Hello from Standing Stone Games! - A message from Rob Ciccolini

[76561198254171310]

Standing Stone Games – A message from Rob Ciccolini

Greetings,

Today we have some momentous news! The game teams responsible for The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) and Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) are now moving from Turbine to Standing Stone Games, a newly formed indie game studio. In addition, we’ve partnered with Daybreak Games to provide global publishing services. They’ve had a long, successful history developing and publishing MMOs, and we’re happy to lean on their expertise.

With the announcement out of the way, I wanted to talk to you about what all this means.

We're embarking on an exciting adventure as Standing Stone Games, a newly-independent studio staffed by people who have been working on DDO and LOTRO for many years. The teams remain very much committed to both games and are thrilled to continue development and operations of these games as an independent studio. This is an opportunity for us to bring about our dreams while still working on two of the biggest licenses in video games. It's a huge honor, and for you this means your games will continue to grow and improve. We love to focus on games with a high level of depth and scope, and we can't wait to show you what the future brings.

Although a great many exciting things are happening on our end, you'll be able to continue playing the game(s) you enjoy with as little interruption as possible. Our development continues on track, and the plans we have already announced remain firmly in our future view. Again, although we are a new studio, we are also the same developers who have been and will continue to work on our games.

Our success has always been possible because of your support. As we move forward, this is more important than ever. The ultimate goal of our new studio is to continue to bring you amazing experiences. We are excited for the future, and we’re thrilled to have you with us on this journey.

Here's to great games, epic adventures, and memorable times with friends!

~Sev

[Grannie1]

Escrito originalmente por SvartSol:

Group-only content sucks. I know, you know it...everyone knows it. If you want to make LOTRO great again, you need newbies, not group content. Advertise. Have in-game newbie events. Release a cheap, useful "jump start" pack to encourage new people to join. Hell, even consider a graphical update...everything else BEFORE forced group-content. No one will do it. Everyone will find a way to skip it or just quit. Believe me.

^THIS^
I fail to understand those who demand that the developers take away my freedom of choice. As it stands now, for the most part I am free to choose whether or not I want to run solo, or wait for kinnies to help with a particular instance. If you want to run in groups, find a good kin (like mine) and run in groups. If you want to run solo, find a good kin (like mine) and chat with them while you run solo. My freedom to run solo in no way affects your enjoyment of the game, while your insistance on forcing me to run only in groups totally ruins mine.

[Irradiot]

rift did auto-grouping well.
if you came upon another player who had the public group option active there would be a button that says, 'join public group', and then you are grouping. This is effective in any situation, any location. If you want to run solo, then keep running solo, just don't click the button, or do and then leave the group if you don't like it.
The harder thing to do is to get someone to do regular questing with you, someone who you don't just happen to find doing the same quest as you in the same area, etc.
So, how to improve the group-finder feature without it being just a stupid list of people who are looking for a group, which is an improvement over simply chat shouting LFG!
so,
1. chat shout 'LFG'
2. list of people looking for group, sorted by distance, sortable
3. auto-grouping panel, check boxes for quests/areas interested in teaming up for
4. ???

[goforrest]

Escrito originalmente por DemiGoth:

Escrito originalmente por Ebyl:

Oh my...yes definitely go back to making group instances required as you level if you want to drive off a lot of the current playerbase (aka, kill the game). I agree with the general sentiment, but it simply isn't feasible anymore with this game, nor would it be a good financial move. That's the reality of the situation and the gaming industry today.

If you want to play the leveling instances as a group, then get a group of ingame friends and run them as a group. The option is still there to run them as a group, so do a bit of work and actually use the given option.

Yeah sure... I know there's a 'dungeon finder' and that you can yell in /LFP, but when you yell/ask for the lower level dungeons NO ONE shows up and you get comments to do it solo - WTF?

That's one of the reasons I've left the game, and with me lots of other (first day) players of the game as well. LotRo has become one of the BEST single-player online RPGs out there :rcry:

this.. and people want to get rid of that feature which will make fidning anything under 60 hard af to find a group for..

[TheStoryteller01]

As much as I hope to be able to enjoy Lotro for a couple more years, I'm not convinced I will.

After playing MMOs since the days of Ultima Online, I learned that only rarely good things came from a change of publishers as online games are often "handed down" to a small studio (sometimes only founded for that very reason) for nothing more than clean accounting and protection of the former publisher from any fallout the shutting down of the game will inevitably bring. It's simply easier for a small studio to claim "We where enthusiastic and had the best intents but we actually bit off more than we could chew" than the big publisher saying "In the best interest of our shareholders we had to shut down the game"

What I have seen after a change of ownership was at best an enthusiastic rush for a few months with a package of new content pushed out, followed by another package of bug-ridden unfinished content that never got fully fixed, followed by stagnation.

Mostly it was just stagnation with slowly diminishing seasonal events, vanishing of moderator and support staff, followed by server merges, a big sale in the store and finally death for the game.

And sometimes it was just server merging accompanied by a big sale in the store and the death of the game shortly thereafter.

Anyone who played "M&M: Duel of Champions" on Steam knows what I mean.

I hope for the best but as a cautionary measure I dumped participating in the Winter Festival with my alts and started to play with my 3 main chars through all the regions I had left out so far (or finish those I haven't yet) as long as I still can.

[Sublime Entropy]

Daybreak brought us Landmark...so...yeah I have a few concerns when I hear they have a part in anything.

[kalameet]

please stop the stupid new RNG essence system

thanks

[Simmions]

any chance for an update to textures by chance?

[MearXee]

Escrito originalmente por Simmions:

any chance for an update to textures by chance?

I am totally for that. Especially character models.

[Jack Pipsam]

Escrito originalmente por Nexus:

Escrito originalmente por Simmions:

any chance for an update to textures by chance?

I am totally for that. Especially character models.

Apparently on the LotRO forums they're said for the Mordor expansion they're looking into updated character models/animations. But it would only be for player models I assume, not everything in the game.

[goforrest]

Escrito originalmente por Mark Davenport:

Escrito originalmente por Nexus:

I am totally for that. Especially character models.

Apparently on the LotRO forums they're said for the Mordor expansion they're looking into updated character models/animations. But it would only be for player models I assume, not everything in the game.

i think they just need to fix combat a bit and animantions. models just mostly need a touch up. then the game should bring a bit more people in.. also work on the grind asecpt of the game. make it less gridning. ( some people may hate that but lets be honest here there nothing hard about a game making it grind base just makes getting anything longer which is majorly bad for anyone entering the game at a low level. ) lol

[MearXee]

I hope they work on the game slowly now. Instead of rushing to get content out, they can now sit down and polish things I hope.

And I hope they really do go over their combat system as well as the player models and maybe a few instances.

Would love to see this game thrive like it use too.

[goforrest]

Escrito originalmente por Nexus:

I hope they work on the game slowly now. Instead of rushing to get content out, they can now sit down and polish things I hope.

And I hope they really do go over their combat system as well as the player models and maybe a few instances.

Would love to see this game thrive like it use too.

but people hate change. look at wow illgel server. people love that cause its more grindy and harder. and get use loot and etc etc.. to me people have a odd way of claiming whats more challengin the others

[Irradiot]

Escrito originalmente por Mark Davenport:

Escrito originalmente por Nexus:

I am totally for that. Especially character models.

Apparently on the LotRO forums they're said for the Mordor expansion they're looking into updated character models/animations. But it would only be for player models I assume, not everything in the game.

excellent. i would like to see all the npc's retain their original looks, such as hobbiton, and everywhere. Player characters should be updated and perhaps certain npc's. New npc's could have new looks. Anyway, I really like your point, ty.

[MearXee]

They did mention that they were going to allow players to decide which character models they would like displayed, instead of forcing players to adapt. So if you want to stay with the old models and emotes you can, it's just so the game can appeal to a newer audience.

In saying this it is not promised to happen. As coding this can cause alot of issues. So hopefully they will able to figure it out.