Scenario_Turbine - Hey folks, this is Matt "Scenario" Elliott, Lead Worldbuilder for LOTRO. I'm one of those responsible for developing the landscape, filling it with cool stuff to look at and populating it with things to kill.. er... defeat you!
MadeOfLions - Hi everybody! I'm Jeff 'MadeOfLions' Libby, a quest designer for LOTRO! You know what I like? I like solo content! ;)
Denour - Evening Everybody! My name is Andy "
Denour -" Gillis, I am one of the Game System Engineers (Programmers) on Lord of The Rings Online.
LOTRO_Saffron - Hiya folks! I'm Saffron and I work with Patience and crew on the LOTRO Forums. I'm glad to see you all here tonight!
LOTRO_Patience - Hi everyone! Thanks for coming tonight! I'm Meghan "Patience" Rodberg, the community manager for LOTRO at Turbine.
LOTRO_Patience - We have a small team here tonight - a lot of people who work on LOTRO are trying to get a breather between the launch and before the Shores of Evendim update goes live next month. What's that, you ask? :D It's the first content update for LOTRO! Watch our website for more info - we'll be releasing more info soon!
LOTRO_Patience - One thing I did want to say on behalf of the team: Thank you to all of our players for the tremendous positive response and reviews out there. We've been getting great reviews from the gaming magazines and websites, but the talk of the hallways here is always how stoked we are about how the reader and player scores are so high, since it's you guys who we really make the games for. So thanks from everyone on the team. :)

Sprite - *Morel* just was wondering about being able to see what the main assist is attacking at all times, other then having to press f all the time.
Scenario_Turbine - For the Shores of Evendim update, we will be including a handful of functionality updates for fellowship/raid groups. Amongst those are brand new target marking for party leaders and visible displays for target players/npcs/mobs.

Sprite - *sariana57* I know that in other games, there are volunterr guides. Does LoTRO plan on having these as well in the future?
LOTRO_Patience - Hi Sariana! I recognize you from our forums. I know you're really helpful there so I'm not surprised to see you ask that question. :) We are looking into ways we might be able to have a volunteer program, but how that will take shape is still an unknown. It's definitely something we'd like to see happen though.

Sprite - *RestlessChickens* Do you plan on implementing a reputation \ reward system?
Denour - We are currently investigating the possibility of adding a Reputation System with different faction rewards associated with it. This is not something you will see with the Shores of Evendim launch, but keep an eye out afterwards for updates.

Sprite - *Naithin* Need/Greed/Pass rolls.. Any word on whether this is something we would expect to see?
LOTRO_Patience - Hey Naithan! Need/Greed/Pass rolls will go live in the Shores of Evendim update. We wanted them too. A lot. ;)

Sprite - *Ivisi* What has been the biggest challenge facing the crafting professions since launch? Any planned changes to crafting at or before the Evendim update?
LOTRO_Patience - Hello Ivisi. Crafting will continue to get refined, but farming is our top priority post-launch. We have a few people working on, specifically, things like pipe-weed cross-breeding, rare trophy drops, and some fun stuff like making ale. These will also go live in the Shores of Evendim!
LOTRO_Patience - Also, players can expect ongoing updates to all of our crafting professions in the months to come.

Sprite - *DirkSalsbery* how does one access the Lorebook while in the game?
LOTRO_Patience - Hey Dirk. The answer is.. well.. you can't yet. :D We're hoping that will change in the future. Thanks for bringing up the Lorebook though, I completely forgot to mention it at the beginning!
LOTRO_Patience - For those who haven't seen it yet, the LOTRO Lorebook can be found at http://lorebook.lotro.com. It's a wiki that's tied right into our game and contains information on every NPC, item, quest, creature, area, skill, and on and on..
LOTRO_Patience - Right now it's read-only since it's a "preview of the beta" but we will be opening it up to editing by our players in the coming months. If anyone here hasn't seen it, you REALLY should go check it out, it's pretty full of awesome.
LOTRO_Patience - :)

Sprite - *Aetos* Lore-wise, what exactly is the Shores of Evendim?
LOTRO_Patience - lol.. Libby's keyboard is smoking as he types furiously. :D
MadeOfLions - Well, Evendim itself is the region to the north of the Shire and west of the Fields of Fornost, home to Annuminas, the ancient city of the Dunedain, and Lake Nenuial, which is, as Tolkien himself would say, 'ginormous.'
MadeOfLions - So we chose the name 'Shores of Evendim' to signal that we're bringing you right up to the edge of something awesome, the 'shores' of LOTRO, if you will. There's another book of the Epic that brings you into Evendim, and the stakes get higher and higher.
MadeOfLions - We're pretty proud of it.

Sprite - *Drogo* When looking at the map, I noticed there is a lot of unused space. Will you be populating all these empty spaces in future updates?
Scenario_Turbine - Hey Drogo! Middle Earth is a very big place and we have only scratched a small bit of its surface. While our focus for release was Eriador, we did leave ourselves plenty of locations that we could go into post launch. With the Shores of Evendim update, you'll see the first of our major landscape additions - Evendim.
Scenario_Turbine - As we continue developing LOTRO, we will certainly continue to fill in the open spaces with new lands to explore (though not every update will include a new addition to the landscape.

Sprite - *Guest76* is there any trial account download to try this mmo like anothers mmo's?
LOTRO_Patience - Hiya.. er... Guest76. There's not currently a trial; most MMOs don't offer a free trial so close to launch. However, if you know someone who bought LOTRO, you could ask them for their buddy key. A 10-day buddy key was included in the box. :)

Sprite - *Alerond* In my wanders, I have noticed many animals fallin from the sky. Is this issue to be fixed soon, should I always submit a bug report on finding these animals?
LOTRO_Patience - Yeah, I've heard about those rains of frogs in Kansas and stuff... OH! Our game. Yeah. While Tolkien never mentioned falling animals from the sky, he didn't exactly exclude them, either...
LOTRO_Patience - Okay. Okay.
LOTRO_Patience - Yes, please bug the falling animals and we'll try to ground them wherever possible. However, look at it this way - no one can ever tell you "When pigs fly!" because now you've seen it.
LOTRO_Patience - :D

Sprite - *Naithin* I saw in a euro preview article on Shores of Evendim, that classes would gain new skills in Shores of Evendim. Are we looking at skills across the level range, or moreso in the currently rather quiet 30+ areas?
LOTRO_Patience - Hi again Naithan. In the Shores of Evendim update, we're focusing on adding additional skills to the Champion class for levels 40+. In the future, we'll focus on other classes with the hunter and captain being the next two on the list.

Sprite - *sariana57* Hello again, sorry to ask yet again another question. My husband who is watching over my shoulder would like to know if there is any chance for a kinship voice chat system in game? he would hate to have ventrilo or TS running in the back ground....
LOTRO_Patience - Kinship voice chat is something we're looking into - it's currently in what we call "Thunderdome," so we'll see if it survives. There are definitely some technical issues we'd have to overcome to make it possible, and not make our chat servers cry.

Sprite - *KoE|Rhynn* Will we ever have "mines" in LoTR. Would certainly be fun for a Dwarf to actually mine in a mine.
Scenario_Turbine - In the near term, we don't have any plans for mines that players can go to for gatehring purposes. However, there are several locations which we are considering for future content additions that are prime for ore deposits.

Sprite - *Tuner89* In the upcomming Shores of Evendim expansion, I heard that drums will be added as a playable instruemnt. How will theese fit in to the current system of notes to keyboard, or will there be a new system specifically for drums?
LOTRO_Patience - Hiya Tuner! It'll be the same system. :)

Sprite - *Tuner89* I heard that a mechanic to brew beer will be added in the near future. Will this be an entirely new craft profession, or will it be added on to an existing one?
LOTRO_Patience - Hi.. again!
LOTRO_Patience - :D
LOTRO_Patience - Beer will be part of the farming profession.
LOTRO_Patience - Yay beer!

Sprite - *Alerond* Also in my travels, especially in the North Downs area, I noticed that I must group with others. In the next update or updates soon after, will ye be putting in more stuff that a lone hunter like meself can solo? It is not always a good time to find a fellwoship with the different timezones.
LOTRO_Patience - Libby's keyboard is melting :D
LOTRO_Patience - He's typing up a big one. I think.
LOTRO_Patience - Or backspacing a lot maybe.
MadeOfLions - Hi Alerond! When we sat down to start designing Shores of Evendim, we decided that it needed to be primarily a soloable region; the intent is that you'll have lots of solo quests available
MadeOfLions - to get you over the low-thirties soloing-gap. There's lots of content in there that you should be able to handle by yourself. The count is somewhere around sixty soloable quests in Evendim. :)

Sprite - *Ivisi* Specifically addressing farming and cooking, are there plans to balance/tweak these professions by or before the Evendim update?
LOTRO_Patience - Hiya Ivisi. All of the tweaks and balancing and other changes have to be made *before* we go live, actually. Many of them have already been made and are being tested right now on Isengard, our test server. We don't plan to make any changes before the Shores of Evendim, because the systems are so closely intertwined there's a ripple effect if you only change one thing without all of the other things that it's connected with.
LOTRO_Patience - So in a nutshell, most of the changes will come all at once in the Shores of Evendim, although we may find we have to do some more minor tweaking once the larger playerbase starts working with it.

Sprite - *Ulysses* Will there be new cities and instances in the Shores of Evendim?
Scenario_Turbine - Hey Ulysses, Evendim will be a fully functional area complete with three new towns (including the hobbit farming village of Oatbarton). The Shores of Evendim update will also include a handful of new instances, ranging in size from solable encounters all the way up to our first 24-man raid instance.

Sprite - *Anon335* Hi, I was just wondering about the enemy characters, they are playable correct? And just wondering what would be some of the benefitsofplaying as evil over good.
LOTRO_Patience - Hi Anon! I think you mean monster play, right? There are currently 5 different playable creatures in monster play. Completing quests, killing other players, and other assorted acts in the Ettenmoors give you Destiny Points, which you can use to buy perks for your player characters or spend to advance your monster player characters.
LOTRO_Patience - And the other benefit? Well, sometimes it's just fun to be the bad guy. :D The nice thing about monster play is that it's completely consensual for both sides. No one who doesn't want to participate has to.

Sprite - *Tuner89* Sorry to ask so many questions, but I am curious, how will the system of uploading your own music into the game to play, actually work? Will it be an ingame mechanic, or do you have to mess around with files?
LOTRO_Patience - Hi again Tuner. :) I think you mean the ABC notation system, and you'll need to "mess around" with files - but there's a ton of info out there on the system, and we'll try to make it as painless as possible to get them into the game. (I haven't seen exactly how it works yet.)

Sprite - *Naithin* Are there any thoughts as to which direction the first major (commercial) expansion will take us? Moria perhaps? :)
LOTRO_Patience - Hi Naithan! I think you and a couple of other people are asking all the questions tonight. :D Tens, lead system designer, is sitting next to me and says "Well.. it won't be north, and it won't be west." :D In other words, south and east are pretty much our options at this point, so you can narrow the possibilities down from that. ;)
LOTRO_Patience - Fortunately for Moria... it is both south, and east. :D

Sprite - *Ivisi* Can you tell us any details about the new Raid in Evendim?
MadeOfLions - The actual 24-man Raid encounter we're adding with 'Shores of Evendim' isn't actually in Evendim at all - it's in the Misty Mountains, at the location of the ancient dwarf-city of Helegrod.
MadeOfLions - There's... something nasty... lurking atop the mountains that overlook Helegrod. You can get some backstory about the nasty by completing Book 5 of our Epic.
MadeOfLions - The Raid has several boss encounters and is suitably dangerous. Pretty impressive loot, too. Since I'm a story guy, though, I'm all about the backstory, and think it's pretty interesting. ;)

Sprite - *Alerond* Will Trolls and other Mobs be available for MP later, say Goblins, dragons, etc...
LOTRO_Patience - Hi Alerond - while I can't tell you which creatures will be available in monster play as we move forward (lest I have one of them show up at my desk), I can say that yes, we'll be adding more of them in the future. Fun ones. :D

Sprite - *Tuner89* Will there be any epic quests associated with Evendim?
MadeOfLions - 'Shores of Evendim' adds Book 9 of the Epic, and it does bring you into Evendim. I can tell you that Book 10 will also take place there. Lots of interesting things going down beside Lake Nenuial.
MadeOfLions - Plus, although it's not part of the Epic, there's this dude you might have heard of who needs a famous sword reforged...

Sprite - *KoE|Farloc* Will the Jewellery line be expanded apon, Allowing Jewellers to create Earrings and Bracelets?
LOTRO_Patience - Tens says, while we don't currently have any plans for this, he doesn't see why not, and we'll take a look. That could be pretty cool. :D

Sprite - *Ivisi* You are introducing more monsters with this update. Will these be variations of monsters already in the game, or will we see a new monster in Middle-earth?
Scenario_Turbine - The Shores of Evendim update will include a number of new monster types as well as new variants of existing monsters. The new monster types will be full featured monsters, with their own looks and behaviors - in my opinion some of the most interesting behavior sets to date will be a part of the update.
Scenario_Turbine - We've even got a surprise monster up our sleeves that we think everyone will enjoy... or at least die trying to enjoy it :)

Sprite - *LBeff* Question: How often are there going to be large updates like the one coming up on June?
LOTRO_Patience - Hey LBeff. :D We don't want to release the schedule, because sometimes things slip and we get angry mobs outside our doors, but we have a Live team who's dedicated to bringing regular content updates. We have some pretty cool things in store already for the next two, which are already in the works. Suffice to say, we'll try to keep the players supplied with content.
LOTRO_Patience - When I say "the players," btw, I don't mean the ones who power their way through the game - nobody can keep up with those guys. :) But for players who play at a more average pace? We'll try to plan for them.

Sprite - *LBeff* Question: Is there any talk of adding flying mounts?
MadeOfLions - Yes! There was indeed talk of adding flying mounts to Middle-earth! The talk usually started with 'Should we add flying mounts?' and ended with, 'No, no we shouldn't.'
MadeOfLions - Really, we just don't want you to grab the Ring and try that whole 'drop it into Mount Doom from 30000 feet.' thing. I think the Professor would approve. ;)

Sprite - *Sprite* I keep seeing all this beautiful water, where are the fish in it?
LOTRO_Patience - Hi Sprite!
LOTRO_Patience - I'm so glad you asked.
LOTRO_Patience - What a great question to end the chat on!
LOTRO_Patience - Tens just said, "Wow, and I thought we'd make it through a whole chat without talking about fishing."
Denour - If only...
LOTRO_Patience - We love fishing. :D
LOTRO_Saffron - I promised Ramen I would bring it up if no one else did.
LOTRO_Patience - We being me, Ramen, Saffron, and you guys, that is. ;)
LOTRO_Patience - Fishing will make it in eventually. I'll pester the team until it happens.
LOTRO_Patience - We love fishing!
Denour - Tens guppy died when he was a child
LOTRO_Saffron - Yes, fishing!
LOTRO_Patience - Okay. Thanks for coming everybody :D
LOTRO_Patience - Remember, we do this once a month!
LOTRO_Patience - The second Monday of every month, actually.
LOTRO_Patience - So mark your calendars. And thanks a million for playing, too. :)
MadeOfLions - Bye everybody! Thanks for the questions!
Scenario_Turbine - Thanks for joining the chat and asking your questions!
Scenario_Turbine - Have a great evening everyone!
LOTRO_Patience - Tens says bye too!
LOTRO_Saffron - Thanks for coming out guys! It's been a wonderful evening!
* Scenario_Turbine goes to buy Tens a guppy.
Denour - Thanks for coming! Come again! Say no to over-fishing Evendim!
LOTRO_Patience - Next time we'll let him type :D
LOTRO_Patience - Maybe.
* LOTRO_Saffron hoists her pro-fishing sign
LOTRO_Patience - See you in the game! :)

Sprite - That's it for this one folks! Thanks for joining us here on Stratics IRC, the logs will be up on http://lotro.stratics.com/ shortly. Feel free to join #lotro for open discussion. Be sure to come by next time!
* LOTRO_Patience waves at everyone and puts on her fishing hat.