Author Archives: Serge

Lore: Nala-dum

Nala Dum

The Dwarves of Khazad-dûm were known as great craftsmen, with knowledge of seemingly magical arts. Among these were the great Water-works which funneled water from the mountains into the halls of Moria. The chief engine of this process lay within the chambers known as Nalâ-dûm.

After many long years of abandonment, lizards and rock-worms have nested in the works of the great water-wheels, bringing their function to a halt. There are rumours among the dwarves of the Iron Hill Garrison that something far more terrible than lizards dwells also in the halls of Nalâ-dûm. . . .

Players of The Lord of the Rings Online seeking a small fellowship challenge will be pleased with Nalâ-dûm. This instance features three-player content, two bosses, a hard challenge mode, and a radiance armour set piece, as well as a puzzle-based game mechanic.

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Release Notes Volume 2 Book 8 Bullroarer Official Update

Welcome to The Lord of The Rings Online: Mines of Moria™ Book 8 Preliminary Release Notes Update 6/9/2009! Please be aware that these notes are for the Bullroarer test server ONLY and are not complete or final. They will be revised and updated when Book 8 goes live on the LOTRO servers in June. Enjoy!

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Dungeon:Lumul-nar

Hall of mirrors
In the days when the dwarves of Durin’s line dwelled in the halls of Khazad-dûm, they had built a great network of mirrors which allowed the light of the sun to burn in their subterranean chambers. Many mirrors remain throughout Moria, but the halls of Lumul-nar were the hub where the sunlight was first reflected.

Like moths drawn to a fire, bats and evil merrevail have occupied the Mirror Halls of Lumul-nar. The merrevail seek to forever extinguish the light of the dwarf-mirrors and bring darkness once more to Moria.

Lumul-nar is a three-player instance in The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria, featuring two bosses, a hard challenge mode, and a radiance armour set piece.  It also features a puzzle-based game mechanic.

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SWOTR played by some lucky E3 attendees

News from E3 keep pouring in. People from Kotaku.com had a chance to actually sit down and play the game (lucky bast****). Here are some initial impressions:

I played through a section instance called The Taking of the Black Talon. I controlled a level 10 Sith. …. During interactions with non-player characters your choices not only drive the voice-acted cut scenes, they also drive the story and your experience. In the section I played I first decided to kill a disobedient spaceship captain and the second time decided to let him live. In the resulting first scenario, a new captain takes over and her inexperience leads her to ignore pods ejecting from a ship we’re attacking. Those pods later attach to our ship and I was forced to go repel the invading soldiers. In the second scenario, the captain, happy to be alive, blasts the pods as they approach the ship, allowing me to concentrate on my main task: Taking out a Jedi. …. This is the sort of massively multiplayer experience that I think could bring back a lot of people long lost to the genre. Of course I only saw a small snippet and we have no way of knowing just how far out this game is, so keep an eye out for further developments.

You can read the entire article here.

In other news, the voiceovers for the game seem to be so massive in scale that everything else fails in comparison. Here’s what Bioware people had to say to the reporters at the E3 expo:

When I asked Erickson how many hours of audio they had already recorded he said he didn’t know. But, he added, when the audio team was about a third of the way through the voice work they told him that they had just passed all of the audio found in the full six seasons, 86 episodes of The Sorpranos.