Lord of the Rings Online tackles Q&A on progression server, plans November release

Lord of the Rings Online’s surprise announcement of an incoming progression server certainly stirred up interest and debate this week. While it’s intriguing, a lot of players were left wondering about the various specifics that Standing Stone Games didn’t cover in its press release and asked about them on the forums.

The studio did address some of these questions on this Friday’s LOTROstream. Here were the most important details:

• The team emphasized that this is a progression and not a legacy server with a heavy focus on leveling up with a community.
• There is a name for the server but it wasn’t announced yet. They’re not quite ready to announce a release date, but it will be in November. [Updated: After the stream, SSG said it’s November 6th.] [Now it’s retracted that date and says just “November.”]
• Standing Stone Games said that it cannot go back to trait lines since they won’t function on the modern servers. It would take far too much work to get them to work (including Beornings, which never had them). The studio said that it’s not 100% happy with where classes are right now and invites feedback on them.
• Forochel, Evendim, and all Volume 1 content will be available at launch but won’t be able to go into Moria. Solo options to go through epic story instances are still available, and the instance finder will still be usable.
• The modern, not the old, mount and stable system is going to be in place.
• Housing and neighborhoods are going to be there on Day One, including Belfalas.
• It won’t be the 64-bit client, since that’s still in the works. Work is going on to fix the live servers.
• Sounds like there might be a rush to grab kinship names and housing plots.
• The virtue cap is still being worked on, but it will be announced later. Also, there will be the same stat caps as on live.
• If there ends up being multiple legendary worlds, the team might allow character transfers between them.
• PvMP as a future possibility is under discussion but not ensured.
• There has been a lot of work done to keep players from going into areas that they’re not allowed (initially).
• No cosmetics will be gated.
• Scaling loot is going to be available from instances.
• All content will look and function as it does in the current live version. The developers are making small cosmetic adjustments to lighting and landscape on all servers. Character and monster balance will be the same as it is on live and will not be tougher.
• New content will roll out approximately every four months. No schedule is going to be posted, but it will proceed chronologically.
• The team has disabled skirmishes at launch but will return with Moria. As with instances, the team made a judgment call on each depending on where the story is on the legendary server.
• These are new servers and won’t be separated by region.
• Some festival content will be disabled if they require players to travel to regions that haven’t been unlocked yet.
• The team is looking at store items, like experience tomes, but no decisions have been made as to what will and won’t be available for purchase. The team is also considering how these items may be used to help players catch up after launch.