By: Martuk

The developers of Turbine showed up in force to the House of Commons developer chat last night. The event was an IRC chat hosted by Stratics and it was joined by such personalities as Cardell "Annuvin" Kerr, Allan “Orion” Maki, Ryan "Tens" Bednar, Matt "Scenario" Elliott, and, Meghan “Patience" Rodberg. It was a fun filled and informative discussion that provided us with some new insight into some of the features not only for the Book 10 update, but for Books 11 and 12 as well.

The evening started with a brief introduction to the participating developers. Several questions were asked and when one person inquired about fishing being added, Tens responded by providing some light hearted humor as he joked convincingly about the new Fisherman class. Tens even had a few people believing this was a real class in the works, but he was nice enough to let everyone in on the joke before the nights end.

Crafting

One topic inquired about was how crafting might be improved. Orion mentioned that in the future we might see some version of repeatable crafting quest, but that there were no solid plans in place for the moment. Crafters of the world can take comfort in one thing. Though he was a bit vague in his answer, Tens hinted to major plans for crafting in the future. Whatever it was it sounds like they have some interesting ideas on the table for making crafting a bigger system.

Housing

Housing was announced as being slated for release with Book 11 which is due out sometime between October and November according to Annuvin. It was also stated that neighborhoods would be instanced and that there would be enough houses for everyone. There are currently no plans to allow Kinship neighborhoods, but Kinships can buy a house.

Gold Sellers and Spam

It looks like farming gold and spamming our mail box by these shady characters just might get a bit harder soon. According to Patience there are new mechanics inbound to help combat gold seller spam mails. It was also mentioned that there will soon be additional mechanics in place to make sure a gold seller of level six is not running around harvesting ore in the Misty Mountains.

Mounts

Mounts have been a hot topic for some time, but there are no plans to alter their speed. The developers made that clear last night by stating you have the option of fast riding, but be tied to the rails of the path or a slower ride, but with more freedom of movement. There are however, new mounts for Book 10 that can be acquired through the reputation system.

The Bartering System

The bartering system got a bit of attention last night. It will require certain items dropped from creatures that you can use as trade for armor, weapons, and other items. Some of the Book 10 instances will work with the bartering mechanic as well. Tens even hinted that this system may be looked at for acquiring Legendary pages for each class.

This Miscellaneous

Other topics discussed involved the possibility of a future system to allow freeps vs freeps combat, The ability to offer new player appearances with new hairstyles with the release of Book 12, and the first expansion pack may make monster classes available for play. While none of these were covered in great detail it was still nice to know.

Nothing really groundbreaking came out last night, but we did learn a useful bit of information on things we can look foreword to for the future. The developers are creative and some of them even have a good sense of humor. This will serve them and us well for the future of Lord of the Rings Online.

You can read the full transcript from the Stratics chat Here.


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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