It finally ends. The never-ending shenanigans of the session play comic has come to its end. Isn't it good though that this end is actually the beginning? The beginning of a brand new story and a whole new approach to this little webcomic we do. Hopefully in the next week we will be bringing you a whole lot of new comics and some fun to brighten the day.

Click here to read the last part of the session play casual comic.

Golden Joystick awards are upon us. For the US crowds out there - this is one of the more prestigious game award shows here in Europe. Lord of the Rings Online has been nominated in 5 categories this year - best MMORPG and best video game being some of those categories - so show your support and place your vote for LotRO at www.goldenjoystick.com.

The official sites have added several new articles about characters and places of Middle Earth. Check out Scary and Boromir  .

The EU forums have the new Dev Corner thread open for submissions - The topic this month is crafting.

MMORPG.com had a chat with Jeffrey Steefel about what's up with LotRO as of lately. They discuss the number of subscribers (no actual numbers were disclosed), mounts and possible improvements (no actual info was disclosed) and Session play (ah yes the ever inspirational chicken - ehrem - session play). Check out the full telephone interview here.

The best official news I left for last. There's an in-game Cloak Designing contest in progress! This contest begins on August 7th, 2007. Submissions will be accepted until midnight GMT on September 4th, 2007. Bellow you will find what the cloak template looks like and for more details and a full resolution picture go to the link provided above.

Balrogs were known as Elf Bane back in the First Age. Only much later, when the dwarves of Khazad dum dug to deep, has one of them become known as Durin's Bane. In this session play comic I wanted our hero chickens to face their ultimate adversary. Something that has brought pain and sorrow to chickens everywhere ever since it first came to be. But what could this ultimate evil being be? I hope you like our take on it 🙂
Click here to read this casual comic.

"Helen of Troy awakes just before dawn to the sound of air raid sirens."

Is that a good start of a book or what?! I started reading Dan Simmons' Olympos again. It's a sci-fi epic that sets the battle of Troy in an alternative universe. The imagination this guy has is almost unmatched by any other so if you get a chance to get a hold of Ilium (the start of the story) and Olympos you will not regret it.

In LotRO related news - US and their lorebook have been extended with Google Maps functionality. The official info goes like this:

"We're pleased to bring you a brand new LOTRO Lorebook feature – LOTRO Google maps! Use this feature to add detailed maps, plot quest paths, and mark locations in your Lorebook entries, or just explore the game from a bird’s eye perspective.

Visit our Editing Maps section for tips on getting started. For a taste of what LOTRO Google Maps can do, check out Frodo’s Path to Rivendell!"

Weathertop radio has their 12th podcast available discussing the upcoming Book 10 free expansion. Their Event Calendar is also full of player run events on all US servers so if you like some quality RP time check it out here.

LotroVault even has some screenshots from Book 10.

Lotropolis.com opened up their YouTube group for LotRO videos. You can check out the announcement here.

That would be all for this slow Saturday. Have a great weekend all.

Turbine sent us an email saying that they launched a referral program fro LotRO. The way this works is that paying subscribers refer friends to play the game and receive free game time for successful referrals. There are some terms and conditions that need to be met.

For every friend that buys the retail edition of the game, registers a retail product key at myaccount.turbine.com, and subscribes to the game, you'll get a referral credit that can be redeemed for 30 days of free game time that can be added to your subscription to that game. If you're already a Lifetime Member we'll issue you a 30 day game card key to give to a friend who is a game subscriber.

If you have Founder's pricing, you can also offer Founder's pricing to your friends! The first 10 friends you invite can take advantage of the special Founder's pricing plans offered through the Founder's Program.

The full news about this can be read here. I don't think this one will be available to European subscribers as well, but we'll keep you posted.

The US also introduced a set of new services to LotRO players.

1. World Character Transfer: Started on Elendilmir but all your friends are on Nimrodel? Turbine can now move your character from one LOTRO world to another! Your character stays intact, retaining all of its stats, items, levels, titles, and other information. The fee to transfer your character from one server to another is $24.95 per move.
2. Character Rename: Wish you'd picked a different name, but have come too far to re-roll? Characters can now be renamed for a fee of $9.95 per name change.
3. Kinship Rename: Kinships can now be renamed for a fee of $12.95 per change. You must be the leader of your Kinship to change the name!

Find more info concerning the matter here.

Yes, we have been fairly inactive the past week. Yes, we haven't released a comic for 7 days. No, we haven't dropped the idea of this site nor we decided to abandon it. No, the comics will not stop coming out.

Let me explain. Both Silriel and me have jobs that feed us. This site is a product of enthusiasm. At this point in time we can't make it our full time job because simply you can't live off of 0.30$ per day now can you 🙂 Since the first day the site got released we've spent a lot, if not most, of our free time producing comics and content for the site and after 3 months of that we just couldn't keep up with the tempo anymore. Having 14 hour work days including weekends is not something you can keep up with for long. I fell behind in my day job and had to bring it up to speed this last week. What you can expect from us in the future is more comics and LOTRO fanboy stuff but I can't make any promises on the schedule.

If you like the site and the idea behind it your help would be most welcome. We always envisioned this to be a place for people playing LOTRO to express themselves. If you would like to write an article about LOTRO, a small guide you think the LOTRO community would find helpful, have a story published, or even have a comic or a comic idea you would like published here and shown to the world please let us know and we'll try to accommodate. Please use the contact us form we have (sorry for not providing the email address but the form is the only way we can avoid being spammed) and we'll respond asap.

As for what the future will bring to the site ... 6 panels of the Epic comic have been drawn and mostly painted. Part 4 of Session play Casual comic will be out in the next few days (I'll try and make it today, but we have a wedding to attend and I am not sure if I'll make it in time). We have a Great Barrows guide in production and that should be out very shortly as well. The comic page has another redesign on the way as well. The problem is that time available and all our plans are not compatible enough for the content to be updated regularly. Hope you guys understand and bare with us for a little while longer.

Yes it has been 5 days in between two parts of this comic but let me tell you, cutting out dozens of sheep and chicken (and making screenshots of them in various poses) is not an easy task. I swear if I never see another sheep or chicken it will not be too soon. Anywho, our little epic story continues and I've really enjoyed making this one (whining aside). I wasn't sure how I was going to end this story but everything came together while I was making the sword go through the sheep and I think you will like what we have in store for you. Bare with us - the chicken vs. sheep absurdity is coming to an end (sooner or later). Click here to read Session Play, Part 3 casual comic.

Another maintenance day brings another small patch. Here are some of the changes:

- Shouts and cries are back by popular demand! Additionally, new shout and cry sound effects have been added for some races.
- The placeholder sound for blocking, parrying, critical hits, and a few other skill feedback sounds has been replaced with the proper sound effects.

- Captain: Herald Armaments will now increase your Herald's ability to mitigate damage (they were doing the opposite before).
- Captain: Telling Mark will once again enable your Herald to use his skills.
- If you are defeated in the "The Thief-taker's Bane" you will no longer reappear where you were defeated. Instead you will be taken to a nearby defeat circle (rally point? whatever we call these in-game.)

Full patch notes can be read here. Note the underlined text above, seems the devs are under some pressure...

The big news is the info about the next free content update coming to your LotRO client this fall. Gamspy got some exclusive info about Book 10 and you can read the full article here. The most interesting additions are:

- Over 100 new quests, a dozen new monsters and a number of new dungeons.
- New reputation and bartering system that enables players to earn positive and negative standings with various groups in Middle-earth.
- Session play (read our comic about it here)
- Book 10 quests introducing a new villain named Amartheil that the players will attempt to prevent from recovering her own magic ring and steal back a palantir before it falls into the Witch-King's hands.

In other news, Sons of Elrond have been added to the Official site's Characters of Middle Earth section. You can check it out here.

Weathertop Radio has the new episode of their famous LotRO podcast available at www.weathertopradio.com . Check it out because they always have some cool things featured in the podcast. Here's their official announcement.

Only one more day remains until the Summer festivities come to an end. There are some neat things to be gained in LotRO during the festival and one of them is unique race dance emotes. I just did that quest last night with all the races and it was fun to type in /dance_hobbit and see the new emote. Trinity at www.female-gamer.com has a comprehensive list of things you can do along with a video of all the new dances.

Under the Banner reports that Turbine plans on upgrading its lorebook with Google API Maps of in game locations. I can imagine a few fansites getting really disappointed by this decision I just hope that Turbine doesn't include web comics into their omnipotent lorebook. Read the full news report by Under the Banner here.

Lotrovault keeps providing great LotRO related content. This weekend they added another 15 new ABC notation music files with mp3 previews of what they sound in-game.

If you have any news related to LotRO that you found interesting and would like to share with our readers please visit our Forums and post the links or use the contact us form and submit them.

One final thing - it's Monday - I can't imagine anyone being too cheerful about it. Here's something I found on the European forums to cheer you up. I don;t know who the original author is and if you do please let me know so I can credit them properly.

Click on the image for larger version

Our little epic story, inspired by the announcement of Session play becoming available in LOTRO, continues. Every army of good must have its counterpart, and our army of evil doers is evil - evil I tell you - no amount of fluffiness can correct that. Parts three and four will be coming very soon and we hope to bring the level of absurdity to all new heights so stay tuned. If you missed the first part of this storyline you can check it out here and to read part two of this comic click here.