The folks from Turbine dropped by on Monday night to answer questions about their popular MMORPG, Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar.

 

[MMORPG]Taera: Greetings and welcome to MMORPG.com's Live Chat on irc.coldfront.net! I'm your host, MMORPG.com's community manager Laura Taera Genender. Joining us today is the Lord of the Rings Online dev team!

[MMORPG]Taera: Our guests will do their best to answer as many questions as possible, but due to limited time and a high volume of inquiries, they may not be able to answer every single one. Users are limited to one question [1]at a time[1], and you will be notified if your question is rejected or discarded.

[MMORPG]Taera: To send a question, please /msg MMORPGBot Yourquestionhere

[MMORPG]Taera: If you would like to talk about LOTRO during the chat, please /join #LOTRO for open discussion

[MMORPG]Taera: Our guests will do their best to answer as many questions as possible, but due to limited time and a high volume of inquiries, they may not be able to answer every single one. Users are limited to one question [1]at a time[1], and you will be notified if your question is rejected or discarded.

[LOTRO]Annuvin: Hey all, Cardell Annuvin Kerr here... I'm the Creative Director type person for LOTRO, and my hobbies include channel surfing, and training my dogs to do horrible things to visiting relatives.

[LOTRO]Ringleader: Hey, Jeffrey STeefel here. I'm the EP for LOTRO which means I get delayed in crazy meetings instead of being here where all the fun is!!!

[LOTRO]Patience: Hi everyone! I'm Meghan Patience Rodberg, community manager at Turbine. I wrangle players and sometimes cause feature creep on their behalf. Thanks for coming tonight. :)

[MMORPG]Taera: jOyriDe asks, I played during Beta, and didnt see much player armor diversity, has this been added now?

[LOTRO]Annuvin: Well, since beta we've added a great deal of armor options. Additionally, in our upcoming update, we're adding a whole system to allow folks to appear however they want, regardless of what actual equipment they have equipped.

[LOTRO]Annuvin: NOTE - the system won'y work in the ettenmoors, as not being able to see your opponent's weapons is sort of uncool.

 

Read it all here.

Very informative and on track.  I like seeing the personal touch that LOTRO dev has done in this game....

Drygonfli.

I had the opposite impression.  A lot of stupid questions and redundancy.  

I think the first question was from someone that doesn't even play the game.  He wanted to know if they added more armor types since beta.  Talk about lame...

We could have asked specifics on the changes coming to the three classes that are being revisited, namely guardian, burglar and champion.  We could have asked more about character customization, how will it be implemented, how will existing characters be affected or be able to change their appearances, what exactly will be added.  I think they said more hairstyles, but very nonspecific.   But how much of our appearance will we be able to change.

Anyway, a bit of a disappointment after getting off work at 12:15 am and reading this.  I expected better questions. 

The conversation just seemed very scripted and didn't tell me anything new. Kind of disappointed here.

It didn't seem scripted at all to me. I have to very much agree, though, that some really poor questions were chosen to be presented. If good questions aren't asked/presented, it limits the type of answers/information we get back.

Maybe a new format should be adopted to where MMORPG.com takes submissions of questions from the gaming public, then posts 30 of the submitted questions of which MMORPG.com subscribers could vote for their top 15 choices. That way we can pre-screen the questions, hopefully vote for the "best" questions, and ensure duplicates are not asked. Not to mention it would probably make the chat moderators job a ton easier. 

I had quit LOTRO because it was just a tad too casual focussed for me, with too few classes, playable races and diversity, but the info was good and I see they work hard on it, so I might try it again in half a year or a year, when the game really has expanded. Most MMOs are best about 1 year after release anyway.