Chat, housing, flora... Nice quality of life improvements in the next LOTRO update, 19.3.
I tuned into Cordovan's LOTRO stream today. I am glad I did, because there were some news about what awaits us in update 19.3, currently set for early February. If this is correct, we'll get some very decent quality of life improvements to the game.
Be advised, these are my own transcripts based on the stream. Hopefully we won't have to put the cork back in the champagne/cava/prosecco bottles when the real patch notes come.
Coming with Update 19.3
- The ability to adjust internal housing hook points, for more customization. Interior housing decorations can be moved ca 10 meters around the x- y- and z-axis (they tried to move exterior decorations as well, but ran into issues). Large wall decorations can be rotated around their vertical axis. In decoration mode, housing hooks are colour-coded by type.
- The ability to buy new premium houses with the housing writs you currently get when selling your old premium house.
- Four new custom/user chat channels, for a total of eight.
- LFF (Looking for Fellowship) and Trade chat channels are made global, while Advice is removed.
- The /say bug is fixed, and the range of /say is increased from 15 to 25 meters.
- Flora vials are bound to account instead of character.
- Checks to prevent people from inadvertedly losing coin after reaching the maximum coin capacity.
U19.3 will be tested on Bullroarer this coming weekend, Friday 20 Jan - Monday 23 Jan.
Edit: The test is now live, and the official patch notes are available on the Bullroarer forums.
Other things besides U19.3
Other notable things I registered:
- The exterior of the new scholar's hall in Bree will be adjusted in a future update to make it less jarring, more Bree-like (possibly in update 20, but not set yet).
- The next producer's letter is due in a couple of weeks.
- Steam payment problems are related to the publisher change from Warner Brothers to Daybreak. Steam needs to "transfer" the games to the new publisher in their systems before payments will work again, this is currently being worked on.
- Exclusive costumes from preorders are unlikely to be released in the LOTRO store.
- Update 20 is set for "tentatively March-ish".
- 10-year anniversary rewards are similar in scope to previous anniversaries. In addition, "pulling out the stops for the 10th anniversary event as well", without going into more detail.