DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

For me Update 11 has been a bit of a mixed bag.  There are a number of cool little things they’ve put into the game and of course the new epic story line, but I can’t help but be overly frustrated by the lack of quality and revision control that Turbine continues to show with its launches.  There’s [...]

DocHoliday The Ups and Downs of LOTRO’s Update 11

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

The patch notes are live for folks to check out as the servers should be up soon-ish.  I’m not going to post them in full, but a few highlights: I’ll be curious to see how the new Mounted Combat works, as well as what new mechanics are there in Wildermore like Aaron has mentioned.  I like the [...]

DocHoliday LOTRO Update 11 Official Patch Notes

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

Of course this is all subject to change, but there are some pretty cool aspects to Update 11 that I wanted to share with folks.  I also will have a couple of suggestions for folks towards the end.  Don’t get me wrong, Update 11 isn’t perfect and it won’t keep end-game folks busy until the Helm’s [...]

DocHoliday LOTRO Update 11 Goodies

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

I have quite a few VERY fond memories of Dark Ages of Camelot, so naturally when I heard there was a reboot in the making I was quite intrigued.  Although I will admit it wasn’t until VERY recently that I started to get excited about it.  I have tossed in my money and support for the game, so this [...]

DocHoliday Camelot Unchained

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

It was delayed a couple of times, but I have to admit I’m pretty please overall with the folks chosen for the council.  I certainly don’t know everyone (I do know and respect  both Silverlode representatives) but in all the places I’ve read (including the unofficial forums) there are very few [...]

DocHoliday LOTRO’s Player Council Announcement

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

I haven’t seen this posted too many other places, so I thought I’d share this out for folks.  Pretty cool interview by the folks over at MMORPG.com with Joel covering all 3 live games Funcom is maintaining.  My gaming time has changed recently and I don’t hop into TSW nearly as much as I’d like, [...]

DocHoliday Joel Bylos talks Secret World Issue 7 Details

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

I’ve been waiting a little bit to absorb and digest the releases yesterday as there are certain things that just don’t make sense to me.  We saw 3 main pieces of news that I wanted to go a little deeper into. After a delay hit last week, Update 11 finally makes its way over to Bullroarer for public [...]

DocHoliday Turbine with an Interesting News Day

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

Unfortunately for those waiting for the next update to Bullroarer like I mentioned yesterday, they’ve run into an issue that will need to be fixed before pushing out to Bullroarer.  Sapience believes things should be available by the middle of next week  

DocHoliday Update 11 Push to Bullroarer Delayed

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

It has been a busy day, but many of the expected announcements either haven’t come or have not come in the way expected. First up, the Player’s Council announcement initially scheduled for the 19th (tomorrow) has been delayed to give more time to the review process.  This doesn’t really phase me [...]

DocHoliday All sorts of LOTRO news today

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

I haven’t been writing all that much, and that’s mainly due to not playing much of anything lately.  But things are coming around and I’m getting settled at my new job and getting into a better routine with our newborn, so I should be getting back into more of a schedule.  But it shouldn’t be a [...]

DocHoliday What’s Keeping Me Busy

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

I must admit that I’m on the fence about this whole player council thing Turbine is rolling out.  A part of me thinks this is a good idea for Turbine to have a more structured way to get feedback and guidance from the community.  However, I also think there’s the distinct possibility that this will [...]

DocHoliday My Hopes for the new Turbine Player Council

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

I was a little surprised that they sprung Update 10 on us yesterday, mainly because there had been so little PR for it.  Pretty much the VERY light “developer diaries” were the only things leading up to this update, without too much fanfare.  Maybe Turbine feels guilty that many people paid for [...]

DocHoliday LOTRO Official Update 10 Release Notes

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

Like many of TSW’s updates, this one came and went pretty quickly without too much fanfare.  However, this not only brought some fun social items but quite a few other changes and tweaks.  I’m not sure I’ve figured out TSW’s numbering schemes but this to me seems pretty big for a tertiary update.  [...]

DocHoliday The Secret World Update 1.5.5 Patch Notes

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

I didn’t even realize there was going to be a patch today but there was and 2 things from this really jumped out at me. First, I was surprised that they’re doing server side performance enhancements ahead of Wednesday’s extended downtime.  I’m all for them doing things, it just seems strange timing [...]

DocHoliday LOTRO Update 9.1.1 Patch Notes

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

The second build hit Bullroarer today and it included quite a few additions that were not there previously.  You can find the full patch notes here, but there aren’t too many changes mainly the finishing off of the changes they had already announced: Fate determines out of combat power regen, not [...]

DocHoliday LOTRO Update 10 2nd Bullroarer Patch and Armor Screenshots

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

Kate Paiz today released her first Producer’s letter in a while but there’s not a whole lot of new information there.  It is a pretty quick read and I appreciate that Turbine is putting out things like this in addition to similar efforts from Aaron “Rowan” Campbell. However, I have to admit there [...]

DocHoliday LOTRO’s “New” Player Council?

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

The initial build hit Bullroarer yesterday for Update 10, and we also have some patch notes.  There’s a decent amount in the notes, but also a number of things that are not in the notes, so I’m expecting not only Dev. Diaries to clear things up but also a couple other builds before it goes live.  [...]

DocHoliday LOTRO Update 10 hits Bullroarer

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

Yesterday’s developer twitter chat had a bit more information in it then previous ones, but I think that’s purely just because they’ve got a release ready for Bullroarer   The majority of the real news was around Update 10.  I’m not going to hit on everything, just a few items that jumped out for [...]

DocHoliday LOTRO Developer Chat Thoughts

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

Joel Bylos put out another Game Director Letter today and there’s a good mix of the good and bad, but one thing I love about Joel (and the whole TSW team) is that they’re not shy about admitting what’s going on. He starts off with describing what’s going on with corporate Funcom and how it relates [...]

DocHoliday The Secret World January Game Director Letter

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

I didn’t even realize a patch was incoming until I saw the notice that the servers were coming down.  Nothing too exciting here, mainly bug fixes and tweaks to the instance loot.  Check out the full notes here and here were the top things I picked out: Fixed the armor values for the level 85 Dol [...]

DocHoliday LOTRO Update 9.1 Patch Notes

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

Joel Bylos, the Secret World Game Director, has been out of pocket for a bit since he was head down with the team over in Montreal.  His first post clears up a couple of items that had been kicking around, and so far from the initial glance I like them. First up, he talks about the changes to the [...]

DocHoliday The Secret World Announces Store Changes and Veteran Rewards

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

It has taken me a while to really start to dive in and understand the depth and complexity of the ability system in The Secret World but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.  When I first started playing I mainly just grabbed things that looked cool and didn’t really think or look too much [...]

DocHoliday Talking About The Secret World Ability Combinations

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

Lately my main MMO of choice has been The Secret World and I wanted to highlight 2 quest chains that I think really show off the reason why I’m so addicted to TSW.  I will try to keep this post spoiler free as much as possible as although I’m still quite early on in the game I’m sure there are some [...]

DocHoliday Furthering my Secret World Addiction

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

I do find in interesting and enjoyable to not only look forward, but also take a look back at what we’ve done in the past.  I’m going to limit my predictions to the two main MMOs I’m playing these days (LOTRO and TSW).  Before I look ahead, lets see how well (or poorly) I did predicting 2012. I [...]

DocHoliday 2013 LOTRO and TSW Predictions

DocHoliday's MMO Saloon DocHoliday's MMO Saloon - LOTRO, Secret World, & Rift with an End-Game View

This has been a pretty eventful holiday break for me with both a newborn and lots of family in town.  I won’t bore folks with the details, but needless to say I haven’t had too much time for normal gaming, but I did want to catch up on a few things and let folks know that I’m still around and what [...]

DocHoliday Ringing in 2013 With All Sorts of Changes