As Sapience has announced LOTRO will soon receive a significant hardware upgrade that will improve the performance and capacity of the game worlds. Bullroarer is the first server with the new hardware upgrade and if you would like to test it, the doors are open to everyone with an active subscription.

Plus, all content added with Mines of Moria and Siege of Mirkwood is available to all players on the Bullroarer server, even if you’ve never upgraded! All you need is an active subscription to any version of LOTRO!

• $250 Best Buy Gift Card – 1 Winner
• $150 Best Buy Gift Card – 1 Winner
• $100 Best Buy Gift Card – 5 Winners

Please note: The Eyes & Guard Tavern will not be available for this event.

You will need to download and install the Bullroarer Client to participate in this event. You can download the installer here.

*Characters copied to Bullroarer will be wiped at the end of the event. Players may not transfer progress on Bullroarer back to their live characters.

More information about TERMS & CONDITIONS

Today, Turbine has released Siege of Mirkwood Game Update notes :

Gameplay

• Dying in Gath Ulunn will now properly teleport you to a Defeat Circle in Gathburz instead of Durin's Threshold.
• When trying to reform a fellowship within the Mirkwood Landing instance players would occasionally receive the error message, “You cannot invite another player inside a different public instance.” This should no longer happen.

Skirmishes

• Skirmish: Trouble in Tuckborough is now available!
• Players who have not upgraded their accounts to Siege of Mirkwood may now enjoy 3 skirmishes per day instead of per week.
• Skirmish Soldier Cosmetic traits should now display as intended.
• The default appearances of Soldiers without cosmetic traits have been tweaked slightly. They will now be envious of their finely attired, cosmetically enhanced peers.

Items

• The following cloaks were incorrectly assigned Radiance values. They have been corrected and the Radiance removed.
  • Cloak of the Stronghold
  • Sûl-Linnod
• Many Lore-masters were surprised to see their Dúnedain Staff had been changed into a Rune-stone. It has been changed back into a staff item and will no longer be called a “Dúnedain Rune-stone.”

Loot

• Removed the Sprig of Woolly Mint from the Dol Guldur 6-man & 12-man hard-mode chests.
• Reduced the number of medallions when beating Challenge Mode Sword-hall from 5 to 4
• Increased the number of medallions when beating Medium Mode Dungeons of Dol Guldur from 3 to 6.
• Increased the number of medallions when beating Challenge Mode Dungeons of Dol Guldur from 4 to 8.

Raids & Instances

The Sword Halls of Dol Guldur

• It is no longer possible for players to revive and re-enter the fight once players have triggered the encounter. The gates preventing this behavior will lower in between each boss death and the beginning of successive waves of “trash mobs.” Getting caught between these gates while they are up will cause the instance to reset.
• Chests for “normal” mode boss deaths will now only spawn the first time a boss dies on “normal” mode. Any other kills of the boss in question will no longer spawn a reward chest.

Barad Guldur

• The camera angles for the Lieutenant of Dol Guldur encounter have been adjusted to allow players a better view of the “playing field.” Viewing at greater camera distances without abrupt camera cuts to closer views should now be more possible.

Quests

• Some quests bestowed at the Lone-lands hub at Agamaur would not appear for players who partook in the solo version of the Passage to Agamaur quest. This has been rectified and all 9 quests can be obtained once again.

[Source]

After some known problems, there are also frequently asked questions about new Skirmish system. If you're like me (not reading tutorials) these answers will help you make your first step in Skirmish system.

Find out more

After discussing this with the Systems Team the issues seems to be caused by a number of factors. No direct change to the repair costs were made. However, due to how repair costs are incurred the combination of stronger mobs, combat changes, new stats and the increased speed of combat, have come together to result in increased item wear which in turn results in increased repair costs.

The team is currently looking into how best to address this. There is no 'easy' way as the issue is caused by a number of variables and there is no 'switch' to throw.

As with all new systems and major systemic changes we'll continue to look at the data and make adjustments accordingly.

[Sapience]

Skirmish Leaderboards and stat trackers are live on my.lotro.com! You can search the Leaderboards by Skirmish location, group size, kinship, level range, and class or any combination of those options. Sort your results by fastest times, Skirmish Marks (SM) per hour, or total SM earned. You can also pull up your character’s my.lotro.com page and see in-depth analysis of your Skirmish performance in the new Skirmish Tabs. Make your character’s information public and let the world see your best times, most SM earned and other stats!

During the last few days I have been gathering information about known bugs, differences between Beta and released version of Siege of Mirkwood and idea for future updates. If you come across another interesting ideas or disturbing ones please let us know.

1. Skirmish Mark Clutter
   Most of those drops are either trash (to sell), or trade-able at the curiosity vendor for additional skirmish marks.
   We knew this would be a concern and are looking into it. [Raskolnikov]
2. What do burgs do about their most basic attack skill - stealth mode
   Stealth is a delicate system that if handled poorly can result in a lot of really bad problems and issues. Having soldiers respond to you being stealthed was something we investigated for launch, but turned out to be a very complex and complicated issue to tackle (as simple as you may think the design might or should be, that has little bearing on the difficulty of the implementation) for launch given everything else necessary to get the system up and running. We would rather have consistent behavior than oddly different sometimes breaking unpolished behavior.

   Now that the system is live, re-investigating stealth and coming up with a suitable solution that does not invalidate stealth as a tactic and skillset, yet does not cause things to break and wonkiness to ensue, is one of the top items on our to-do list. [jwbarry]

3.  Skirmish Raid size?
   The quest dialog says in red text that the skirmish can be completed at Solo, Small Fellowship, Fellowship, or Raid sizes. But when creating the skirmish from the Skirmish Join panel, raid is not an option in the drop-down list.
   The skirmishes for mirkwood and Dol Guldur will have their raids enabled in a future update. There was not enough time to fully balance and bugfix a dozen skirmish raids. These ones had lingering issues and we decided to hold them back and get them right before releasing them. One of the really cool things about skirmishes is we have the tech to do be able to still have the skirmishes available, but limit the group size options to what's functional and polished. The final skirmish involved with the epic, Battle in the Tower does have it's raid mode available. [jwbarry]
4. Outfits not working
   There is a known bug with some of the cosmetic traits. We are looking into fixing it as soon as possible. [Zombie_Columbus]
5. Bree town skirmish bug
   No, it's not a bug. This is working as intended. This boss fight will reset if any of the enemy party get too close to the exit gate or if you wipe and they leave combat. [jwbarry]

Codemasters has announced today that players can now purchase the Adventure Pack and Loot Bags!

Adventure Pack
Every adventurer needs an Adventure Pack. Included in this handy pack:

• 2 additional character slots
• One shared storage (20 additional slots)

All for just £4.99 / € 6.99!

Loot Bag
If you just can't help yourself when it comes to useful shinies, then why not grab yourself the Loot Bag which includes ten special in-game items especially selected from all the items ever released:

• Bree-horse (In-game mount for level 25 and up)
• Ring of Agility (+3 agility)
• Ranger's Cloak (+42 armour, +5% out of combat run speed boost)
• Waybread of Imladris (Removes wound and poison effects. Restores power, heals damage, and increases Morale & Power regeneration)
• Scented Hope Candles (+10 Radiance, stack of 5)
• Lucky Horseshoe (+5 Fate, additional +5 Fate when activated)
• Cloak of Durin’s Crown (+42 armor, +120 Non-combat morale regen)
• 5 Resist Acid Potions (+100 Acid Defence for 21 minutes)
• Pesky Dormouse (Housing decoration, this mouse exits his hole to look around your house)
• Ore-Miner’s Helm (Cosmetic head wear)

All for just £4.99 / € 6.99!

To buy one or both of these great items login to your Codemasters Online Player Account to get started.

[Source]

Expedition: Lost in the Fray - This quest has been disabled for performance reasons. If you had the quest underway, you will need to cancel it to remove it from your log. Removing this quest does not impact any deeds in Mirkwood.

[Source]

Some major changes were made to the Festival Mount exchange system, to reflect both changes to the festival and changes to how mounts are being handled now.

Formerly, horses and ponies could be bought at Hengstacer Farm and elsewhere in Middle-earth for around 4 gold, usable after the quest to gain the riding skill was completed (level 35 or above). All mounts purchased afterwards cost full price, unless you opted to trade them in. This could be done through a quest that provided a receipt for a mount, which could then be traded for another mount. Using this system, only one mount could be in your inventory at a time, but there was no additional cost. Another aspect of this was that all seasons’ festival mounts were available at all times.

The changes are as follows:

• A specific festival vendor, Will Peartree, has been moved to Hengstacer Farm to keep mount purchasing more localized.
• Each season’s festival mount is only available for the duration of the corresponding festival. This is for consistency reasons with other seasonal rewards in our game (other festival items, anniversary items, etc.) and also to keep vendor lists simple as more mount rewards start to come out. We want your new options to stand out!
• The cost of a mount:

• 1 Festival Run token (from winning the horse race)
• 12 festival barter tokens (These are given out as rewards for playing the festival content. This number may change someday as more content comes out, and tokens are easier to collect)
• 1 “Document of Mount Ownership” – this is like a proof-of-purchase for owning a horse/pony, giving the discount to those who are eligible for it. This can be purchased from Will Peartree, the same vendor that sells the festival mounts.

• All festival mounts can now be collected at a discount by using the above system. If the festival mount is your first steed, it will cost the full price. If you already own a horse or pony, however, you will receive the discount, and the mount will only be 1.6 gold.
• When you convert your first festival mount to a skill, you should automatically acquire the Mount Discount passive skill, and thus will get discounts on future horses.
• There's more content for each festival with every book release, and theoretically you'll be able to get your tokens much faster now. All of the old content is still there, but there's more to do now
•  Assuming that you already have the mount discount, it will cost you the festival tokens, and 1.6 gold to buy the Document of Mount Ownership.
• Tokens will be coming only from the race, but the race has been totally revamped
• Once SoM launches, you'll only be able to acquire the Fall Festival horse during the Fall Festival.
• If you have the discount prices, the discount effects festival horse prices and the "regular" horse/pony prices as well
• In order to get the discount you have to purchase at least one horse (or Document of Mount Ownership) for its full 4g price.
• The discounts do not apply to reputation mounts.

[Source]

Today Warcry had the second Developer Chat about upcoming release of the next Lord of the Rings Online expansion, The Seige of Mirkwood. Some questions have been already answered in the previous Developer Chat, but  there are also several interesting questions about end-game gear, skirmish system, legendary books and pages...

Find out more