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MMORPG | Genre:Fantasy | Status:Final  (rel 04/24/07)  | Pub:Midway Games
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A Look at Book 8

MMORPG.com's Donna Desborough takes a look at the upcoming Book 8 update for Lord of the Rings Online.

It's been seven months since the Mines of Moria expansion has been released and we're just about to see Book 8 come to out computers. Where Book 7 took us out into Lothlorien and with Book 8 we'll travel into the depths of Moria.

With every new book comes many small bug fixes and tweaks and Book 8 is no different of course. The character classes have all had small bug fixes and adjustments, but everyone will be happy to hear that none of it is major. The Devs assure me that all of the changes are bug fixes or tweaks that help the characters or stop potential exploits. So good news there. One game tweak that will be brought in that has me a little unsure of is a limitation of how many instances you can enter in an hour. The limit will be five instances and hour and should only apply to raid instances.

With Book 8 also comes the next festival. Turbine has added a couple of things in the festivals this time around. First is the races that can be bet on with tokens. At the location of each race's festival is a Race Master that allows you to use a race token to bet on one of the runners to win. The race master will appear approximately 3 minutes before the race begins and the races are every 10 minutes. The one I think is the most fun is the Hobbit race. After you've placed your bet the 4 Hobbits run from table to table eating their way through the race. First one to the finish line wins of course, but you may miss the end like I did as I was laughing so much at this.

The festival games you know and love are still there, like the drinking game. Once again you can earn a horse from the festival, only this time it's a little bit different. This time around you collect tokens from the festival activities to buy your festival mount.

Now unlike the last book we've got several raids coming in Book 8. To be exact, there are 4 raids awaiting players. There are two 3 man raids, one 6 man raid and one 12 man raid. In these raids you'll be traversing further down into the depths of Moria.

MMORPG Screenshot MMORPG Screenshot

The first three man raid will take you to a familiar place, the Waterworks. In here you'll be giant water wheels and puzzles for opening doors. While this area will feel kind of familiar it will also feel like a very new area as you traverse through the large waterwheels and platforms. The immense size is hard to convey in just words. Let's just say that there's a falling hazard that could be detrimental to your health. When you first start this raid you may think that it's going to be easy, but you can quickly be overcome and the end boss certainly needs some good planning and thinking on one's feet.

The second three man raid is the Mirror Halls. As the name implies you'll be seeing the Dwarf mirrors in this area and the puzzles you'll need to solve involves them. Like with the Waterwheels you'll need to activate the mirrors to solve puzzles to continue from area to area. These mirrors aren't quite like those you've seen previously though. Instead these are massive scallop shaped mirrors that are turned to reflect light. One thing to be said about this area is that it's very vertical in a couple places, especially at the beginning, so watch that first step. The boss at the end of this raid is a bit of a doosy, so come prepared. It may just be a three man raid, but it can still be a challenge.

My favourite of the new raid areas is the six man raid in the Flaming Deeps. The Halls of Crafting are absolutely vast. Think of the hugeness of Thorin's Hall and you'll have an idea of how big everything is inside this raid area. As mentioned, this is the six man raid and you'll need every person to be on their guard. The goblins in this area are smart little blighters that'll overwhelm you fast if you're not careful. They're s smart as they are ugly and they'll poison you the first chance they get. At the end of the raid you'll meet Thaguzg in a large room. It may seem like a very big space to fight one creature, but you'll fast find out that he has many friends and that room just might not be big enough for all of you.

MMORPG Screenshot MMORPG Screenshot

The last is the 12 man raid, Dâr Narbugud. Into the Foundations of Stone for this one. Here you are in the deep caves of Moria where The Nameless reside. Mixed in with the nameless are corrupted creatures such as goblins and trolls. They'd all as soon see you dead by their hand though so be glad you've got 11 of your closest friends with you when you begin to be attacked. Here you get the joy of not one but two bosses to fight. The first is an incredibly ugly corrupted goblin by the name of Istum. He's a fast one so get in there fast and take care of him. You'll run into him about half way through the raid. After killing more butt ugly Nameless and even more corrupted creatures you'll get to the The Blind One. Now this guy may be blind, but don't let that fool you. He's got plenty of tricks up his sleeve to take care of you and will have no problems finding you.

Overall I was rather happy to see a range of new raids added instead of just big or small ones. You may not be able to please everyone all the time, but maybe they'll make a whole lot of them happy. Also, even if you're not into the raids I would highly suggest you do these 4 at least once each for the visuals. Turbine's artists keep turning out lovely areas and these raids are no exception. Just wait until you see the goblins in The Crafting Halls; you'll see they've been improving their models as well as their environments.

MMORPG Screenshot MMORPG Screenshot

MMORPG Screenshot MMORPG Screenshot

MMORPG Screenshot MMORPG Screenshot

More Lord of the Rings Online Features:

Lord of the Rings Online - Bringing Riders of Rohan in 2012 Preview added on Wednesday January 25
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The Secret World - Deck Templates Dev Journal added on Thursday February 09
Coyote's Howling - Every Guild Member Ever Column added on Thursday February 09
Conquer Online - The Conquer Online iPad Review Review added on Wednesday February 08
 
 
Mrbloodworth writes:

 

An excellent update indeed. There is also the bree-land revamp,  the extended storyline, and the crafting revamp in this update. Also, not sure why you said raid, but there was only one raid added, the rest are simply small fellowship instances.

 

That being said, its good to see turbine continue to add things for all play styles. Frequently.

 

New Post Quote
6/05/09 1:43:35 PM
 
Haggis13 writes:

First off, I'm not trying to discredit anything here; I like the facts that MMORPG.com has these reports and that I can glean first-hand information about upcoming Books from them. That said, I find your writing style to be absolutely horrible. Not only is the report riddled with errors in syntax and semantics, but I'm not very fond of the wording either.

 

Examples of syntactical errors:

"Where Book 7 took us out into Lothlorien and with Book 8 we'll travel into the depths of Moria."
(You cannot co-ordinate two sentences of inequal value, i.e. main clause and subclause.)

"With every new book comes many small bug fixes and tweaks..."
(Many small bug fixes and tweaks is plural, so the correct form of the verb is come.)

"First is the races that can be bet on with tokens."
(Same as above)

"...there are 4 raids..."
(As a general rule, any number below 13 that does not specifically refer to an actual mathematical number (i.e. 4 + 1 = 5) is fully spelt out. The reason for this is that all these numbers are monomorphemic; one to twelve cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts, whereas from thir-teen and onwards, there are clearly multiple morphemes.)

 

Examples of semantical errors:

"In here you'll be giant water wheels and puzzles for opening doors."
(Come again?)

"The immense size is hard to convey in just words. Let's just say that there's a falling hazard that could be detrimental to your health."
(This is a tautology or at least borders on it; the semantic notion of a hazard is that it is detrimental to your health -- else it wouldn't be a hazard.)

 

Examples of wording I'm not particularly fond of:

"One game tweak that will be brought in that has me a little unsure of is a limitation of how many instances you can enter in an hour."
(While not particularly ungrammatical, this phrasing would -- in my opinion -- best be changed to something along the lines of that I am a little unsure of.)

"First one to the finish line wins of course, but you may miss the end like I did as I was laughing so much at this."
(I am not exactly sure what you are trying to say here. Is the end easy to miss? What exactly are you laughing at?)

"...you'll fast find out..."
(Obviously, fast being an adverb, this phrase has proper grammar. As it is also possible to find something out in a fast manner, it is not per se a case of 'wrong' semantics. However, this phrasing does imply the actual finding out was fast, rather than it happening early on. That is, it opposes a fact that slowly becomes more apparent to a fact that becomes apparent nearly instantly after the cue that started its becoming apparent. In contrast, a phrasing like you'll soon find out achieves the intended meaning: it opposes a fact that becomes apparent very quickly after it has become relevant to a fact that does not become apparent until it is too late.)

"Into the Foundations of Stone for this one. Here you are in the deep caves of Moria where The Nameless reside."
(This is simply not a very fancy phrasing, especially considering the previous sentence to be so short. Rather, I would make the latter an adverbial phrase for the Foundations of Stone, omitting Here you are altogether.)

"Here you get the joy of not one but two bosses to fight."
(Be careful not to use the same syntactical structure and phrasing all too often; Here you are so shortly followed by Here you get seems a bit unimaginative.)

 

Again, please do not take this as a personal insult. This is solely intended as constructive feedback. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the information the writer provided (although one might start wondering when too blatantly obvious grammatical errors start becoming intrusive to the readers' experience). You might consider re-reading your reports or getting a second opinion before uploading them to the website.

New Post Quote
6/05/09 5:45:56 PM
 
Redline65 writes:

English teacher incoming!

New Post Quote
6/05/09 5:56:29 PM
 
Radiohedwig writes:
Originally posted by Haggis13

First off, I'm not trying to discredit anything here; I like the facts that MMORPG.com has these reports and that I can glean first-hand information about upcoming Books from them. That said, I find your writing style to be absolutely horrible. Not only is the report riddled with errors in syntax and semantics, but I'm not very fond of the wording either.


(As a general rule, any number below 13 that does not specifically refer to an actual mathematical number (i.e. 4 + 1 = 5) is fully spelt out.

Spelt is a species of wheat.  The correct word would be spelled.  Next time you get all preachy you might want to use correct spelling yourself.

New Post Quote
6/06/09 4:08:09 PM
 
Hallie_Miles writes:
Originally posted by Radiohedwig
Originally posted by Haggis13

First off, I'm not trying to discredit anything here; I like the facts that MMORPG.com has these reports and that I can glean first-hand information about upcoming Books from them. That said, I find your writing style to be absolutely horrible. Not only is the report riddled with errors in syntax and semantics, but I'm not very fond of the wording either.


(As a general rule, any number below 13 that does not specifically refer to an actual mathematical number (i.e. 4 + 1 = 5) is fully spelt out.

Spelt is a species of wheat.  The correct word would be spelled.  Next time you get all preachy you might want to use correct spelling yourself.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spelt[2]

The correct word is spelt. The next time you get all preachy you might want to use a dictionary first.

New Post Quote
6/06/09 9:44:26 PM
 
Fuerchtegott writes:

Actually, both of you guys are right. One can either say spelled or spelt. :)

New Post Quote
6/07/09 12:05:10 PM
 
Icemasta writes:

Old england was smelt/spelt/delt/etc...

With the common english nowadays, you  can use both, smelled, spelled, dealed, etc.... You should still be pronouncing them as old english, but spell them both ways.

I do believe the UK school system is not really fond of the ending in ED everywhere, and they teach most if not all irregular verbs.

For the US, I know some english teacher don't even know that irregular verbs exist. (exagerating but still...)

 

Oh and yeah, as for the "no major nerf" comment, that's kinda false. Champions are getting nerfed hard once again with a terribly thought nerf, which will basically cause champions to get -30% incoming healing when in their main DPS stance. All other classes that can and will out-dps a champ don't get that and only champ, I found that unfair?

New Post Quote
6/12/09 6:51:04 PM
 
Darq writes:

As touched on earlier, a raid is two or more full groups linked together. There is a single raid dungeon in this update, a single full group dungeon, and two small group dungeons. This is common knowledge, and I really have to question how anyone who's played MMOs for more than a few days could utter the phrase "3 man raid." It is laughable to be honest.

New Post Quote
6/15/09 8:30:25 AM
 
reillan writes:
Originally posted by Icemasta

Oh and yeah, as for the "no major nerf" comment, that's kinda false. Champions are getting nerfed hard once again with a terribly thought nerf, which will basically cause champions to get -30% incoming healing when in their main DPS stance. All other classes that can and will out-dps a champ don't get that and only champ, I found that unfair?

Even though I've got an English degree myself and could heavily comment on the syntax discussion, I've chosen not to simply for this one fact:

The text I quoted above cannot possibly be expressed enough.

The Champion nerf is possibly the biggest nerf to hit any class in the game to date (and this coming on the heels of a Champ nerf in the last book update).  It's a quick fix to a much bigger problem, one which has had countless good (and even more bad) suggestions of how to fix it, all of which would be better than the -30% Incoming Healing debuff.  The fact is that Turbine either doesn't have the time to implement a different fix (which is likely - parent company demands on releases take precedence, unfortunately) or doesn't care enough to look for a better solution.  Regardless, Champions are going to suffer and suffer heavily in this new update.

So, to the author or editor of this article: please at least put in an asterisk leading to some mention of the nerfs.

New Post Quote
6/15/09 9:03:58 AM
 
micona writes:
Originally posted by Haggis13

First off, I'm not trying to discredit anything here; I like the facts that MMORPG.com has these reports and that I can glean first-hand information about upcoming Books from them. That said, I find your writing style to be absolutely horrible. Not only is the report riddled with errors in syntax and semantics, but I'm not very fond of the wording either.

 

Examples of syntactical errors:

"Where Book 7 took us out into Lothlorien and with Book 8 we'll travel into the depths of Moria."
(You cannot co-ordinate two sentences of inequal value, i.e. main clause and subclause.)

"With every new book comes many small bug fixes and tweaks..."
(Many small bug fixes and tweaks is plural, so the correct form of the verb is come.)

"First is the races that can be bet on with tokens."
(Same as above)

"...there are 4 raids..."
(As a general rule, any number below 13 that does not specifically refer to an actual mathematical number (i.e. 4 + 1 = 5) is fully spelt out. The reason for this is that all these numbers are monomorphemic; one to twelve cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts, whereas from thir-teen and onwards, there are clearly multiple morphemes.)

 

Examples of semantical errors:

"In here you'll be giant water wheels and puzzles for opening doors."
(Come again?)

"The immense size is hard to convey in just words. Let's just say that there's a falling hazard that could be detrimental to your health."
(This is a tautology or at least borders on it; the semantic notion of a hazard is that it is detrimental to your health -- else it wouldn't be a hazard.)

 

Examples of wording I'm not particularly fond of:

"One game tweak that will be brought in that has me a little unsure of is a limitation of how many instances you can enter in an hour."
(While not particularly ungrammatical, this phrasing would -- in my opinion -- best be changed to something along the lines of that I am a little unsure of.)

"First one to the finish line wins of course, but you may miss the end like I did as I was laughing so much at this."
(I am not exactly sure what you are trying to say here. Is the end easy to miss? What exactly are you laughing at?)

"...you'll fast find out..."
(Obviously, fast being an adverb, this phrase has proper grammar. As it is also possible to find something out in a fast manner, it is not per se a case of 'wrong' semantics. However, this phrasing does imply the actual finding out was fast, rather than it happening early on. That is, it opposes a fact that slowly becomes more apparent to a fact that becomes apparent nearly instantly after the cue that started its becoming apparent. In contrast, a phrasing like you'll soon find out achieves the intended meaning: it opposes a fact that becomes apparent very quickly after it has become relevant to a fact that does not become apparent until it is too late.)

"Into the Foundations of Stone for this one. Here you are in the deep caves of Moria where The Nameless reside."
(This is simply not a very fancy phrasing, especially considering the previous sentence to be so short. Rather, I would make the latter an adverbial phrase for the Foundations of Stone, omitting Here you are altogether.)

"Here you get the joy of not one but two bosses to fight."
(Be careful not to use the same syntactical structure and phrasing all too often; Here you are so shortly followed by Here you get seems a bit unimaginative.)

 

Again, please do not take this as a personal insult. This is solely intended as constructive feedback. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the information the writer provided (although one might start wondering when too blatantly obvious grammatical errors start becoming intrusive to the readers' experience). You might consider re-reading your reports or getting a second opinion before uploading them to the website.

nobody cares the end .

New Post Quote
6/15/09 9:09:34 AM
 
Xasapis writes:

Why did you quote the whole thing then? To punish us?

New Post Quote
6/15/09 9:11:14 AM
 
Haggis13 writes:
Originally posted by micona

nobody cares the end .

 

May I suggest the author as a likely audience?

New Post Quote
6/15/09 6:12:55 PM
 
sanders01 writes:

 Couldn't you of just PM'd them to the author of the piece? That, I think, would of been more appropriate. 

New Post Quote
6/15/09 6:19:21 PM
 
NeokiNaomi writes:
Originally posted by micona

nobody cares the end .

Nice trolling, and lots of people care.

On another note, I can't wait for this update to come out, sounds like a lot of fun and some funny scenes to watch of the hobbits racing lol.
 

New Post Quote
6/15/09 6:24:32 PM
 
Haggis13 writes:


Originally posted by sanders01
Couldn't you of just PM'd them to the author of the piece? That, I think, would of been more appropriate.

Aye, I could've. I found this to be easier, quicker, and equally appropriate, though.
 
As for the actual book release, I can't wait either, especially now that they have the teaser screen at the start of the game.

New Post Quote
6/15/09 6:34:54 PM
 
reanor writes:

Oh man, all this bickering. What a bunch of sad people...

New Post Quote
7/29/09 10:30:15 AM
 
pfloydguy84 writes:

wow and I thought I was a nerd.

New Post Quote
7/30/09 11:39:49 PM
 
Deathstrike2 writes:

It looks like this thread has been trolt.

 

New Post Quote
7/30/09 11:51:56 PM
 
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