Siege Of Barad Morlas

by MithrilSoul

Last night myself and two LM's ran this instance for the first time. Had a good time, actually failed it twice when we didn't pay close enough attention to some of the wandering pathers and were just learning what the instance involved. So our third time through, we finally were able to be successful, got the four siege engine teams killed and ran back to the bridge to kill the Duneling Commander.

We were then followed by two surprises. One, there were elves left helping us (a very nice surprise), especially welcome was that elven captain (Master Defender, woot!)

The second surprise, not so nice. After dispatching the last bad guy, imagine our shock when that elven Master Defender and the rest of the remaining elven soldiers began attacking us!!! I kid you not. The three of us were like, "wtf is going on here?" So we ran...the elven followed after us, attacking all the while. The weird thing was, even though they were clearly aggro'd on us, we couldn't target them. So we were in a helpless state of getting attacked, but not being able to attack back.

Thankfully we got to the anvil and there was no "induction" animation necessary to use the anvil, so we were able to use it and then talk to that NPC with the ring over his head (Perimbant, or something like that) and get out of the instance...with the elves pounding on us the whole while.

Not a pretty sight.
Then after arriving back in Echad Dunnan, one of the three in our party didn't get credit for the quest, which made it an extra bummer. By that point, though, none of us were in the mood to go back again.

Also, after we were back in safety I went back over the combat logs, and noticed that the elves actually started attacking us even before the Duneling Commander boss was killed. I didn't notice that at the time, it was just something I discovered later.
Anyways...I'm attaching here a screenshot. I did submit a /bug on it in-game, but figured it was worth posting here, mostly as a warning to other players to watch out at the final battle here. Also because some things (such as the fact that the elves were hurting us even before the final boss was killed) I didn't notice until after I had already submitted my in-game bug report.

Vastin

The Lord of the Rings Online Team
Turbine, Inc.

• It's good to see that my secret Elvish ambush code is working properly!

  Err. That is to say, wtf?

  I have no idea why they were attacking you. It certainly never came up during quite a few runs in beta or I'm sure I would have heard about it!

  It's time for me to do a bit of research and see if I can determine what might have triggered them onto you like that. I suspect some unanticipated interaction between some particular player skill and the mobs...

  Luckily it sounds like a pretty rare occurance. Nevertheless, I shall see what I can learn about it. Do you have a full combat log - in particular the fight with the dunlending captain shorly BEFORE the elves turned on you?

• The pointer on Noble's Mark was indeed on the mark. A rather serious bug was found in the skill that would likely cause a friendly NPC to agro on you if you used it on a mob they were engaged against.
  This should be addressed in the next available patch.
  We're still looking for issues in the Lore Master skill list that might cause similar issues, but haven't come up with any smoking guns as yet.
• Lets just say that this wasn't the only problem we found with Noble's Mark.
  I'm not at liberty to say any more at this time until the Systems team decides exactly how they want to address the problems we found.