The past couple weeks have seen a lot of proposed changes to href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro">the Lord
of the Rings Online, announced through a series of
new Dev Diaries. Tim
"Raskalnikov" Lang, the game dev you may remember from such Dev Diaries
as href="http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/1015-update-2-minstrel-developer-diary">
Update 2: Minstrel Developer Diary, brings us another look at
upcoming changes, this time to the character panel.

Ahh, the good ‘ole Character panel; I think it’s safe
to say that over
the years it’s turned into a bit of a rat’s nest. The changes started
off innocently enough: “Players will love this Cosmetic Inventory
system. Where do we put it?” “Hooray, housing is in! Where should we
put the housing information?” “Now that we’ve converted a lot of our
stats to points, where should we display all of the new stats?”
Inevitably, the answer would always be, “Let’s just put it in the
Character Panel.” While this did make the Character panel a one-stop
shop, it also made it more convoluted and thus more difficult to
navigate for newer players.

The goal, then, was to tidy up the look of the character
panel, while also introducing a handful of new features. Well, not
"new," exactly, but existing features made bigger, bolder and/or
better. Including adding 3 new cosmetic outfit slots, apparently
unlockable through the LotRO Store. 

Our guide takes us on a tour of the process behind this
redesign, showing the different stages of development - from crude,
confusing hack-jobs to the more elegant and refined "final" version:

alt="Character Panel Equipment & Stats Page"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95272">

alt="Character Panel Outfits Page"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95273">

Images courtesy of
www.lotro.com

Bigger portraits in the character panel give you a better view
of what your toon looks like. Interestingly, the devs decided to go
with the ol' standard head/waist/feet zoom buttons instead of a slider
bar as shown in earlier concept mock-ups, and have kept the tiny "eye"
icons to toggle visibility of equipped gear instead of using something
more obvious. Large buttons linked to the appropriate store pages allow
for the easy purchase of cosmetic items and character enhancements.
Evidently, individual tabs are given up in favor of a mini toolbar at
the bottom of the panel with graphical icons. The Stats panel has been
greatly simplified and moved to the right-hand side, with a checkbox at
the top to show advanced stats in addition to basic/simple ones.

Read more about these changes at href="http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/1035-update-2-character-panel-changes-developer-diary">Update
2: Character Panel Changes Developer Diary.