Codemasters and Turbine are proud to announce that LOTRO has been awarded MMORPG-Planet's MMORPG of the Year 2007. This is a fantastic achievement and they'd like to thank everyone for their involvement and support!

Head on over to MMORPG-Planet to see the results!

On the last of this years European Dev chat you can find out

* about a new task in the group/raid for the champion
* more about the improvements to the hunter
* what plans have the team to expand other activities besides questing
* will there be a christmas event
* information about the Month of the Guardian
* something about the changes of the Burglar in book 12
* when can we await the new book

www.lotrolife.com/dev_chat_20_12_07/

Turbine, Inc. announced today that The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar was awarded PC MMO Game of the Year of 2007 by the editorial staff of GameSpy, the web's leading destination for online information, entertainment and communities serving the enthusiast gamer worldwide. The editors also named the critically acclaimed massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) as one of the PC Top 10 Games of 2007.

"The Lord of the Rings Online delivers a remarkably rich, interactive game and community experience and we are honored to have the editors of GameSpy choose it as both the PC MMO Game of the Year and one of the Top 10 PC Games of 2007," said Jim Crowley, president and CEO of Turbine, Inc. "Receiving this award is a true honor and we look forward to providing our global community with even more compelling content, features and interactive experiences in 2008 and beyond."

LINK.

Satine
Senior Community Liaison Manager

"Hi everyone,

We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused and we thank you for your patience. "

Dirgnas
Moderator

"Hello again,

We apologize for any inconveniences. "

At the dawn of the world, many powerful spirits served the Enemy. Of these, perhaps the greatest were the Balrogs, great fire demons such as the one faced by Gandalf the Grey upon the Bridge of Khazad-dûm. Others of lesser strength were used by the Witch-king of Angmar to stir the bones of the dead lying beneath the mounds of the Barrow-downs.

Still another survivor of the Elder Days is the Rogmul. Regmyl are lesser fire demons enthralled by the will of the Balrogs. While they are in fact minor spirits, they are among the mightiest of the sort: great brutes of evil will and fierce strength. Wherever a Balrog is or once was, it can be wagered that a Rogmul or two is not far away.

The Rogmul was an early creation of Turbine, similar to the Balrog, intended to be used as a high-level monster in The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™. They will most likely be found only in the most dire of locations.

The latest Dev Corner thread is now open. The topic this month is the Angmar Revamp.  What's new? What's changed? Ask your burning questions about the improvements to the Witch-King's land here. Click here to join in the discussion.

But first we would like to remind our visitors about the last Developer Diary: The Great Angmar Revamp

Join Content Designers Amlug and MadeOfLions in their quest to improve and revamp the Angmar region! If you've been exploring or questing in Angmar, this update is for you. The Great Angmar Revamp will provide insight on the challenges of improving an existing area, as well as a window into the exciting world of content design!

by Jeff 'MadeOfLions' Libby and Jared 'Amlug' Hall-Dugas

The yellow sun slipped beneath the rim of the encircling hills, and the land was shrouded in shadow. In the dim half-light, two figures could be seen, walking north along a dusty road. They made no attempt at stealth. The pair could be seen for miles in every direction, but if this troubled either of them, they made no sign.

Amlug: If this is another boar quest....

MadeOfLions: It won't be. Angmar was the realm of the Witch-king, and that means Evil.

Amlug: You're right. I'm probably worrying for nothing.

MadeOfLions: Probably!

As our intrepid heroes arrived at the crest of the hill, a warm and fetid wind blew out of the east, from the great swamp of Malenhad. Amlug scowled, but not at the swamp-odor.

Amlug (pointing at a charging boar): Doesn't he know where he is? If there's one place that we shouldn't be fighting boars, it's the Land of Angmar!

After a flurry of blows, MadeOfLions squinted down at the corpse of the porcine beast, and absentmindedly kicked the dust from one of his boots.

MadeOfLions: Well at least it was an evil boar...

Amlug: That's just not good enough! And it's not just the boars, either. Angmar is entirely too much "wild kingdom" for its own good. I think that there should be much less in the way of livestock and much more in the way of evildoers. Do you remember what we're supposed to be doing?

MadeOfLions: The chieftain of that town we passed said he wanted us to defeat some orcs, and that they should be wandering around somewhere out here. You know, like orcs do.

Amlug: All right, then. Do you see any orcs?

The movement of the crimson moon betrayed the passage of long hours as our heroes sliced and diced their way through Angmar.

MadeOfLions: I see a lot of aurochs. And that's aurochs plural, not aurochs singular.

Amlug: Me too. You don't think that those aurochs might be 'taking the spot' of our orcs, do you? Should we try and take one out?

MadeOfLions: I doubt it. After all, it would take a whole fellowship of heroes to bring down even a single aurochs, and that chieftain assured us that we'd be able to take on the orcs by ourselves.

Amlug: He did say that. Of course, he also told us to get twenty-four silver nuggets from that cave...

MadeOfLions: I still don't know what that whole garrison of orcs was doing in there. It was a little cramped to be filled with enough orcs to overrun the North Downs thrice over. Barely any breathing room at all!

Amlug: ... and to then go into another cave to get gold dust...

MadeOfLions: Do you think maybe that chieftain was just trying to waste our time?

The two considered this notion for a few uncomfortable minutes, and then started down the slope, in search of fame, glory, and experience points.

---

Content Design Gained a Level!

A funny thing happens when you've been in game development for awhile: you start to get pretty good at it, and as you get more comfortable with the tools and better learn the scope of the playground, you start to develop more efficient ways of working. You learn new ways of accomplishing tasks better and faster, and you begin to push the boundaries of what you previously thought were stone-carved limits. In the realm of content design, this is a great thing; as we've gained experience, we've been able to make some of our most complex and interesting content in the months even after the game launched!

The flipside of this otherwise rosy occurrence for most game developers comes when they look back at some of their earlier content. In hindsight, they often can't help but ask themselves, "If I knew then what I know now, what would I have done differently?"

Which brings us to Angmar.

Room for Improvement

By the time development began on the Land of Angmar, the last region included in LOTRO at launch, the pressure was on: not only did we need to polish the rest of the game, but we needed to create an Angmar that lived up to its billing as the former home of the Witch-king. It was a period of late nights and early mornings, with all of us working at full speed to get everything done in time - and with a great deal of effort, we crossed the finish line and managed to avoid having to rename the game "The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of the North Downs"!

We spent a lot of time polishing the regions in our game; no matter how careful you are when you go about implementing quests, or how detailed a plan you write up before you begin, it always, always, always takes more than one pass at a region before it's really up to snuff. Still, there will always be things that can be found only by thoroughly hammering on the content in unexpected ways -- ways which only bona fide players can do. For all the pressure under which Angmar was created, there is a lot of content there for players to experience.

Six months after LOTRO's launch, what are some of the things we'd like to change about Angmar that have come up from player feedback and our own internal reviews? Here are some of the issues we've identified:

• Quest flow is sometimes inconsistent and doesn't send players to the correct level bands
• Quest difficulty is mislabeled in many cases, both for Suggested Levels and Suggested Group Size
• The spawns in Angmar feel out of place (boars again? Really?), and Elite mobs should not share spawn-points with Normal-statted mobs
• Spawn density in certain locations is too great, resulting in very frustrating gameplay
• The ratio of Full Fellowship quests to Solo quests is not correct; more Solo quests are required

What Angmar needs is a healthy scrubbing to bring it more in line with the rest of the game as far as consistency goes, and improve the experience for everybody.

Portions of the Plan

We've given Angmar some time to simmer, and after gathering feedback and data from our players and other sources, we've formulated a plan. The Reported Quest Difficulty Levels and Recommendations thread on the LOTRO forums has been particularly helpful in pinpointing some of the inconsistent quests. We also played through the entire region and took copious notes on improvements and polish we can add to Angmar. This is a small sampling of our notes from Lehma-koti, the first quest hub you reach upon entering Angmar:

Some Polish Tasks for Quests from LEHMA-KOTI, the Earth-kin Camp

We're not only looking at specific quests within Angmar, but also taking a step back and seeing where we can improve things on a larger scale. When playing through quests at Aughaire, the Nomad Moot, we decided that the seemingly random manner in which quests there opened up was less than ideal and could be made more intuitive. As a result, we'll be adding a new "Challenge" quest line (and removing the old one) -- as you complete the new quests in this line, quests in Aughaire will become available in clusters and you will be directed to each cluster. This diagram will show you the new structure for Aughaire's quest flow:

As you can see from the chart, the plan calls for more than just scrubbing existing quests: new quests will be added as well, and we hope to fill some gaps in coverage (especially those for solo adventurers) with these additions.

In some cases, our research revealed gameplay that was unintentionally frustrating. For example, most of the quests that lead you into Imlad Balchorth come from the quest hub of Gabilshathur, far to the south. In order to improve the experience of adventuring in this area, we'll be adding a new quest hub near the defeat circle at Imlad Balchorth. This serves two purposes: it means that you won't be bombarded with quests for the higher-level Imlad Balchorth until you're ready to tackle them, and you'll have the opportunity to focus on quests out of Gabilshathur when you arrive there, rather than being immediately vectored away.

The Impact

We're planning these fairly sweeping changes for Angmar during Book 12, and this means that your quest log will be affected. Almost every quest that belongs to the Angmar category in your quest log will be versioned, which means that these quests will be taken out of your log if you have them underway when the patch goes live. When Book 12 gets closer, we'll release a list of all the quests that will be removed from your log, and a more detailed breakdown of changes. Admittedly, when you collect the quest again, you'll be playing the freshly-polished and improved version, but if you've collected nine pea-plants and need ten, you might want to just get that tenth one and turn in the quest before Book 12 arrives.

You might ask what this means for quest loot, and you'd be right to do so! No changes are being made to any of the quest items that players have already collected. The new quests will have brand new loot while the updated quests will have the loot in them updated (increase/decrease to item level, change the names of the items etc.) Nothing already acquired will change, but items you were working towards may change if you do not acquire them before the Book 12.

We sincerely hope that the freshly-scrubbed Angmar region will be more fun and rewarding when we're finished, so put on your hard hats, hang on, and mind the dust!

---

And so, with an invigorated sense of purpose, our heroes gallantly marched toward the sunrise, confident in their plan to bring new light to Angmar. With unflinching steps, they strode forth to their destiny.

MadeOfLions (running off the path): Hang on a sec! I see blueberries!

Amlug (following): If we have to stop every five minutes for you to pick ingredients...

His voice echoed on the distant rocks and hung on the still air for a moment before it was picked up by a cool breeze from the south, and was gone.

[Comments? Post them here!]

Tonight, Led Zeppelin will be performing for the first time in 28 years in the O2 arena in London (yes I know they performed on a couple of occasions in the meantime but it is a consensus among the fans that this is the first real LZ "reunion" concert). In the sea of produced r'n'r bands on the market today we have a privilege to listen to the band that made rock and roll into an art form. Words are pretty pointless in describing Led Zeppelin. Just play any of the albums and the music will speak for itself. If you're wondering what this has to do with a LOTRO fansite - not much - but I do like to play LOTRO with Misty Mountain Hop, Ramble On or The Battle of Evermore playing in the background.

You might have noticed that we did some visual changes on the site. Gandalf got an epic hat drop in one of the LotRO instances and is now a new contender for the job of Santa Clause. He always wanted to go down chimneys and hand out gifts. We also did minor updates to the horse guide as well as a very small change to our leveling guide. We're working on a new crafting guide but obligations are making this project slow. Besides, we need like million dwarf-iron ore to progress to Artisan metalsmith/weaponsmith and as you know it takes days to farm it. You know we'll get to publish it soon enough - in our style - slow but reliable :).

One of the better MMO game portals around, mmorpg.com, started its annual Reader's choice award voting. You can vote for your favorite mmorpgs this year in several categories. You'll have to create an account first but it's quick and painless. LotRO is nominated in several categories so if you think it deserves your vote you can go here and cast it. In all honesty in some of the presented categories LotRO is a clean winner. We here at LotroLife will be making an article today about what we think this year has brought to the MMORPG market and how LotRO did overall so stay tuned.

All servers are now available following the December 6 patch! The following changes were made to the game:

UI

• Items (like Legendary Book pages) will no longer have truncated names in tooltips.
• Fixed a bug which would periodically cause Housing Storage Containers to become inaccessible.
• Corrected a bug in the Auction House UI where an auction's time remaining could appear to oscillate.

Quests

• The "Aid from the Rangers" quest in the Ettenmoors should be fixed. Ranger and Troll session play are once again available.*
• The "Mushrooms for Rivendell" quest can now be advanced when you are in a Raid group.
• Rift chests will now remain in the world for 1 hour after the chest has first been opened.
• We've addressed an issue where players would be killed on entering Gorthban after the death of the Balrog, Thaurlach.

Misc.

• Fixed a stuck in combat issue when fighting creatures that despawn during combat (for instance, trolls that disappear when day breaks).

Graphics

• Fixed a stability issue triggered by changing graphics settings.
• Fixed a visual glitch that could appear when opening a dropdown menu for the first time under DirectX 10.
• Performance improvements made to DirectX 10 Dynamic Shadows.

* Please note that if you are one of the small number of players who encountered a problem entering Ranger play immediately after the last patch, you may still be unable to access Ranger play. We are still working on a fix for this.