Severlin, the executive producer of Lord of the Rings Online took advantage of community manager Cordovan's weekly stream to announce the upcoming arrival of two new legendary servers Angmar and Mordor.
Both will run on the same system, this is the location which will be different, Mordor will in fact be a server located in a datacenter in Europe.
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Angmar, Mordor and the Veil of the Nine
We're working on new legendary servers, and they're coming soon.
One of its servers will be named Mordor and the second Angmar.
Mordor will be hosted in a European data center, so this new legendary server will be the only one hosted in Europe. We have not obtained sufficient space in this data center for other servers. “Mordor” will be reserved for VIP players.
“Angmar” will be hosted more traditionally in the United States.
These two new legendary servers have been nicknamed “the Veil of the Nine”, and when you're on them, the specters – tailored to your level – will be able to find you and attack you.
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The Nine will remain the most powerful specters, and if one of them jumps on you, you will then have to count on the community to come and help you free yourself. The entire server will have to come together to defeat. You will need to be at the maximum level of the server (50 initially) to meet one of the nine.
This type of vent will not happen so often, on this occasion rings will appear in the World (the server not the channel eh), which will create a breach in the invulnerability of the specters. Without these rings, it would take around fifty people gathered to defeat him due to the low damage received.
If a ring bearer shows up, some of the invulnerability is lifted, and then the specter will behave more like a boss of raid people.
Please note, there will only be TWELVE rings available on the entire server, once collected the ring remains in the player's inventory for TEN days.
It will always be possible to escape the specters.
They will appear in the open world (so not in instances) and the rings can also be found in chests also scattered around the open world.
There will be new titles, new portraits and decorations to collect on these servers.
The first 64-bit servers…
Angmar and Mordor will be the first two servers to benefit from the 64-bit architecture.
This should make it possible to effectively combat the Gby allowing us in particular to preload all the instances, this avoids the current problem which means that each time we openinstancethe server must fetch it and load it onto disk.
In the testing we have done this has had an impact, but we know there can be a difference between our internal testing results and player experience.
We have also worked to improve our technologies, particularly for creature management, to further limit lag.
It will not be possible to transfer your characters to these new legendary servers, in fact we will not have any lag caused by “serialization” – which is the loading of all the character's data upon connection including the quest system and inventory. This data and the resulting loading time become increasingly “heavy” over time and also cause lag.
We are looking for solutions to improve the quest system but we are not there yet.
Classic servers will also be entitled to this 64-bit infrastructure, we will start with the most populated servers.
Not all servers will necessarily be eligible for preloading technology due to its hardware cost.
First tests on Bullroarer…
Within a fortnight, Bullroarer should open with these new legendary servers. One of the goals will be a load test for the European server.
Angmar and Mordor should open at the same time, during July.
What about other European servers?
I don't have space (in the European data center) for other Worlds. They will potentially benefit from the new technology we are testing on these two new servers which will help reduce lag. I had to make a choice because of the space allocated to us, it was decided to favor a new experience with “Mordor”.
Will the Landes be open on these new servers?
No, because we would have a balancing problem. Our Monster system is not programmed to upgrade them. They are still at the maximum level of the server, and so for the moment they are balanced at level 150. We do not have a system to automatically bring them to level 50.
As long as the legendary server has not reached the level of “live” servers, the Landes will remain closed.
Progression on Angmar and Mordor could resemble that of the previous legendary server Shadowfax with a first opening up to level 50.
Specters will begin appearing at level 15.
What about the new launcher?
We are working on it, now that we have the new store in game we will be able to implement a new launcher with two-factor authentication.
The Brotherhoods update…
It’s always something we want to do. But there are also other projects, for example we are currently working on the new hobby, then we will have a big update.
I think the brotherhoods update will arrive after all this (Editor's note: you could almost say it's postponed until 2025).
The new hobby of ornithology…
Its arrival is still planned with update 41. The entire engineering side is finished and the artistic team is working on it at the moment.
An interface adapted to 4K?
We have made progress on static panels and on several elements, this is work that is still in progress.
An update to the Elf avatars?
It's still planned for the fall.
NPC expansion and pre-order rewards…
Long-time players know the problem of logging in for the first time. reroll which sees its inventory loaded with all the rewards linked to the purchase of expansions, pre-orders etc.
As was done on DDOit should be possible on LotRO that these rewards do not arrive directly in the inventory but remain available from a NPC.
It's on the list but no date.
A release date for Update 41?
Severlin wouldn't commit but Orion on the chat said mid-July.
To find out more about the content of update 41, click here