"And so it begins..."

Dear visitor,  lotrolife.com presents to you the first of our Epic Web Comics. An idea that has come to life out of pure wishful thinking. An idea that, just like our Heroine, was unsure if it was a good or bad choice to come to life. Here we are now and we hope that you will enjoy what we have prepared for you. Get that cup of coffee (or favorite ale), sit back, relax and have a laugh or two, because "The Road goes ever on and on" and we will try and make it an enjoyable walk.

The idea for this site was conceived only a few weeks ago. As if it wasn't hard enough getting all the content up in such a short period of time we came up with this idea that we should have not one but two Web Comics. One drawn by our artists (the Epic Comic as we like to call it) and one to come out more frequently but not to be following any special story arc. The LOTRO game engine is so beautiful that we believe making a comic from screenshots from the game would be good enough to shorten the waiting in between the Epic comic episodes. The first in our Casual comic series tries to resolve an almost Shakespearean dilemma that has been plaguing the game's OOC chat for months now (yes in beta as well) . We hope you like our take on it. Click on the picture to view the comic.

Seems there is enough demand for the Europeans to get a new server. Here's the official announcement:

"[EN] Gilrain comes online!

Gilrain – Normal server
Meaning - Flowing south out of the White Mountains this long river was a tributary of the river Serni. It is said that Nimrodel once walked along its banks as she left the White Mountains."

Being as impatient as we are about unveiling our web comic we couldn't hold back anymore and had to post something at least. Who is the mysterious character whose eyes you see above? Is drawing a few lines and calling that a web comic sane? Will the EU login issues ever be resolved? Stay tuned while our goblin artists finish their work. Last thing we heard from them was: "Give more hobbit feet!".

That quest mob took forever to find? You are not sure what materials you'll need to craft that brand new shiny item? Fear no more! Turbine released a beta version of their wiki like LOTRO game database site at http://lorebook.lotro.com . At the moment there are no user submitted contributions but Turbine promises that this site is linked to the actual players database so everyone playing Lotro will be able to contribute to this site true wiki fashion. This seriously impacts webmasters of fansites that held similar content, but it gives the players a resource that is much more reliable and not under control of any gold selling companies (for example). We at LotroLife for one are ecstatic because now we will be able to focus on bringing more fun content to the site (ie more web comics) than spend days on figuring out how to provide a comprehensive quest/item database system (woohooo - Silriel). Here's the official statement:

"The Preview release of the LOTRO Lorebook Beta is now live at http://lorebook.lotro.com. This is the first version of our all-new reference site dedicated to The Lord of the Rings Online. Currently containing over 20,000 entries (with more on the way), the Lorebook is destined to become the definitive LOTRO resource online.

1. Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows Of Angmar - Midway - $49
2. Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows Of Angmar Special Ed - Midway - $59
3. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack - Vivendi - $34
4. World Of Warcraft - Vivendi - $20
5. The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $23
6. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars - Electronic Arts - $48
7. The Sims 2 - Electronic Arts - $24
8. The Sims 2 Celebration Stuff Expansion Pack - Electronic Arts - $17
9. Bejeweled 2 - PopCap Games - $12
10. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Shivering Isles Expansion Pack - 2K Games - $26

Is there any comment that I should make?

Being a backend web developer really I never got around to fiddling about with all that Web 2.0 stuff much. I mean I've thrown a few pieces of code here and there but I was always more preoccupied with generating search results rather than displaying them. On the other hand I've been generating them search results for way too long and developing LotroLife.com gives me a great opportunity to explore some of the things I've never really bothered with. Lo and behold the comment system. When I first thought about it I was like - 3 hours of coding - no biggie - add a toggle visibility javascript and you're done. Then I thought that the number of comments might get big and the site loading speed would be hampered by data that would be hidden to start with. Enter AJAX. Playing around with Ajax.Updater and poking an effect here and there I think we got a pretty sexy looking system in place. Oh I know - it's probably full of bugs - probably it doesn't work and even if it does it is probably slow as a hobbit figuring out whether to cross the river on a boat or go around 500 miles over a bridge - but hey at least I've tried :). Anyways - the comments are at your disposal. Make sure to let us know if something doesn't work as expected and me - I'm finally off to turn in some quests or maybe grow and smoke some pipe weed even.

Economy/Crafting:

• Item damage upon defeat will no longer occur until the player reaches level 10. Once you hit level 10 all bets are off, but you get a free ride 'til then! Keep in mind that item wear still occurs during combat.
• The repair cost has been lowered on some uncommon/rare jewellery, weapons, shields, and clothing.
• Signature, Elite, and Boss monsters drop more money.
• Pipeweed seed processing recipes now only give out 1 seed instead of 3, like they were always supposed to. (Farmers, please drop the pitchforks! There are changes coming to better your plight. More details to follow.)

Quests:

• Fixed a problem in the "A Road Through the Dark" instance that was causing the second door in the instance to sometimes not open.
• Fixed problems with NPCs that had a ring but would not interact with the player. Constable Bolger, Jolly Smallburrow, Isembard Took and The Lynx Mother should all be fixed by this.

Miscellaneous:

• For Windows Vista users, Texture Detail is now set to High when overall graphics settings are set to Very High or Ultra High. Previously (and still true for non-Vista machines), these graphics settings would set Texture Detail to very high. People will still be able to manually set their Texture Detail to Very High, but it won't ever default that high on Vista.

Europe-specific:

• The NPC Nási (which when translated was Nazi in French) is now named Morór.

Known Issues

• Quest - The Oathbreakers - The Oath-Breaker Captain will get reset if you log off during combat. You will not be able to complete the quest if you do this.

It's been a very busy few days. Making a website, at least the way we envisioned it, is not an easy task let me tell you (try having a full time job at the same time and you'll know exactly what I'm saying). For now we have added basic Races and Classes information. This was compiled from both official and unofficial sources and we are looking to add our personal touch to each and every new page we add. For now though we are focused on bringing as much content live as possible before we go adding the finer points of the site. The Character Creation process is 90% finished as well and you can expect it fully functional in the next couple of days. We have many new and exciting features planned so stay tuned...

While browsing I came across this great article/review of Lotro that covered exactly why I personally like this game so much. Gamerswithjobs.com seems to have gotten it just right:

"...What will keep LOTRO alive is the players who want to be part of a story. Yes, this will mean legions of scary Tolkein freaks who will sit in OOC chat and argue about what kind of tobacco should grow in the shire. But it also means that for those gamers able to admit their love for the story lines in games like Planescape: Torment and Oblivion, there's a new animal here. It's the Co-Op Destiny-locked RPG..."

To read the whole article go here