New Blogs and Podcasts

It seems like the LOTRO community is getting bigger by the second, but I wanted to put out a quick welcome post to a couple of new Podcasts and a new blog.  These are all over in my Links section on the right hand side but please let me know if I’m missing anyone.  I’ve tried to keep my lists up to date with separate areas for LOTRO info (just in the LOTRO section), LOTRO Blogs (the LOTRO Blogroll), podcast (some are double posted in the blogs), and Warden specific posts or information.

First up is Gondor Awaits where Theobor has been blogging for a bit now but also has released his first episode of his Podcast.  You can find the show on his blog, the RSS feed, iTunes, and probably Zune as well (I haven’t made that complete switch yet).  His first episode is mainly an introduction but I look forward to what he has to offer as I’ve enjoyed his blog.

Brian from Mordor of Bust has also released his first podcast show which focuses quite a bit on the Free to Play news but has quite a few comedic  elements to it.  He’s got a great blog and his first show was a blast so I can’t wait to see where he takes it.

And one of the more chatty dwarves on Twitter, Thamorian has announced his new blog Drums of the Deep. He’s another fellow Silverlode member and I’ve grouped with their kin a number of times.  Plus with a kinship name like Fat Smokin Hobbits there has to be some good stories on the horizon!

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Good weekend to be out of town

Luckily for me, I was out of town this weekend and wasn’t online that much or I would’ve been ranting quite frequently about the explosion on the LOTRO forums about the F2P system.  I think it has been pretty well covered and beat to death there and certainly the Turbine CM team has done an amazing job.  For me, I’m just anxious for this summer to be over so we can see it all live 🙂  my general positive attitude hasn’t changed at all and the only downer is the lack of new content.  I’ve very confident that Turbine will stick to a similar model to what they have in DDO and actually everything I’ve heard so far from Turbine leads me to believe there will be more restrictive in the kinds of things on the LOTRO store.

I’m also not too worried about the community, sure we’re all in shock now but that’s mainly due to it being new and unknown.  I’m sure as we start to learn more about it and actually experience things we’ll start to see that this isn’t all bad.  And the other important thing to realize is that Turbine has been very responsive in putting in technologies to help prevent spamming, griefing, and other such nastiness that folks are worried about so I’m sure they have a few tricks up their sleeves.  Plus they also have the DDO roll-out to experience so I’m sure the new Executive Producer (she worked DDO) Kate Paiz will have some lessons learned.

I did want to pass on a few of the weekend posts that I thought were either informative, clarified points of confusion, or just plain fun 🙂

• I posted this on Friday, but this Q&A post on the forums is maintained with all the updates.
• Mordor of Bust has also has a great re-cap of the forums so check his list out as he not only broke the story early 😉 but has been quite vocal about it.
• You might want to check out the DDO Store as you’ll get a good feel for the item types and prices
• Sadly bag space has been confirmed to be capped at 5 bags. However, the 20 slot wardrobe mechanic seems intriguing and I like Patience’s comment “it does a couple of other nifty things.”   I smell a Wardrobe Developer Diary in our future…
• For those of you who’ve missed out on the Lifetime offers, Sapience has confirmed that there are no plans to reintroduce the lifetime subscription option.
• Switching gears a bit, I enjoyed Sapience’s post on the Lottery system for 2 reasons.  One it is always nice to get an insight in what they’re spending their time on, and after what he did on Skirmishes I can’t WAIT to see what JWBarry’s been working on!!
• And I’ll end with Syp’s post on the 10 Probable Consequences of LOTRO going F2P. Number 10 though is a bit of a stretch, we all know that means the entry of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.  Or maybe that’s the new raid boss?

That’s about it for now, I’ll have some other updates here shortly but I can’t stress how much I agree with Sapience’s Signature right now so I’ll repost it:

Questions about LOTRO F2P? Read This, then Read this, THEN Post your question. 😉

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