Lord of the Rings Online MMO News, Guides, and Features at Ten Ton Hammer

From the Official MEO Site:

Whether it was the Tooks feuding with the Bagginses, or the Fellowship of the Ring advancing resolutely against the forces of Sauron, the people of Middle-earth formed groups for fun, for family, and for fighting, and so will the players of MEO.

Kinship Features

When a group of players want to form a permanent alliance they can group themselves into Kinships. Some features of Kinships are:

• Multiple levels of membership, allowing those who run a Kinship to selectively promote only those who have proven themselves strong and worthy – or sneaky and crafty!
• The Kinship founder will have the ability to designate an heir who will take over if the founder decides to abandon the Kinship.
• Special housing will be available for Kinships that want to have their own meeting spaces, and even individual housing can be adopted for small Kinships at the click of a button.
• Kinship will have an online home on the official MEO game portal to help them communicate and coordinate their activities.

More from the Devs
Thanks to Warcry's Dev Quote Database

• Multiracial Kinships & Housing - Romanov - 10/20/03

The first thing I can say is that multi-racial Kinships will not have problems finding a common gathering spot. A player can open their house to everyone in the Kinship they belong to, so even indivdual housing could provide meeting areas for small Kinships.

Second, we have worked hard to take the living situations Tolkien described into account as we design a fun housing experience. The result is that there will be some minimal restrictions on where characters can own houses, but in general race will not be one of those restrictions. We'll share more as we get things nailed down.


• No Officially Sactioned Kinships - Romanov - 10/24/03

While some Kinships on these forums have designated themselves the official Kinships of certain places (which we think is great) they don't have any more claim on the game than any other group of players. So don't worry that there will be officially sanctioned "uber" Kinships.


• Private Chat & Storage - Sharked - 10/24/03

Kinships will have a dedicated chat channel.

Kinship leaders will have the ability to kick troublemakers out of their Kinship.


Kinship leaders will be able to give other members access to secure storage. This is assuming the Kinship owns a house.


• Kinship Emblems & Other Basics - LOTRsChris - 10/25/03

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One question that I was interested in and mentioned in a earlier post is.... "will there be Kinship specific crests" I would love to see each Kinship with their own crests/banners.

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This has been something we've discussed, mostly because we know how much the community has asked for it, but we don't have it on the list currently. There are a few tricky things that have to be solved to do this and have it actually be useful within the game. It's a fairly intensive amount of work to do, and we want to concentrate on some higher priority issues at this time.

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I was wondering if there was any way to get an official kinship, or at least closer ot it, like once you become a citizen of a or region, you look around town and visit guilds and pledge your support to whichever one you think is most powerful, and this makes the kinship closer to having 100% support from a city which would give them more officialness.

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This is a good idea, one that we will explore. We've talked about different types of kinships as is.

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Also, Will it take anything to make yourself a kinship or will it just be any "lvl 1" whoever arrives at a town and names themselves leader of Gondor.

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Yes, there will be some sort of requirements.

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Will there be a requirement of members until you're officially a Kinship?

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That's really up to your Kinship.

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Are their any advantages(other than obvious ones such as housing and "combat partners") to being in a kinship?

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Kinship chat channel. Some other stuff that is on the List of Things That May Not Be Mentioned Yet.

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Also, what are some of these ranks, and are there any privelages given with them or does that depend on your leader.

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Besides the Leader and the Heir, there are elders/officers and normal members. There are different privileges for all the levels of membership.

pax,
-Chris


• Five Tiers of Kinship Leadership - Sharked - 12/29/03

I just wanted to pop in and give you some more Kinship info.

Kinships will have five tiers of leadership. The topmost being the Kinship's leader, then heir, elders, members, and lastly pledges.

This system gives Kinships the ablilty to delegate rights to certain members. For instance the elders, heir, and leader can promote lesser ranking members. They also have the ability to remove members from the Kinship. Elders, heirs and leaders also have access to a private chat channel. This allows for the formation of a leadership council.

We currently have no plans to implement voting capabilities at this time. A voting system would have to be worked out by each Kinship’s leadership.


• Functions of Kinship Hierarchies - by Franklin - 01/09/04

Hello everyone.

As the engineer who implemented the Kinship system I can answer some of your questions. Sharked pointed out the five official levels of Kinship ranks. There can be only one Kinship leader, and one Heir.

Leadership of the Kinship can be passed down. The Kinship leader can resign leadership (being demoted to Elder) and the Heir will become the new leader. If there is no Heir, a random Elder will become the new leader. (If there are no Elders, a random member will become the new leader.)

This leadership rollover will also happen if the Leader quits the Kinship or the character is deleted. Note that the Leader can disband the Kinship at any time.

The Leader, Heir and Elders all have the ability to promote/demote/expel members of lower ranks. They cannot promote someone to their own rank, however. (The Leader and Heir cannot do this because there can be only one of each, and Elders can only promote pledges to members.)

The Leader, Heir and Elders also have access to an "Elder" chat channel in addition to the Kinship-wide chat channel as Sharked mentioned, and can set a text message (like a "Message of the Day") visible by the entire Kinship. There is no "chain/pyramid scheme" (to quote Gothgul) involved with Kinships whereby experience is passed along from one Kinship member to another.

We do not currently have plans to allow Kinships to rename ranks or add additional ranks. Also, while it is certainly possible for like-minded Kinships to form an alliance, this would be strictly a social arrangement. There are not currently any features that support multi-Kinship alliances.

Hope this helps!

Regards,
Franklin


• Kinships Only Need Leadership - Franklin - 01/12/04

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Franklin said that the leader, heir, and elders can all expel members of lower rank at will. Well, what if you cannot fully trust the people? Are you allowed to not have an heir or elders if your kinship is new? Can you choose not to allow the heir and/or elders to have executive type decisions?

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A Kinship requires a leader - an ultimate authority - for administrative reasons if nothing else. The other ranks are not required, however. Everyone other than the leader could be simply a Member, or even a Pledge (although that might look odd.) If a leader does not want any Elders in the Kinship then she simply has to avoid promoting anyone to that rank.

There's been a lot of interesting discussion here we're definitely following it.

Regards,
Franklin


• Limit on Leadership Ranks & Membership - Franklin - 01/12/04

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Has there been any information posted about how many Elders a Kinship can Have?

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There is no limit on the number members in the Kinship who can be of the Elder rank. There will, however, be some kind of limit on the total size of a Kinship, either by number of members or number of unique accounts. This limit has not yet been determined and will be affected by performance as well as gameplay issues.

Regards,
Franklin


• Creating and Joining Fellowships/Fellowships - Sharked - 02/04/04

You will be able to group with up to eight other players to form a Fellowship. Anyone can create and join a Fellowship for free, and you can even name it!

Any player not currently in a Kinship can form a new Kinship. This may cost the player a few coins, or some other form of payment.


• All Individual Characters can join any Kinship - Sharked - 02/09/04

Players will be able to have multiple characters per server. As of right now, if you create another character, whether they are on the same server or not, they will be able to join any kinship, regardless of whether the player already has another character in it or not.


• Kinship Members Sharing Screenshots - Romanov - 02/24/04

We've thought along the same lines that you're discussing here, and MEO will have some features that help players to share screenshots. However, sharing screen shots in-game presents a number of problems, starting with lore issues and ending with technical challenges. We're approaching it from a different angle, and concentrating on enabling members of Kinships to share with each other.

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