Under the Banner

The following is a summary of the developer notes for Thursday, May 17th.

• Interesting IGN article: Shores of Evendim
• What constitutes “Gold Farming” bans?
• Quest Levels Appear To Be Bugged
• There are BOA items in lotro, and more are coming
• Designer of “Instanced Caves” Needs a Shinkick of Epic Proportions
• Hide in Plain Sight
• Bags of salt

Interesting IGN article: Shores of Evendim
When asked if IGN got it wrong with mention of Tomb of Elendil in the article when it really is on Amon Anwar (Hill of Awe) within the borders of Gondor, MadeOfLions clears up the confusion.

Weerean, there is a tomb for Elendil at Annuminas, but it’s empty; it’s where he would have been buried had he died in the north.

What constitutes “Gold Farming” bans?
When asked to define what players can do and what they can’t do to avoid being banned, Patience had the following to say.

Are you playing pretty much as the game was intended? Yes? Then you’re fine.

Seriously, this was a fluke; not very many accounts were mistakenly banned, the ones who were innocent were re-instated and compensated, and we’re pulling back the criteria so we don’t cut that far down again - we basically widened the net just enough to catch the very hardcorest of our hardcore players, since some of the patterns of behavior are similar to those that are typical to gold-farmers. I can’t tell you what those behaviors are lest that information be used by the gold-farmers.

Also understand that there’s a big difference between “farming” and “gold-farming.” We’re not looking for players who are farming gold so they can buy a horse. We’re looking for the professional gold-farmer who’s trying to amass as much gold as he can so he can turn around and sell it for real-world money. That’s who we want to remove from the game, not our “real” customers, who are the ones we make the game *for*.

-Meghan

Quest Levels Appear To Be Bugged

Constant Gardener posts a followup to the previous day’s discussion regarding quest levels.

So what my esteemed colleague is saying is exactly what I told him.
However, that’s just wrong.

What you are seeing is that monsters age out slower then quests.

That’s currently by design. However we’re considering making monsters age out at the same rate as quests. (The printed material you have does seem to be bugged, however.) We’ll keep an eye on it, but at this time their aren’t any plans to change quest/xp level aging.

We are looking into this for month three, but we’re still waiting on more data.

Thanks!

There are BOA items in lotro, and more are coming
Avon stops in to discuss BOA items.

The Lucky Worm-Tooth is an incomparable item and almost all incomparable items are both bind-on-acquire and unique. Characters cannot carry more than one of something if it’s unique, however, we allow you to vault the item and later get another (but you can never carry two of the same unique items at the same time).

There are a number of incomparable items covering all types of gear, most of which drop from bosses but some can be crafted from one-shot recipes. A majority of incomparable items don’t start appearing in-game until 40+, but if I recall, there are a couple of incomparable items in the high 30’s.

Designer of “Instanced Caves” Needs a Shinkick of Epic Proportions
Scenario talks about the Meluinen Troll Cave.
The Meluinen Troll Cave is not an instance. It is a normal public space much like any other normal monster camp (it just happens to be in a cave).

It is beneficial for quest targets (be they monsters or items) to repopulate at a faster rate just because there may be multiple players (or in this case, fellowships) all trying to obtain the same item/kill. Having to wait for 10 minutes for your quest target to respawn isn’t fun.

The Troll Cave is one of our public dungeon spaces and one of our oldest dungeons. Some tweaks to it may be necessary (re: respawn rates). However, if tweaks do come to the dungeon, they won’t be a part of the Shores of Evendim update.

Later when asked if the spawn rates are static or dynamic, Scenario replies.

The repopulation rate inside the Troll Caves is not dynamic. We will be experimenting with some high-level dynamically regenerating locations for our second major content update.

Hide in Plain Sight
Orion discusses the skill Hide in Plain Sight.

Stealthers always seem to boast a significant advantage in player versus player - or in this case player versus monster player - conflict.

I am posting this today to address some misunderstandings about the skill Hide in Plain Sight and what it truly does for players who use it in conflicts.

Hide in Plain Sight immediately drops the player into stealth mode. This means that they can be in combat and simply disappear from in front of their enemy and re-appear behind them to gain a definitive advantage. It’s certainly a great boon, but it is a boon that is not foolproof. In fact, it is not a “get out of jail free” skill. Hide in Plain Sight will obscure its user, but their assailants or those defending themselves will still have a chance to see that burglar. While there is an increased difficulty to perceive the individual who used Hide in Plain Sight, it is not impossible for them to see through the stealth.

Although the feedback on the behavior of the skill in conflict is appreciated, it does not sound as though Hide in Plain Sight is not working as intended.

Bags of salt
Avon discusses the plurality of salt.

Salt = singular
Bags of Salt = plural
It’s confusing and it’s going to get fixed. If you see anything else like this please /bug it.