary
“New Raid & Instance Content – We’re planning on releasing one raid with the Instance Cluster in Q1 and another raid and a couple of instances in the Anniversary Update.”
http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/933-producers-letter-december-2010
But lots to do at the moment to stop things from going stale. Am off to pick some flowers
March 30, 2011 at 6:06 pm
From this letter, it sounds like they were working on a dragon raid at that time but it good too complicated so they’ve pushed it back to Isengard.
March 30, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Talking dragon hmmm…. I can see all the parody lotro videos now lol
March 31, 2011 at 9:13 am
It might seem a little silly, but Smaug spoke to Bilbo in The Hobbit, so it’s true to the lore.
March 31, 2011 at 10:38 am
And Glaurung spoke too, though not in anything that Turbine has rights to use. Can’t remember if Ancalagon spoke.
March 30, 2011 at 7:23 pm
I found this funny:
“The improved Morale potions and Battle potions of Restoration have also found permanent places on my hot bar…”
Well, yeah Kate! You don’t have to pay for them.
March 30, 2011 at 11:02 pm
Wahhhhhh! Dragons! *duck under the table*
March 31, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Lip-syncing ? I can’t wait to see that.