The Lord of the Rings Online Update 13 Released
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Following the release of Helm's Deep a few months ago, the team at Turbine continues to churn out new content for The Lord of the Rings Online, with Update Rollup 13: The Breaking of Isengard releasing earlier today. This has prompted not one, but two developer diaries on the official website that cover quest notes and zone revamps:
We took a good, hard look at a few older zones from Shadows of Angmar for the content revamps in Update 13. The North Downs, Trollshaws, and Misty Mountains all needed some love.
The goal of this revamp was to spruce up some very outdated content and yet still retain all of the best aspects of these three very unique regions. There were some great stories, beautiful and diverse environments, memorable characters, and unforgettable moments throughout the content we looked at. Hopefully these have only been enhanced with the improvements that we've made.
1. Quests have been re-leveled to cover 24-30. Previous level coverage was incredibly sparse and scattered, ranging from levels 21-45. Now players won't have to leave the zone and come back later in order to finish the content here.
2. Quest flow has been modernized and improved significantly. This zone was really showing its age with the scattered nature of the quests.
3. The existing stories in the zone have been highlighted and better supported.
4. Back-and-forth travel from quest hub to objective has been reduced. Running from Trestlebridge into Nan Wathren several times is annoying, so...no more of that.
5. Many quests have been added to areas with not enough content. (eg. Nan Wathren, the Fields of Fornost, Annundir, etc.)
6. Quests with overly high kill/collect numbers have been made more sane.
7. All quest hubs are OPEN! Completionists will still get recommendations on where to go when they finish a batch of content, but explorers can ditch Trestlebridge halfway through and pick up at the beginning with Mincham, if that's what they want.
