Book 11 brings lots of changes - here are some, but by no means all of them!

• The Month of the Lore-master
• The Month of the Minstrel
• Player Housing - Individual and Kinship
• Goblin Town
• New areas - Trollshaws: Tâl Bruinen, and Misty Mountains: Northern Pass, Southern Pass, and Goblin Town
• DirectX10 Support!
• Monster player "Warband Maneuvers"
• Monster play - new skills!
• New raid: The Rift!
• First appearance of a Balrog
• First appearance of Gollum (new instance)
• More work on the crafting system (400 new recipes!)
• Harvest Festival
• Yule Festival
• 60+ New Quests, including the continuation of the epic quest arc
• 9 new Deeds

Story

You have wrested the palantír from Amarthiel, but not before she learned what she sought to learn: a clue to the location of Narchuil, the ring she lost at the Battle of Fornost. She turns her gaze eastward seeking to recover Narchuil, and the Dúnedain find themselves with few means of stopping her advance, save one: Calenglad believes that Mordrambor, the Black Númenórean held prisoner by the Dúnedain, may be the key to ending Amarthiel’s ambitions.


Lore-master Revamp (“Month of the Lore-master”)
Overview:

• Fill out level 40-50 skills
  
• Better skills for fighting Undead, Drakes and Creatures of Nature
  
• A new Pet - the Lynx!
  
• Diminishing returns on Crowd Control skills (PvMP)
  
• Examine Enemy Weakness ability
  
• Tier Based Cures
  
• Cute “critter” pets - 8 non-combat pets!

Minstrel Revamp (“Month of the Minstrel”)
Overview

• Fill out level 40-50 skills
  
• Enhance music features:
  
• Minstrels will be able to train other players to use instruments both directly and via created items
  
• 3 new Instruments: Bagpipes, Cowbell and Moor Cowbell.
  
• More effective solo play:
  
• War-Speech toggle stance opens up new skills:
  
• Call to the Elder King (Damage+debuff)
  
• Call to the Second Age (Damage+buff)
  
• Chat of the Oathbreaker (damage+debuff)
  
• New damage-type instruments
  
• Equipping new instruments will change the damage type of your skills
  
• Better Buffing and Support:
  
• New trait to increase length of ballad buffs.
  
• 2 new “Tale” auras:
  
• Tale of Battle (+VIT and +wound resistance)
  
• Tale of Warding (+AC and +Hope)
  
• Call to Fellowship (Increases fellowship effectiveness)
  
• Better Healing:
  
• Chord of Salvation (Insta-heal)
  
• Gift of the Hammerhead (Power-shield)

Fun Stuff:
Irresistible Melody (nearby players break into dance)

# Minstrels will be able to train other players to use instruments both directly and via created items

What that means?

I guess I will be able to teach people to play the drums, bass and the moor cowbell. Not all classes can play all insturments now in the /music system, but I guess they will be able to after the patch.

wow i super excited about the new pet thing!! i hope i can find some time to play soon!

I'm gonna get a look at the housing stuff tomorrow... If anyone wants to check it out, you gotta download the Roheryn client. You can skip to lvl 50 (with gear traits and deeds, GM in crafting)and there is a pig that gives you gold :O

The best part about the test server, and what the live servers need most, is a big building full of doors that lead to all the big cities. You even get a second map that takes you straight in to the building. fuckin' travel time is the worst part of the game.

one of the test server changes snuck in early. this should help a lot.....

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Turbine say:

As part of the initiative to reduce the amount of spam players are receiving from gold-sellers, we have added new filtering to the /tell feature in LOTRO!

Players will find a new option in their Options panel which allows them to only receive /tells from players on their Friends list or in their Kinship. This option is turned OFF by default. If you would like your /tells filtered, please check this option to enable it.

Trial and Referral accounts will always be subject to this filtering, even if a player has their /tell filtering turned off. If you or a friend are a Trial or Referral account and you'd like to be able to use /tell in-game, you should contact each other via email, IM, or the forums and arrange to add each other to your Friends lists.

We believe this filtering will drastically reduce the amount of /tell spam our players are receiving. Thanks for your patience while we worked on the problem; more anti-spam code will be introduced in Book 11, and our Customer Service team continues to diligently follow up on your reports and banning spammers from the game!

Finally I can go about playing the game in peace again.

thats all well and good for the people on thier way to 50,,but at the rate i'm goin i might hit 45 by december so non of it matters to me any ways,,especially since i'm a champion right now,,,lol