First screens for LotRO Vol. II Book 8 Scourge of Khazad-dum
by Kyle Horner 
May 27th 2009 at 3:30PM
Filed under: Screenshots, Lord of the Rings Online, Patches, News items
Our guess is that the Water Wheels is a new instance. Can we just say that the whole wood and stone architecture is really awesome? It certainly adds some new variety to Turbine's envisioning of Middle-earth, not that there wasn't any to begin with -- making the achievement that much more impressive.
There's sure to be more screens and potentially concept art in the days to come, so keep your eyes peeled for it! And while you're doing that be sure to be on the lookout for our forthcoming Volume 2: Book 8 developer tour, too.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
THAC0 said on 3:48PM 5-27-2009
It looks cool, too bad i cant motivate myself to resubscribe and get through teh 20's and 30's doldrum. I really really wanted to like this game.
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mrbreck said on 4:42PM 5-27-2009
2 years of CoH, then 2 years in WoW, now I'm trying to get into this game. There are so many quality of life things that is has over WoW, but damn the combat is hard to swallow. Auto-attack pushes back your skills and even if you turn off auto-attack, there is a huge delay between the completion of one skill and the beginning of the next skill. It just feels so sluggish, and the powers aren't very impressive looking on top of it. I will say the two new classes seem to not have this problem as much, especially the Rune Keeper. But, I just can't resist rolling a plate-wearing Dwarf, so I'm trudging through the levels with a Guardian in the hopes that things get more fun later on.
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THAC0 said on 5:03PM 5-27-2009
Yes combat IS slow. LotRO is one of the very few games that when i play at night i will literally fall asleep on my keyboard during combat. They need to up the interactivity level during fights. I found warden to be quite a bit better but i dislike the fact that if i don't play the warden for a few weeks due to RL then i forget all the combos.
Jason said on 5:33PM 5-27-2009
May I suggest rolling a burglar. Dual wielding daggers are blazing fast. I notice the slowness of combat on my champion but I use a 2 handed hammer that is almost 3 second speed. That's a 3 second delay between attacks so it really seems like forever when you're fighting something. Quicker weapons make the problem disappear.
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mrbreck said on 7:47PM 5-27-2009
The speed of auto-attacks isn't the only problem. I've wielded 4 second 2 handers in WoW before. The problem is that auto-attacks push back your skill usage. So if I press a skill, I have to sit and wait for the character to get finished with his auto-swing before it executes. Not only that, but even with auto-attacks turned off, there is a huge pause at the end of the animations for the skills. The first skill I execute will play it's animation, then the character will just stand there for about 2 seconds doing absolutely nothing before any other skill can be used. It's very frustrating.
mechanicalturk said on 5:35PM 5-27-2009
Sadly, the combat mechanics are the only reason I have not tried LotRO. I still do not understand why Turbine didn't use the combat engine from DDO. My only guess is that they are worried the combat is what encourages many players to stick with DDO. DDO has other good qualities, but LotRO gets most of the love from Turbine.
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Jay said on 6:29PM 5-27-2009
Hmm, looks like it's just a new instance in Waterworks... the Boss worries me a little, certainly it couldn't be lore?
I guess LoTRO continues it's downwards spiral to try and steal WoW players while alienating those who liked the game the way it was.
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Iokthemonkey said on 7:22PM 5-27-2009
I guess LoTRO continues it's downwards spiral to try and steal WoW players while alienating those who liked the game the way it was.
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LOTRO has continued to improve its presentation, quality, depth and just overall brilliance over the last few patches. Sorry if you can't see that but please, don't make it sound as if just because you're not digging it, that nobody else is.
Jack said on 8:07PM 5-27-2009
This game is just boring.... Combat sucks.... I try to get into it 2 times but its just not for me.... too slow combat and automatic its like a bot is playing your game...
Also the toony look on the toons is sad and really not fit in the much better looking game world.
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Tom said on 8:59PM 5-27-2009
My biggest frustration with LotRO is that, while they continue to add new content, they have yet to address the problem of a thinning player population for levels 20 to 50.
Turbine very seriously needs to revamp much of this content so that it is soloable (as WoW did some time back), particularly the epic group quests. Group-finding is just too frustrating in this game.
I keep wondering which game -- WoW or LotRO -- is going to wise up and fix revise their lower level instances (in WoW, everything instanced pre-WotLK and in LotRO everything pre-Moria [including both instanced dungeons and epic quest instances]) to make them soloable. That would be a really smart move, imo. As it is now, no one ever runs these instances with level-appropriate groups any more. It's just too difficult to find other players for them.
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Bryan said on 10:19PM 5-27-2009
Not sure what server you are playing on, but I have NO problems finding people on Landroval to run any instances. Hint: type /joinchannel glff and ask for fellowships there as well as your local LFF channel. It does wonders.
Granted, the game DOES need work done on the LFG system so that a player shouldn't HAVE to join a user chat channel to get anywhere. Also, the combat isn't that slow, it just has a rhythm you have to get used to. Hell, I remember WoW combat being boring as well, you still had a skill rotation for most of the battles there as well.
I'm currently loving the game, I really got into it a lot more after book 7 as a lot of the leveling walls I was hitting now seem to be gone. Loving my Minstrel at 60, and am now working on a hunter, currently 32 after starting him last week.
Jason said on 11:25PM 5-27-2009
Turbine has been adjusting the low level area's. They tweaked The Shire, Ered Luin, and Archet area's in the last book update. They are tweaking Breeland in this book update. They are tweaking the Lone Lands and North Downs in the next book update. They aren't changing the layout of the land just changing the way quests flow together to make it more smooth from region to region. I imagine they'll do the same for Evendim, Trollshaws, Forochel, Misty Mountains, Angmar, and Eregion in the future also.
Tom said on 8:16AM 5-28-2009
Part of my frustration with LotRO and WoW both is that I am a bit spoiled by Guild Wars, where you *never* have to spend valuable game time spamming for a balanced group in order to complete important and entertaining content.
I enjoy a good group as much as the next guy, but not if I have to spend 20-30 minutes (or more) looking for one. In Guild Wars, this is never an issue, since you can run dungeons alone or with just another player or two and fill out your group with NPCs. If Guild Wars can do this, then so should LotRO and WoW for "group content" at the lower levels. Uldaman (WoW), Great Barrows (LotRO), Deadmines (WoW), Garth Agarwen (LotRO), etc., you name it. It's really a shame these well-designed instances are so seldom visited and enjoyed by players any more.
The revamping of the lower-level content in the Shire, etc., while a good thing, was not to make it more solo-accessible. That problem, unfortunately, remains.
WoW and LotRO and other games of that ilk are going to have trouble attracting new players if these games continue to coerce new players to go through (or skip past, more likely) piles of great but group-requiring low-level content when there are so few other players at that level around to group with. Blizzard and Turbine need to get a clue about this problem.
It would hardly hurt anyone to, for example, allow WoW players in the 15-20 level range to enter a "solo version" (either scaled down for one player or supplemented with an AI-controlled NPC party) of the Deadmines instance in order to have a reasonable chance of completing their Deadmines quests.
This is not rocket science. The MMO that learns to do something like this is going to win/win big time, imo.
koehler83 said on 12:13PM 5-28-2009
I've never seen a hobbit in that much armour.
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Jason said on 11:28PM 5-27-2009
The characters look toony? Are you logged into WoW?
Some of the vendor NPC's are not that detailed but they don't look cartoony. The character avatar's sure look as realistic as the game world IMO. LOTRO is considered one of the best looking MMO's available. Along with EvE and AoC.
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Hub said on 2:42AM 5-28-2009
@Bryan:
... Dam you mate, I might have to resub again just to see if that global LFF thing works :)
And for any casual readers about this game: It IS beautiful in it's graphics, but you may want to mess with the graphics settings options for a while after install, especially in advanced and anti-aliasing; try giving them all a bit of nudge upwards to smooth out the character models a lot. It doesn't take the words greatest graphics card to get something very presentable to the eye. I suspect Turbine have been very cautious with the default settings (understandable)
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