Yule Festival

[Palantir]

The Winter Festival will soon be upon us and this year they have an entirely new mini-area in Ered luin to party in, a town called "Winter Home." It sounds like it could be a winner going in a new direction from past festivals just as they did with "Bilbo's Cellar."

From Lauren 'Budgeford' Salk the designer of Winter-home:
I hope you enjoy your time in Winter-home if you decide to travel there this Yule! There are many choices to be made, titles to earn, sights to see, and people to get to know… some nice, and some not-so-nice. There is a new mount, a new cloak, and several new outfits. And don’t forget the snowmen.

And as usual for LotRO the graphics look to be outstanding:

[/I]View attachment 31931

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/939-developer-diary-2010-yule-festival

Once again another good step forward: it seems to be the way in this game lately that the "special content" (& their designers) get an A+, while the base game keeps taking a step backwards. Now if they can just get back to basics with the core game...

 

[Palantir]

Now this Yule Festival addition is IMPRESSIVE! :salute:

View attachment 31959

What is the Festival Theatre? This brand new event allows players to take on the role of a stage-actor in a Hobbit-production of "The Curious Disappearance of Mad Baggins."

:crosseye:

:coolban: :hurray: :clap:

Players actually get to be IN this play and the audience participates as well. :toast:
This looks to be great fun and if they pull it off (A+) a future standard for the rest of the game to aspire "back" to. :thumup:

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/945-developer-diary-yule-festival-theatre

{Note to Turbine Managment: get out of the way and let the lore guys & these designers make the rest of the game.}

 

[Redwolf]

For sure it's looking like Turbine start providing some cool things again. If this festival is another step up after the fall festival that's a good thing.

 

[Palantir]

Could this be a direct result of F2P profits?
:hmmm:
If so a big thanks :clap: to the F2P'ers and KEEP SPENDING! :devious:
:whist:

 

[Redwolf]

Could this be a direct result of F2P profits?
:hmmm:
If so a big thanks :clap: to the F2P'ers and KEEP SPENDING! :devious:
:whist:

Their hiring page didn't move yet, so I don't think so

 

[Michael Dorosh]

C+

Things I don't like:

This thing was given grid co-ordinates on the overall map. Given that the LOTRO map is Middle Earth on a scale of 1:100 (?) or something, this is apparently displacing actual terrain somewhere. And a lot of it.

I also don't see how it fits into the whole ME canon; like the "hallowe'en" stuff, it pretty much just welds our own holiday ideas into this festival.

I agree that it was nice to see new artwork, quests, etc. and a lot of time and thought went into it (and it was nice to see that you didn't have to 'purchase' anything in the Turbine store to access it).

But come on, they obviously scrambled a little bit at the end to cram some content in - I mean, berry bushes in winter? A tent of mushrooms?

Stuff I liked was the theatre, at least in concept. (The execution was draggy and kind of boring really since you had to read the dialogue.) What I really liked was all the backstory about how the mayor was exploiting the workers, and the whole Robin Hood theme of robbing from the rich at the same time as apparently being one of the rich at the same time. Though it seemed a bit dumb also to be pickpocketing other people when I had a back with 13,000 silver pieces in it - I could have fed those bums for a year. I had two quests going simultaneously, one to drive the bums out of town for the sherriff, and the other to help feed them. Like, make up my mind.

And I thought that barter token wallet was supposed to put those goofy tokens in it. All it lets me keep in it is skirmish marks.

 

[Redwolf]

It doesn't let us keep all skirmish marks. I have a couple special marks that are still in the bags. And yeah what the hell to now go and have two currencies for one festival?

 

[Palantir]

I haven't made it there yet, but the background story was supposed to be a moral choice type of deal- do you help the bums or drive them out? I guess in the world of MMO's you get to do both.

As far as theme festivals- they are all obviously "our" festivals with a flare of Middle Earth thrown in for ambiance. Since they are side-line deals and are put in only for fun to break up the normal questing routine I can't complain much about them. Plus the RP'ers really like them.

Since this is a season only non-world shaking event they can scale this "instance" to any size they want without harming the actual game-world. I thought it was just going to be the size of say 1/4 of Bree but it sounds like it covers more than just a few city blocks.

BTW- did anyone else happen to notice they changed the area to the west of Thorins Gate? It used to be an area with scattered trees, goblins and Auoches. Now that’s all gone, in its place is a massive halted construction site overran with goblins.


On a completely different note: if you have done the theater- did you see any “out of line” actions by players? I told my WoW playing son about it and he said- “it will never work, players will screw around & mess it all up from the word go.” I replied, “I don’t think so this is LotRO not WoW.” His reply- "oh ya forgot about that, in WoW it would never work."

Since there are jerks everywhere on the whole however I think players will respect the idea of player participation—well at least till they’ve had a month to sit through it over & over and then it might become like a Rocky Horror Picture showing. :nuts:

 

[Redwolf]

This festival is much better than the previous "normal" ones and of course the summer festival was a dud. Good to see something moving in the right direction.

 

[Redwolf]

Damn unwanted XP.

I have taken a level 10 character into the festival and it's at 12 after a single run through the festival quests. Thanks for invalidating a couple dozen real-world quests...

 

[Palantir]

They're giving good EXP for festival quests?
That’s just stupid, the reward should be the fun of doing it and the few tokens you get to get "fun" items.
Who goes to a festival to level?

I have no idea why Turbine thinks it's hard to get experience in this game or making tasks to get more EXP, then festival quests to get more EXP and of course Skirmishes that give tons of EXP. I read on the LotRO forum that some players level by only doing skirmishes & skip doing any real quests. I guess the idea is to get to certain parts of the world or endgame raid content ASAP. That I don't get as the main game stuff is just as good or better than "endgame" content. The point of LotR is the entire trip to the end, not the "end action" itself. Heck the end of the game will entirely be a cinematic- players are not going to fight Gollum for the Ring or toss it in themselves or destroy Barad-dur.

Although I don't put it past Turbine to have us personally battling Sauron at the foot of his fortress in a massive 24:1 battle as the Ring is being destroyed... or even a 1:1 battle if they give us a good enough Superman stone.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Ok, the yule theatre experience is significantly more different than I anticipated once I got into it. The point is not to watch the play, the point is to take part in the challenge quests.

Not bad little challenges, but - you guessed it - they have dumbed these down significantly. The "stomp a shrew" used to be very difficult, just like running down the fence in the northern shire country was.

The theatre quests are so easy as to be laughable. They telegraph every single thing you need to do with not one but two distinct hints, so there is no way you can't miss what you're doing. The stomp a shrew used to be a free for all - only one person per shrew. The theatre is open to anyone (try it and you will see what I mean).

I'm not saying I disagree - the shrew thingie was a bit frustrating til you got the hang of it - but I DID eventually get the hang of it. Just more of the same of the dumbing down angle of it all.

 

[Redwolf]

It's more like television. Things happen in front of you. Not so much doing them. The only thing I fail on is the eating contest, but that's just because there are too many players and everybody fails.

At least you can die if you have a very low level character and fight the wood-trolls. Of course afterwards you aren't low level anymore.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Like Palantir says, I guess soon we can just wait til the "quest completion pack" turns up at the Turbine Store, and then we don't even have to watch it, either.

 

[Palantir]

Finally made it to the festival and, had a great time.

I enjoyed all the events: the quests were cute and different. I found the snowball fight to be fun (there were 8 players throwing) and I couldn't get my wife out if the theater. Each time she got on stage she did a bit more "unscripted" acting. Some of the other players on stage were also doing "extra" acting via emotes, some of it was quite funny.
The audience players (usually 4-8 on hand) seemed to be having fun as well and were emoting before the show began. I started dancing on the benches and soon 3 other players dancing along. One guy was playing music by the fire. I think the enjoyment level depends on the players you're with at the time.

For the first attempt at a new type festival I think they did a great job for exactly what it was meant to be. I don't recommend just doing the festival hour after hour that would kill it but instead to just jump in for a while and enjoy the spirit of the festival & more importantly to interact with other players in a fun environment.

Well worth the trip there.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Like I said - three mehs out of five. :laugh:

I agree about the theatre, and the experience is dependent on whom is there when you are. I at least tried to clap when the simulated audience was clapping, lol when the audience was laughing, etc. I found that the actors were reluctant, and in fact would stand in front of each other and make it hard to target them in order to advance in the deeds there. Most annoying. Some would actively run around the stage, not to emote but I think to actively just be hard to target; I suppose they saw it as part of the 'game', sort of a dodge ball.

I did like the music in the area a lot, and give that an A, and the general layout of the town and area gets an A as well. I rate it as I would a CM map - would I want to live there? Answer is yes; quite nice.

 

[Palantir]

What I really liked was all the backstory about how the mayor was exploiting the workers, and the whole Robin Hood theme of robbing from the rich at the same time as apparently being one of the rich at the same time. Though it seemed a bit dumb also to be pickpocketing other people when I had a back with 13,000 silver pieces in it - I could have fed those bums for a year. I had two quests going simultaneously, one to drive the bums out of town for the sherriff, and the other to help feed them. Like, make up my mind.

GET WITH THE SPIRIT MD!!!

If you do enough of the quests (or repeat them enough I guess) there's an "end result" to the back-story.
You get a quest & must choose one of 2 out comes: to either help the Mayor & his mean spirit or, side with the poor suffering workers. You get 5-6 rewards with each: help the mayor & you get Fancy cosmetic clothing & an appropriate mean title, "Miser." Help the workers & you get "peasant" cosmetic clothing & a title like "helper" or something (forget now).

I was running a female alt at the time & after looking over both sets of rewards I went with the "Fancy" stuff. Why look like a hag while running around M.E.?

1. Fancy Dress & hat. 2. Fancy Top hat & Snow man / Snow-dusted hat 3. Fancy hat & Snow-dusted Robe (and my little fish!)
View attachment 32077 View attachment 32083 View attachment 32079


I really like the array of housing items, nic-nacks & cosmetics you can get, not to mention this excellent one below. (I bet there are some very happy RP'ers out there.)

I was in the Theater today and the "actors" are getting better with their ad-lib'ing! :laugh:
The Yule Festival gets a solid "A."

 

[Redwolf]

Damn unwanted XP.

I have taken a level 10 character into the festival and it's at 12 after a single run through the festival quests. Thanks for invalidating a couple dozen real-world quests...

Apparently that's nothing:

http://www.casualstrolltomordor.com/2010/12/level-while-you-eat/

 

[Palantir]

Sadly based on the "happy" outcome & comments (and those attitudes are probably not isolated) I fully expect Turbine to begin selling even better "Leveling scrolls" (at a much, much higher price of course).

Being able to jump 25- 50% of a level per scroll is not out of the realm of Turbine Store possibilities anymore.

I'll go back to the basic F2P mantra I keep reading that if: "I'm paying for this game & keeping it going I should be able to buy anything I want since it doesn't affect your playing so... I want faster mounts, mapping ability, on-the-spot-rezzing scrolls, better potions, store-only outfits, quicker leveling etc." Next it will be, "it’s still taking me too long to do these boring areas I want to reach the new areas quicker."
Ta-da! Leveling scrolls for those who can't be bothered to play their characters’ but fortunately can BUY their characters and add to the Turbine coffers...

New LotRO add: “Why play your way to Mordor when you can pay you way!”

One step forward- ten steps back...

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Apparently that's nothing:

http://www.casualstrolltomordor.com/2010/12/level-while-you-eat/

I don't understand why they sound happy about it?