I will leave LOTRO Weekly up in a slightly different format so that people can still access the information herein, I’m not a Scorched-Blog type person.

I will still be active in the Windfola community and will still post to the LOTRO forums when it strikes my fancy to write a guide or something. I will also keep The White Captain up, as that is strictly for my RP pursuits and outfits.

Again, I hope I have helped some people in the past year this site has been going and I hope it continues to help people.

Token Cost and Acquisition

The primary source of concern is the token cost of these new items. Especially in regards to the horse. For all the other festivals, a horse costs 1 race token and 20 special festival coins. These is usually able to be achieved in a day, usually in a few hours time. This makes it so you can get your horses on all your characters at your leisure within the 2 week time span. It’s great because even if you only have the opportunity to log in for 3 hours during the duration of the festival, you can still get a horse or two.

The problem with this festival or ‘celebration’, is the horse is now 30 Anniversary Tokens and 3 race tokens. You can only run 2 races a day, meaning at minimum you need to play two days in order to get the horse. The real clincher here though is the acquisition rates for the Anniversary Tokens. There are only two ways to gain these tokens, and each way only gets you 1 Token per run. There is the Horse Race (which in all previous festivals gives you the choice of rewards: 1 race token or 3 festival tokens. For the anniversary it is the choice between one of each) and the Beer Brawl, the 2009 Yule Festival event. The Beer Brawl is only available 6 times per hour and will only start if there are 2 or more people in the arena. This brings me to the next problem…

The Beer Brawl

At its initial release, many did not like the Beer Brawl. The point of the game was to hit other players with a club and try to grab a Glorious Beer that randomly spawns on one of four tables a few times during a 5 minute span of time. In 2009, only one person could win the Glorious Beer in a round, it’s with this festival they implemented the ‘spawns multiple times’ bit. This game is incredibly frustrating because, like Stomp-a-Shrew, once the game starts you cannot leave the arena square or else you fail the quest and have to wait until the next round. That wouldn’t be a problem, but the whole point of the game is to hit people with  clubs. Hitting someone with a club knocks them back, and sometimes out of the arena. It has come to light that some people actually think the point of the game is to hit people out of the arena (Which is NOT TRUE. Please DO NOT try to hit people out of the arena). So by sheer luck, people can loose this event and their chance to win 1 token. By way of the timing, you must play Beer Brawl multiple hours ever day if you wish to get the mount, cosmetic items, and all of the housing items. Having the Beer Brawl as a means to get tokens wouldn’t be so bad, if it weren’t the only viable way to get tokens on a daily basis. With the festivals, there is always a multitude of options to acquiring tokens.

Sapience’s Responses

As my frequent readers know, I am usually there to defend Turbine, the devs, and the CMs. However, today I stand firmly on the other side. Sapience has responded in the main thread about the Anniversary. In his responses he does not address any actual issues and is snarky in one instance. In the first link, he claims the grind is so high because they want people to ‘enjoy the festival for the duration of its run’. This is a huge problem for those with limited play time on a weekly basis or for those who happen to be busy much of the next 2 weeks. This line of thinking is only thinking about the people who play multiple hours everyday. With this approach, if you want the items, you need to decide whether you will spend all of your play time today actually playing and leveling and doing instances or just doing Beer Brawl for four hours straight. This thread isn’t a giant whine fest. most of the responses are well reasoned and show the kind of posts that Sapience is always asking for: data and analysis. One posted took the time to do the tokens/hour math for the Beer Brawl. In order to achieve all the items, one must play Beer Brawl for 44 hours. And that’s assuming you don’t get knocked out of the ring by griefers.

Less is More

A lot of people have pointed out that this is yards away more than Turbine has given us for the past anniversaries. That is true, but everyone liked how those anniversaries turned out. Everyone would get a permanent discount to the bards or the travel horses. Everyone could get level appropriate fluff rewards just from going about their typical LOTRO day. Nothing grand was expected, and the small simple way of saying “Thanks for playing all these years!” was enough. Now they say Thanks by dangling a gaudy carrot in front of us and telling us the only way to get it is to do one event for 44 hours.

The Inn was also notable for serving good food and excellent beer, at one point made better by an enchantment from Gandalf. The Inn had been owned by the Butterbur family since its start, with Barliman Butterbur the innkeeper at the time of the Lord of the Rings. Due to the status of the Inn as a meeting place, Butterbur was considered an important person in Bree.

Aside from Barliman Butterbur, the hobbits Nob and Bob worked at the Prancing Pony; Nob typically taking care of the guests while Bob worked as a stablehand. Gandalf, Strider, and Tom Bombadil were regular guests at the Inn, and it also hosted Frodo and Company during their trip to Rivendell. In addition, it was where Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield had a chance meeting that would eventually lead to the downfall of the dragon Smaug.

In LotRO:

The Prancing Pony is located in the north-east corner of Bree. There are a number of quests started by or involving Barliman Butterbur. In addition, Aragorn and Gandalf can be found staying at the Inn as part of the first book of Epic quests. While Nob can be found fetching water for the Inn, Bob is located near the Barrow-Downs, having set off to search for his daughter. The Inn is also the subject of one of the skirmishes, the aptly named “Defence of the Prancing Pony.”

The Prancing Pony also offers the services of a barber, a bard, and a Minstrel class trainer in addition to the standard Tavern Keeper and Healer vendors, with a Milestone and mailbox located just outside.

[Spoilers Follow]

During the stay of Frodo & Company on their trip to Rivendell, The Prancing Pony was attacked in the night by agents of the Black Riders, likely including Bill Ferny and Harry Goatleaf. The Inn suffered from a lack of business when ruffians and bandits began operating in the Bree area, but customers began returning when Frodo & Company came back from the events “away south,” as the Bree-folk called it.

You can see the inaugural edition here.