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Now we're talkin! Somewhere in the works I became a crafting nut and so anything with this topic gets me all warm and fuzzy inside. Turbine's Nik Davidson tells gives us the juice.

You've probably heard the joke about how games are like sausage: Best to just enjoy them and not think too hard about how they're made. For those like me, there is no sparing us the greasy intestinal details of design and production. We live it and love it. And like it or not, I'm going to share a bit of it with you. I'm going to tell you a story. A story about a boy, a coffee machine, and a dream. A story about the crafting system in The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™.

Before I launch into the explanation of our crafting system, I'll share this with you: At a certain point in the game's development, crafting was almost cut.

Find out more right here.

The weirdest thing about this is... I belong at this site. *feels herself getting older and older as the WoW minutes pass*

TheOlderGamers.com has conducted an interview with our very own Stieg Hedlund. Check out what he has to say about minions, loot, and the various other things you can expect to see in Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising!

"No one likes loot more than me. Quests will certainly provide some of the monetary and items rewards, but there will also be plenty of loot in the world, both dropping from defeated NPCs and from chests. The item and looting systems are rooted in my experience on the Diablo franchise, and will be similarly robust and rewarding-you never know what you'll get!"

There are also several new screenshots exclusive to TheOlderGamer.com.

Get the goods here.

It's the first in a four parter. I don't mind saying that it's a good laundry list. But hey, I don't play the game so I could be wrong. Tell me what you think.

New Enhancements

Module 2 will be introducing a number of new enhancements (purchased with action points) that will let players further customize and specialize your characters. Almost everyone will be getting some new enhancements to choose from; over the next few weeks we will be posting in-depth descriptions of what these new enhancements are and how they work.

New Enhancements for Spellcasters

We have several new lines of enhancements for arcane spellcasters, designed to help them specialize in specific types of spells. With these new enhancements, casters can score spell criticals on damaging spells, similar to the critical hits that the sword-swingers get when they get lucky on an attack. Each enhancement is specific to one energy type, and gives you a percentage chance to score a critical, and a multiplier to damage. For example, a sorcerer with the enhancement "Lineage of Force 3" has a 15% chance of scoring 50% extra damage on their magic missiles; if he prefers to use fireballs he could instead take "Lineage of Deadly Fire" which only has a 3% chance of scoring a crit, but will do triple damage when it does.

Read the rest here.

Then go visit our Dungeons & Dragons Online Community.

This just in from the official Istaria Community site -

Tonight! May 25th at 5pm PST, please join David Bowman (Producer) Amon Gwareth (Lead Design), Smeglor (Simulation Programmer and Guru), Illyist (QA Lead) and Jason Eubanks (Client Programmer) for a one hour chat about recent changes including the ARoP, Lairs, Confectioner, PSB Quest and the upcoming Expansion.

Futher information regarding how to connect to the Stratics IRC channel can be found at Horizons Stratics or below. See ya then!

From Stratics Central:

Please join us on Thursday, May 25th, for a House of Commons with the developers of Horizons at 5pm PsT / 8pm EsT in the #StraticsHoC channel on Stratics IRC.

Topic will be on recent changes (staff, ARoP, Lairs, Confectioner, PSB Quest, etc). and the Expansion.

You can connect to one of our IRC servers through the use of your favorite IRC client, such as mIRC, ircle, xchat, or whichever you prefer. Connect to irc.stratics.com port 6668 or whichever server is closest to you:

stratics.frws.com port 6668, USA - Coloradoirc.glowfish.de port 6668, EU - Germanystratics.afraidyet.net 6668, USA - Atlantairc.epaxsys.net port 6668, USA - Colorado

You may also connect through our handy Java link which may be found right here. You must have Java installed to use this which can be downloaded from the Java homepage.

General chat relating to Horizons will take place before, during, and after the chat in room #horizons. We hope to see you there!

Find out all about the new expansion and then tell me what you think!