The moment I heard that Turbine was to present us with chickens as playable characters in something they like to call LOTRO Session play I was overwhelmed by the possibilities for a comic. Hence the latest comic that is just the beginning of an epic storyline to come. Stay tuned for more in the upcoming days because I plan on releasing comics in this storyline back to back for the next few days. Click here to read this comic.

In the next content update Turbine is planning on introducing something called Session play. You get to play a disposable character that will not be like your Freep or your Monster Play Character - you don't get to keep the Session Play character. The thing is - the new characters available in Session Play will be a Ranger, Troll and ... a chicken. Check the screenshot below and you will know what I mean

The official press release follows:
"Take a brief sneak peek into our next content update and learn more about a new feature called Session Play! We’re egg-static to present this sneak peek to you and we hope you enjoy it!"

Full article can be located here.

Tim from www.ctrlaltdel-online.com did it again. He started this crazy storyline in his world famous comic where his main character is starting a new religion - gaming religion ... The funny thing is that in this comic here - he mentions he opened a site called www.churchofgaming.com to spread the word about his new religion... Guess what - he actually opened up that domain and put a few pages from the "book of gaming" on it.

www.actiontrip.com continues its "epic" storyline that has been going on for I don't know how long. The thing about this particular page is the art - they did that droid soooo well. Check out the latest comic here and if you have the nerves and nothing better to do you can start from the beginning of the storyline - warning, absurdity to the max - but I think they're pretty smart - in their own twisted way.

Here's some random image from the internet for your Sunday reading pleasure.

(image found on http://oubliette.alpha-geek.com/)

Last thing for this weekend. Warning - never ever in the million years try this - you have to be out of this world to be able to do stuff these kids do.

After our epic low level run to Rivendell (as described in this news post) we had to share the funniest moments in a form of a webcomic. Trollshaws is a beautiful land, which I think shows in the comic, and that combined with the absurdity of having to face epic cows on the way was good enough material for a webcomic :). Click here to read this comic.

There has been a wealth of information made available to the LOTRO community on both sides of the ocean in the past two days.

To start things of - US community manager Patience announced in the forums that the lorebook is editable by all players that have a active US LOTRO account. Here's the full announcement:

"Greetings everyone!

Visit the Lorebook at http://lorebook.lotro.com! "

Next up is that EU maintenance has been moved to Thursday again to implement a number of hotfixes. I guess these are the hotfixes the US got a few days ago only now translated and localized for the European version of the game.

Next European Dev Chat is on Thursday 28th June. From 20.00 until 21.00 UK time (GMT + 1). Turbine devs will be on hand to answer your questions about all things LOTRO! For full details on how to participate, please visit Online-Welten's IRC page, here. If you have any questions for the devs you can post them on our forums and I'll try and join the dev chat and relay those questions.

Last but not least, Turbine added a new article about Staddle to their Points of Interest section - the link to the full article is here.

LotroLife was envisioned as a meeting point for the LOTRO community. A place where you guys can have something fun to read that will lighten you up and make those grinding sessions a bit easier :). We, also, always hoped that the site will draw in creative people of the LOTRO community and give them a place on the internet where they can express themselves.

This is the first time this wish of ours has been realized. We posted a topic on the US forums announcing our existence and very soon one of the US forum members - AmbushMartyr - told us he had some work of his own. We present to you here the first guest comic on www.lotrolife.com. This is one of three comics AmbushMartyr sent us and we'll be publishing all three very soon. We are planning on introducing a special community submitted section on our site where community's creativity will be displayed, but more on that soon. In the meantime you can contact us with your work or your comic ideas and we'll try and bring those to life on our site.

Click on the picture or here to see the comic.

After a few days mehq.net seems to be back with their amazing dynamic LOTRO maps. They have been moving to a new server and the switch didn't go as smooth as hoped, but the most important news is that they are now back with a slick new look. We wish them a successful and visit-full relaunch.

Everyone seems to be having a blast with the Summer festivities and thebrasse.com has a new LOTRO comic up covering this - she made an excellent one yet again. The EU forums community seems to agree on the brilliance of the Summer festival quest design.

The US forums have this topic discussing how the LOTRO community feels different than some of the game communities out there. We whole heartedly agree.

So much for this slow weekend. Hope you're relaxing and having fun all. We are doing some coding and will present a couple of guest comics. Somebody convince me that it's not weekend and that I should start working instead of crawling the net ...

UPDATE:

I've missed on some great news here and I thought I make up for it.

LotroVault and their very own news manager Loktofeit have released a great list of the new deeds in the Shores of Evendim expansion. They also have had their ABC notation music library updated with some MP3 samples which show how the files sound when played in the game. And than there's the panoramic screenshots gallery they've released that looks absolutely stunning.

Weathertop Radio has their 10th LOTRO podcast out - entitled Many Meetings - covering a lot of things so be sure to check them out.

For the end I got a couple of things I hope you'll find fun. The latest casual comic needed some screenshots of Legolas, which can be found only in Rivendell as far as I know. Now, some of you may know that my poor minstrel is only lvl 21 since I got no time to play almost (update- I did get him to 23 over the weekend :). Getting to Rivendel was no small feat for a lowly level 21. The lands in between feature ~ lvl 35 monsters of which some are elite. I've crossed the Last Bridge out of Lone Lands and stood face to face with none other than an epic lvl 35 mob called "Snow-Mantle Cow". I got into a conversation with high levels in the area asking for directions and here's a little screenshot of how that went ...

On a completely unrelated note. I came across this topic on the EU forums addressing the dilemma all LOTRO players face at one point - wear that nice head armor that just dropped or just stick to something that looks a little less like a complete dissaster. Here's a picture to prove my point shamelessly stolen from that thread.

(click on the picture to see the full size image)

And this is the end of what must be the longest news post in the history of LotroLife.

Talk about the Need/Greed system that was implemented with the Shores of Evendim update has been very heated lately on both the US and EU LOTRO forums. Just about the same time, I have started posting on the US forums (got myself a US copy of the game so I could interact with the US community). In the thread where we announced lotrolife.com's existence people started dishing out great ideas about our little comic and one of those was this comic you see here before you. The dialogue and idea was contributed by NappingNow@ US LOTRO forums also known as Cale from Meneldor Server [US] in this thread here. We thank you very much for your contribution Cale and if any of you guys have an idea for the comic please contact us.

Click here to read this casual comic.

Following are the patch notes for the June 21 patch released in the US - EU people should expect it as soon as localization has been finished:

General:

* Fellowship members will no longer hear a sound when entering Tale of Heroism effect area.
* Fixed the problem with F12 hiding the mini vitals but never showing them again.
* The pages needed for the Legendary Captain Deed, "The Candle's Flame," can now be found in the game world.
* The new crafting icon background has been fixed and should no longer cause eyeballs to bleed.
* It is no longer possible to mail items directly from your Vault.
* The "Earring of Discovery" and "Hunter's Eye" now both give a +1% bonus to Ranged Critical Chance.
* The Krahjarn Felarrow guards assigned to protect the captured rally points of monster players are meant to be fearsome, not fearful. Now, they are immune to effects which make them run in fear.
* Armour Rend effects are no longer permanent.
* War-cloak of Isildur now has an out of combat morale regeneration bonus.

Quests

* Changed the behavior of the Kergrim Elite Masters in the Tomb of Elendil so they can no longer break the fight with Nornagol.
* The quest arc which begins with “Hewing the Wood,” created for the Shores of Evendim, is now available to players.
* Fixed an issue in the instance Barad Gúlaran in which Múlvuirë, High Sorceress, could enter a broken state and block the player from completing the instance.
* The Knight of Mordirith needed for the Book 9, Chapter 6 - "Journey to Esteldin" quest will now respawn correctly after he is killed.

Spotted this at www.actiontrip.com. NPD's top 20 best selling PC games in the US, for May 2007. A few days back we saw a weekly chart. This time it's for the whole month. Can't wait to see the June list.

1. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack - Vivendi $37
2. World Of Warcraft - Vivendi - $22
3. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars - Electronic Arts - $49
4. Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows Of Angmar - Midway - $51
5. The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $29
6. Starcraft: Battle Chest - Vivendi - $19
7. The Sims 2 - Electronic Arts - $35
8. 3333 XP Games JC - Viva Media - $10
9. The Sims 2 Celebration Stuff Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $18
10. Warcraft III Battle Chest - Vivendi - $39
11. Battlefield 2142 - Electronic Arts - $39
12. Age Of Empires III - Microsoft - $46
13. Civilization IV - 2K Games ( Take 2) - $39
14. Halo: Combat Evolved - Microsoft - $20
15. Sim City 4 Deluxe - Electronic Arts - $24
16. The Sims 2 Pets Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $30
17. Spider-Man 3 - Activision - $23
18. The Sims 2 Nightlife Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts -$31
19. Supreme Commander - THQ - $45
20. Fable: The Lost Chapters - Microsoft - $25