LOTRO US servers will be down on Wednesday, February 13th from 6am to 12pm Eastern time to patch Book 12: The Ashen Wastes. Although fishing has been pushed to Book 13 (boo!), this update will include the much-needed Angmar revamp, new solo quests between levels 10-20, appearance slots and barbershops, the Delving of Frór, Month of the Burglar, Month of the Guardian, Champion revamp and much much more!

While you are waiting for the servers to come up, take a look at Massively’s gorgeous screenshots series on One Shots, with a heavy Lord of the Rings bias (because Middle-Earth is as pretty as it gets, you know).

Or drool over the real photographs of the Ultimate PS3 set-up – all six million dollars worth of it.

If you want more intellectual interests, take a look at the write-up from Project Horseshoe, the second annual Game Design Think Tank and see what the industry movers and shakers are thinking about.

If that’s all too much, then just veg out and watch your monitor getting cleaned from the inside out. I’m sure it needs it!

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Brasse is working on completed Epic quest guides and is looking for help.

If you haven’t started your epic yet, you’ll find your quest starters and some initial information on theBrasse.com – more than enough to get you started.

And if you are a bit further on than this, write it up! Brasse is making an offer that you won’t see every day:

I haven’t much to offer in return, but for every complete, non-plagiarized Epic Quest guide, I will put the author (or co-authors) in a comic, and maybe get you a special beer stein! A coffee mug for those few who do not like beer…

You can post to volunteer on the forums at The Brasse.

I’m somewhat removed from Norrath at the moment (actually at this moment I am in a renovated barn in Bull’s Green in Hertsfordshire, which is almost as bizarre), but you can bet I’ll be looking to help out once I’m back to civilization! I’m pretty sure Brasse will knock a few pounds off of the hips of my epic-wielding halfling if I ask nicely… ;)

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

At level 29 every race on Middle-Earth gets a deed which will allow them to return to their racial home – very useful for fast travel!

This deed is always the second in a set, so you must complete the initial deed (slaying 50 of the same monsters) before you will see the deed appear in your deed journal.

You will have to kill 150 of a specific monster, as listed below. You can kill these monsters in any zone in the game and they can be any level. So you may wish to rush through the quest by choosing the lowest level monsters you can find – or increase your experience rate by choosing the highest level monsters that you can take on.

The other issue to take into consideration is whether you can complete a virtue deed at the same time. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

I’ve not tagged this as a guide as it’s quite rough. I didn’t get very far into the quest but for those who are just getting online, I thought I’d get you started. Meanwhile, I’m heading to sleep and then travelling all day – so I’m counting on you to tell me the next stage!

Speak to Danelak Hosfoak at 1196,203,1464 at Bathezid’s Watch in the Fens.

You’ll need faction to do this. There is a whole set of quests dedicated to helping low-level tradeskillers get around in Kunark. First you need to get access to the sokokar posts. Then, get faction with Bathezid’s Watch (and Riliss, which I suspect we’ll need for the epic) by doing the initial kunark crafting quest. Then you will need to do writs to get to apprehensive faction (that is, better than -20,000 faction). They pay out 750 faction, so if you can do the adventurer quests, you’ll probably find that quite a bit quicker.

So, assuming you’ve done all that, Danelak will ask you your tradeskill class and ask you to do 20 combines of one of your T8 class recipes. Do these, hail Danelak again.

He’ll ask you about what you know and then tell you about famous cabbage jewelery in Rivervale … something like that anyway. :) Go to Rivervale and enter the Fool’s Gold. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Game Update 42 is upon us! The patch notes are on the forums and the servers are up!

A quick Q&A based on the questions coming fast and furiously on the servers:

Tradeskills

1) Where does the tradeskill epic quest start?
Speak to Danelak Hosfoak at 1196,203,1464 at Bathezid’s Watch in the Fens.

You’ll need faction. Bathezid’s Watch are KoS to outsiders but if you don’t have adventure levels, don’t despair! You need to get access to the sokokar posts and then get Fens faction by doing the initial kunark crafting quest. Then you will need to do writs to get to apprehensive faction (that is, better than -20,000 faction). They pay out 750 faction, so if you can do the adventurer quests, then that is much quicker.

You can watch this thread for information as people gather it.

2) Where is the new tradeskill quest for advanced recipes?
Go to your city tradeskill society and speak to the Grandmaster in there. He’ll give you the level 35 quest Trademan Service, which requires you to harvest briarwood in Zek and the Enchanted lands. Provisioners gain two new drinks and one new, er, food. All fluff but they made me laugh.

3) How do I get my mannequin?
Mannequins are crafted. You need warmly faction with a city tradeskill society to purchase the recipe which is level 55 and scribable by any tradeskill class. You will need a rare T8 pelt to create a mannequin.

Adventurers

4) Where do I find the Erollisi Day quests and stuff?
Stop searching: it’s not there yet. They will appear on the 14th of Feb, be patient.

5) Where does the [fill-in-your-adventure-class] epic quest begin?
Try looking in the class forums, where you’ll probably find discussion about what people have found so far. Be warned that not all epic quests start solo.

6) They said the Anda quest series reward for mages was going to be fixed. Why does my Bracelet of Thuuga still have +healing?
The fix was to add in a new item for mages – you can sell your bracelet in return for an earring with +spell damage. Yes, that does mean you’ll lose any adornments. And it’s a bit annoying to find that it’s an earring now although apparently it’s exceedingly nice.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Clan Stormshield is not like the other factions in Jarsath Wastes: there are no merchants nor menders. In fact, there are only two people in Clan Stormshield: Kror and his brother Grim. You’ll find Kror Stormshield standing on a hill tending to Ironhoof just in front of the Danak Shipyards. For all of the hunting quests, you can hunt your prey anywhere in the zone. I solo’d the quests at level 76 but I did do the easier level 77 prey in the Stonehoof Badlands where I could.

You have 5,000 positive faction with Clan Stormshield before doing any quests. Kror will start by offering the A Dangerous Game! quests sequentially: cockatrice, razorfangs, grindhoofs and then pincher men. The first three quests can be done locally, then take the sokokar to Howling Stones for the Durus, which will also get you faction with Clan Skleross. Once you have completed these initial four quests, you’ll have 8,200 positive faction with Clan Stormshield. Kror will tell you that you need to practice and allow you to take his hunting quests four at a time (cockatrices, razorfangs, grindhoof and pincher men). The first set of four quests nets you a considerable amount of AA along with the quest experience. You need to to complete the set four times.

Although the quests give you faction, you can not pick and choose like you can with writs. You must do all four quests, four times. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Massively have spotted an interesting article in Trading Markets which
might be letting the cat out the bag:

China’s leading online game operator Netease.com Inc. (NTES.NASDAQ) is likely to make its first step on being licensed to operate overseas online games in the near future.

Caijing Magazine reported that the first foreign online game to be operated by Netease, which used to rely on independent R&D, will be Starcraft Online, developed by US-based Blizzard, quoting an industry insider as saying.

Netease CEO Ding Lei didn’t confirm the market saying, adding that the company is observing many online games and has not signed any formal license contract.

When it first came out that Blizzard were working on “an unannounced Next-Gen MMO”, Starcraft seemed an obvious candidate. Unfortunately, the English language edition of Caijing isn’t carrying the story and my Chinese is not up to scratch, so it’s a bit of a dead-end from there. Hopefully we can expect to see a statement soon and stop all the second guessing!

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.

Turbine has done screenshot competitions before and some stunning views have been submitted, but yesterday they posted a competition with a difference: if your screenshot gets chosen, it will be featured on the loading screen! This is a great prize, it ties in nicely and gives a reward that the people who take screenshots can honestly enjoy.

To enter the LOTRO Loading Screen Contest send your entry to lotro@turbine.com with the subject line LOTRO Loading Screen Contest. One (1) entry per player per week.

All screenshots should be unedited, although cropping is allowed. The dimensions of the final screen will be 1024 x 512, so please bear this in mind when taking or cropping your screenshots.

All entries must be original and created and/or owned exclusively by the player submitting the screenshot.

The fly in the ointment is that once again the competition is limited to “legal US residents” only, for some bizarre reason. I suppose one day there will be enough lawyers clued into the Interweb to sort out sensible restrictions rather than panicking at the word “competition” but until then, I guess I’ll just pretend that I still live with my mom (don’t tell her, she’d be afraid that I might follow through!).

Still, it’s a neat idea; I like the idea of my hobbit going on a photography safari to see what she comes up with, although seeing some of the shots from the last competition, it’s going to be tough to compete.

Posted by Taymar on http://www.mmorpg-info.org.