Monday, October 19, 2009

More mixed news from Turbine Q&A

Turbine posted it's second official Q&A document a few days ago, and it contains the usual mash of prefab questions. Among these, a couple stood out:

Q: Minstrels currently suffer a 2 second root after a healing skill and animation completes. Is this working as intended or something that will be addressed?

A: This is intentional, for the time being.

This could be construed as a good or a bad message...it indicates that they are clearly aware of the issue, but are not taking any steps to correct it in the near future...on the other hand, perhaps they to plan to do a major combat revamp later on to address this and other 'animation rooting' problems.

Q: Why is so much gear "Bind on Acquire"? If it is just to stop trading, why not "bind on Account"?

A: We want to have certain items be bound to the specific character. Bind on account would not accomplish this. It’s one of our ways to encourage players to engage content on their characters as they progress through the game using various classes. We are not considering Bind on Account at this time, however, it’s a nice idea for a set of “inheritance” items.

This makes plenty of sense for gear items, but for some, such as housing, which is an account-specific feature, it would make TREMENDOUSLY more sense for trophy items to be bind-on-account, and allow storage in housing chests. This is currently one of two major flaws with the housing system. On a related note:

Q: Can we expect to see the guild and housing systems advancing any time soon?

A: Not for Siege of Mirkwood, though we’d love to revisit these systems at some point in time.

Understandable, but will disappoint many a 'fluff' player.

Q: Where does Mirkwood fit, size wise, with previously released regions?

A: Mirkwood is roughly 75-80% of the size of the Northdowns.

This is one of the more worrying answers. We've seen from the new Mirkwood trailer here that the zone LOOKS fantastic. However, being this small, and encompassing all five levels of advancement past 60, would indicate that it's an incredibly dense area in terms of content, much like Moria. However, many players, myself included, have been clamouring for LESS dense areas -- areas akin to the Brandy Hills, Far Chetwood, even parts of Evendim. Also, from the maps we've seen from PAX, the Mirkwood area seems to be directly across from Lothlorien, which is incorrect -- there ought to be many miles of land between the river and the Mirk-eaves.

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