User talk:RingTailCat/Archive2

Under Construction

I use the
{{Stub/Construction|[[User talk:RingTailCat]]}}
template to mark articles I am working on. Please "View history" of any such page to see if I have worked on the page in the last few hours. If so, please give me a change to finish, as I may have the page open for editing in my browser. If I have not worked on the page for a couple of days, please go ahead and work on the page. If you finish it, just remove my construction stub. Thanks.

Liquid Threads

Hi RTC, I noticed your message and no, Liquid threads do not work for you, no idea why and hoping Lotroadmin might know.

Earlier I just tried to ask what you liked the table style of Camp Site Fires. And I wanted to spell out that all those Yes-es are uncertain, they are just the opposite of all the "no horn here" .. which may be in error of course.

I hope your Liq is resolved soonish (remove this as you please) Zimoon 17:42, 19 January 2012 (EST) (Moved from User:RingTailCat/Editing

Abandoned Liquid Thread

Liquid Threads has turned out to be more bother than it's worth. For now, I am going back to the old way. Perhaps I will revisit it when we get a new software version RingTailCat (talk) 10:07, 21 January 2012 (EST)

Quests .. Epic / Other

Hi, I just wanted to hear what your thoughts are on how the quest lists including Epic quests are displayed at NPCs and locations, and I will direct Star here as well as he also is heavily into quests.

I have vacillated about best way and have finally thought that there is no one best way to list them. If there are quite a lot and their level are interleaved with the levels of the other quests it seems that group them together is the clearest view of them. But if only a couple they can equally well be sorted into the list by level. Sometimes this grouping is natural and there is no need for an explicit group. Examples:

Radagast the Brown -- natural grouping as all Epic Quests but the final are lower level than other quests.
Frideric the Elder -- ditto but the Epic Quests finish his role in Lotro.
Hana the Young -- one Epic Quest which can go into the long list, it stands out anyway because of the long name ;)
Barliman Butterbur -- levels are interleaved, it would be hard to spot he Epic among all others, or perhaps to spot the others under the long names :P

The second thing is if we really must split Epic Quests on books, as has been done for a while. Often a book has just one quest, another book a couple, and yet the third one, etc. It gives a very chopped and crappy up look, does it not? Using either Vol. III, Book 2, ... or Volume III, Book 2, ... most often aligns all Epic quests in a way their book-difference is more clear than chop them up with a bold header per block, don't you think? The only drawback with the full "Volume" is the length, but on the other hand it instantly makes the quest to stand out from the others.

I have found it almost the same for locations, either it is possible to interleave them without loss of clarity, or it is not. Hence I wanted to hear your feedback on the above. You are so heavily into quests that it humbles me, yet I touch them as quests are perhaps the most important part of locations, the main reason players visit them.

PS. Some locations have also other types of quests that naturally fall into their own group, as with Ost Guruth and the "requisitions". DS.
Zimoon 13:42, 2 February 2012 (EST)

I would suggest a flexible policy, based on ease of use. A rigid policy applied to all NPCs requiring quests to always be listed in a particular way may not be the best way to present the quest information in a friendly way.

We have quest givers that range from minimal involvement in one quest, to the main characters who are involved in multiple quest chains, in multiple areas. One size does not fit all!

There are a lot of different use cases. A lot of different reasons why someone will visit an NPC's page. I know I have visited an NPC page to answer many different questions.

I often end up getting ahead of the Epic quests by doing non-epic quests from the XP. I find myself going back through a region, at well over its design level, doing the Epic quests. Also, I often find my quest log full, so I cancel the grey quests. Later, I need to find where I left off, for completeness, deeds, or just plain fun. The regional quest pages lead me to the quests and on to a quest givers. There I find if there are other quests I need to get from them. It's a lot like the route planning I do in real life.

I guess I'm not giving a very specific answer to your concerns. One thing I found, is that the design or layout for an NPC's quests may change over time. This was especially apparent building up the pages for Enedwaith and Dunland. It was essential to start a page on first encounter, without knowing everything that was going to end up on the page. This has, in some cases, led to non-optimal pages. You have the luxury of having most pages already written up in the Lone-lands. You can review the pages and redo them so they look their best. I think that has to be decided on a page-by-page basis. I'm guessing that there will be 3 or 4, maybe half-a-dozen, patterns that an NPC's quest involvement will take. So, I would guess there should be that many potential quest layouts.

RingTailCat (talk) 14:48, 2 February 2012 (EST)

Sounds like we are in perfect harmony then: flexible, from case :) Zimoon 18:05, 2 February 2012 (EST)

Looks like I was beaten to the punch by RingTailCat! -- Starbursty (talk) 17:47, 5 February 2012 (EST)

You're now a bureaucrat!

Bureaucrat RingTailCat ... has a nice ring... Big promotion, one new privilege :) .. you can promote anyone as you see fit. --Lotroadmin (talk) 21:52, 6 February 2012 (EST)

Thank you. RingTailCat (talk) 22:07, 6 February 2012 (EST)

Playing in the same sandbox, are we?

Hia, just noticed we seem to be at the same area tonight :)
If at the same server we might have seen each other, but your page does not tell which. Laurelin here. Have fun. Zimoon 17:31, 8 February 2012 (EST)

While leveling my last few toons, I have avoided the Lone-lands. My wife hated the spiders, when we were questing together, so we end up avoiding the place. Lately, she plays on Vilya with a few of her high level toons, and her tough (rank 9) spider (!) in the moors. I decided to take my latest toon through the Lone-lands instead of the North Downs. As you may have noticed, I am filling in the quest giver (and other NPC) comments in the quests. It tends to reiterate the information that we often put in the walk through and notes section. But I notice that it also fills in a lot more of the story. I really enjoy having a rich story line (in the context of Tolkien's tales) to quest in, more than simply jumping through do-this/do-that hoops. BTW, I am mostly on Dwarrowdelf, and rarely on Vilya. With luck, we won't collide on these pages. RingTailCat (talk) 17:50, 8 February 2012 (EST)

I like the story line too, taking the time to read and so. I like having it in the quests and the format we are using now is great. I like exploring locations too, see what is behind that next wall and so, making me even slower, the casual fellowships nightmare ;) Spiders, they seem to have infested every game around, also SWG from where I came though I don't recall any spiders in Star Wars, but definitely in LotR. Zimoon 01:54, 9 February 2012 (EST)

Zimoon: I wonder if it would be useful to change the template to automatically add all the quest categories you are manually adding. It looks like you are adding a category based on the "startinglocation". That would eliminate a lot of manual categorization. I suppose we could also use the "endinglocation" as a category as well, provided it is different from the "startinglocation". RingTailCat (talk) 17:59, 9 February 2012 (EST)

Lua updates

FYI - I've completed 3 out of 4 of the "new" Lua pages. Any and all comments welcome. See Template:Lua information.

I have one more major one in the works (your original Writing Lua Scripts) -- probably going to make it both more technical and point more to lotrointerface.com rather than "duplicate" that work here.

Also, been working with lunarwtr (LOTRO Plugin Compendium (Mac / Linux) ) to write up and promote the "standard" identification mechanism ".plugincompendium" xml file, and similar conventions.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 14:03, 9 February 2012 (EST)

Test Wiki

Log in on IRC and I will hand you the link. Zimoon 12:13, 10 February 2012 (EST)

code to insert a single line break

The 4 character string   is the HTML element to insert a single line break.

The 6 character string   is the XHTML element to insert a single line break.

The 5 character string   is a malformed XHTML element. Some strict browser parsers will reject it. And it will fail strict XHTML validation.

Please use correct HTML or correct XHTML, but not incorrect XHTML that happens to be accepted by a lenient parser.

RingTailCat (talk) 00:08, 17 February 2012 (EST)

I reject my earlier comment that   and   are 100.00% equivalent. Pragmatically they are, I am not aware of any such "lenient parser" but rather the opposite, any concurrent browser that want to play at the open market has to accept sloppy and/or old coding styles and some browser are then rather too forgiving.

Then the next question is why somebody once run a bot and turned all   into  , because I do not think we need to use XHTML?

Either way, as long as we do not depend on any over-zealous XHTML tool we can just let the 5 character break sit there. To save you the time and effort. Actually, the XHTML validation tools I have used over the years are adjustable to ignore both this "error" and many other common "errors" ... that is since much that is considered "error" per some theoretical standard are harmless and negligible. This may change of course, and then we run a bot doing it ;)

Zimoon 04:58, 17 February 2012 (EST)

This is only meant as some pal-to-pal chat, nothing else — I run into this at work when I had to resolve an issue with documentation causing Eclipse to spew error messages, the docs written and validated according to HTML 4.01 strict was ill treated by its SAX-parser :(

I am not so sure anymore of what is best or correct for this wiki when it comes to versus versus . This is it, in HTML 4.01 it is forbidden to terminate so called "empty elements" whereof BR is one. However, SGML states that any element must be terminated, either by /> within the element or as a closing element ( and are equivalent in XML .. but the result is very much browser dependent). Ever since day one the XHTML and HTML teams have struggled with important subjects like this ;)

The difference between and is more clear, they are both very much not HTML but both are perfect XHTML. However, certain browsers does not handle the white-space version well, as you correctly say above. That is against standard and I pity the browser vendors that make fragile products :P

I notice our wikimedia pages does not identify themselves strict to anything but plain HTML, and they are wildly mixing XHTML with HTML. Hence, which is correct and which is not? -- meant more as a rhetoric question than wanting a reply, plainly because I don't think there is just ONE correct reply at this point in time. Of that reason I will not change any BR anymore but let them be as-is. Probably I will use the HTML strict version when I type it anew, cuz I am lazy ;) But if anybody can tell us both what is the correct use at this site, technically correct I mean (not religiously), that is another animal :-)

Zimoon 14:01, 17 March 2012 (EDT)

Since we're hang'n round the water cooler --- Let me throw in my two cents worth... :)

There was a change in the HTML validator (validateor.w3.org) about 3 or 4 years ago which resulted in the (no /) and (no space) being flagged in prference for (space before the slash). Since I retired in 2003, I'm guilty of simply "using" tools rather than understanding the underlying spec, so I can't tell you why that change happened. I'm guessing that is when/why the bot wsa run to "fix" things.

I note that, as Zimoon pointed out, (apparently) all Wiki pages (both lotro-wiki and wikipedia.com) use the nebulous doctype of "html"... although, the headers on both are "minimal." It reminds me of the pages we wrote back in the days before Apache when there were only, quite literally, less than 100 web-servers worldwide. Not knowing how the MediaWiki works, again, I assume, that there is boiler plate someplace that wraps all of the various text pages in a common header. Of course, it could also be "that's what the webserver ?Apache? does by default and Wikimedia does not modify it. Looking at my pageUser:Magill I find, for example,

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en" dir="ltr" class="client-nojs">

Compared with:

<!DOCTYPE html
     PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
     "https://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="https://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

That being said... looking (for the firs time) at the MediaWiki docs... I note in the "What is MediaWiki General overview,

"Pages use MediaWiki's wikitext format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit them easily."

Interestingly, no mention of HTML.

Advice Wanted

Hi RTC,

Regarding this, I need help from an English native (or well spoken) and I think you are :)
The thing is, what would be a good term to use for the level thingie? My concern is that it is not only about quests really, but the general level for resource nods, creatures and mobs, and quests of course. The level tells so much more for the knowing reader than just the general range for quests. Hence I do not think "Quests: mainly N - M" is the best choice. I have some ideas but feel they are either vague, too long, or just clumsy (remember that the space for the text is veeeeery limited).
Zimoon 13:43, 21 February 2012 (EST)

When I saw your suggestion, I immediately thought of this page: Zones by level. I have to tell you that I did not think changing the Area Infobox to add quest related info was a high priority. I think enhancing the Zones by level page would lead to a much more useful resource. Just a day or two ago, I responded to a forum post from someone looking for quests in the level 40-45 range. I have used that page myself to help decide where to go next.

A quick glance at the quest involvement for an area should give a good idea of the range of quests available. Putting it in the infobox does not seem necessary. And, most important, you have to get to that region/area/settlement page before you will see that info. I have a feeling that knowing the level range at a location is something you want to see in an overview, to help decide if you want to go to an place.

But, back to your original question. I would suggest a label of "Level(s):" with the data field containing values like "1-15" (e.g. the The Shire) or "1-25, 30" (Bree-land) or "65+" (Enedwaith).

RingTailCat (talk) 21:40, 21 February 2012 (EST)

Thanks, "Levels:" or ("Level(s):" is good enough.

Regarding the rest, we all have different ways to find stuff, the "zones by level" is good and this piece in the infobox is not overruling or replacing that page. But for somebody looking up e.g. Kingsfell for some other reason can also at glance see what is to be expected; no she has to scan the list of quests and also the contained landmarks for certainty.

There is a risk thinking that just because we have all that info at a page it is enough. For example, yesterday one asked me how to get the Item:Golden Shire Tater Field Recipe (and one more). It is there but it does not tell if it is learned by levelling, bought from vendor, loot, or what. But this was the proper place to start with for my friend. I knew, however, that clicking via category Farmer Recipes and then clicking at the proper tier eventually takes me to a table which reads "Basic" which is understood to be "learned by level" (but that is a guess). Lesson learned: we most often have the data but we do not know which way the visitors enter the wiki to find something ;)

Zimoon 02:08, 22 February 2012 (EST)

Possibly the most distressing thing about the current method of storing information is that the same bit of information is entered in numerous places. The quest levels for a geographic subdivision should be calculated by searching leaves and branches of the category tree for quests in the geographic subdivision and summarizing the levels of the quests. Instead we (the page editors) have to manually roll up that information to the closest geographic subdivision, and then roll that up through the hierarchy of geographic subdivisions. It is these "extra" steps that can make editing a page a daunting task. Not everyone will know what they are and how to do that. As well, this rollup can end up creating useless content. For instance, if you count the festival quests and the In Their Absence quests in Bree-land, you see something like "1-65". Even Archet is "1-50" (at least). Neither of those ranges, while strictly correct, are useful. Something like "1-7, 50" might be useful for Archet.

The wiki format is very good at storing unstructured data, but we have a mix of structured (level, quest starter, quest ender, solo/fellowship, repeatable, i.e the stuff in the quest infobox) and unstructured (dialogs, walkthough). So this ends up being an argument for using some form of database for the content. I don't want to get too technical, but the design principals of industrial strength databases apply here. One that very much stands out is that each piece of information get stored in exactly one place, and every where you need that data, you retrieve the value from that single location.

A huge concern of mine, is how to keep the editing of pages open to the general readership. And especially the creation of new pages. I'm not a big fan of fellowship or raid quests and end game grind stuff, so you won't see me creating a lot of content in that area, but someone needs to do that, and if it is too difficult to do, it will not get done. Just have a look at the coverage and completeness of the Armies of Isengard pages compared to the Rise of Isengard pages.

And here I'm wondering off topic again. TTFN. RingTailCat (talk) 03:51, 22 February 2012 (EST)

We are in perfect harmony in this respect. Transclusions are good for some of the same-info data pieces, but somewhat cumbersome to handle for the common editor, mainly foreseeing consequences. You nailed the drawback with automated data gathering, it must differ between level 1 quest from event quests, and the similar. Luckily not too much of that stuff change over time, at least not too much. But, as written elsewhere, if and only if there is a great database support in the mix we could at least do great data gathering and present useful stuff. And if if was not if I am the king ;)

Zimoon 06:58, 22 February 2012 (EST)

Added verbiage about questing in Dunland

See the pages for Trum Dreng and Bonevales.

This is a particular issue I am constantly hearing people comment about and reading about it on various forums.

The main question is ... where to put it (and how often). And then to make certain the other areas follow through on theme.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magill (Contribs • User Talk) at 2012-02-22T21:27:25.

I think explanation at that level of detail is unnecessary. If such an explanation is required, it is up to Turbine themselves to give it. In Dunland, you simply have to do most of the quests available. In some other areas, you could pick and choose, or farm mobs to gain XP. Remember too, that the Derudh's Stone stops working at level 65, so the accelerated XP gain folk might be used to ceases.

I've got to tell you that I was really tempted to roll that section out of there. It just does not fit there. Getting the levels to get into the Isengard end-game raids is not enough. You need to have built up IXP on your weapons, done enough deeds to get your virtues up and learned your traits. If someone has been power-leveled to Dunland without learning how to play the game, they do not get a lot of sympathy from me. Just because they whinge in the forums or the chat channels is no reason to pollute our pages with that stuff. But maybe I'm just in a bad mood tonight! RingTailCat (talk) 00:38, 23 February 2012 (EST)

I agree with RTC, that information is not information about the "geographical" area but about questing there. It should go into an article of its own if needed. And having such articles are perfectly fine with me, they could even be named as under-pages of the main area, such as "Trum Dreng/Questing Info".

It all boils down to what we want to convey with particular pages, what their meaning is. IMHO geography is kind of generic, not specific to either quests nor lore, but as always common sense works best. As soon as a page is burdened with too much details about this or that it will be cumbersome both to maintain but first of all to read and extract that piece of info that is wanted.

Since I have not done the lower level stuff in the North Downs (but in the Lone-lands) on my main toon I wondered the other day if I will miss some chained quests. Now I am uncertain whether such a page exists but should such info be at the region page? Nope, it is all about questing, but the region should have a link to such compiled info. The same for tips on deeds, heavy historical or lore notes, etc., the editor must find the balance between too little and too much and balance the two. And that balance is different on different pages. Rather create another page and transclude snippets from it but first of all, link to it.

Should we use the talk-pages more? I am not so sure, they are meant for talk, not normal wiki-info. But sometimes info is not really prime for its own page, use the talk then. Topmost if it is generic and not a discussion, linear if it is talk or in beta-stage. Or do you think I am wandering again? ;)

Zimoon 04:27, 23 February 2012 (EST)

I agree, the "fit" wasn't right, but didn't have an idea what else to do with it. It sounds like "an article of its own" is the answer. Category is obviously going to be "Game Play" -- will have to look around to see if there is a logical place to hang it. Maybe there needs to be a "section" called "Strategy" -- how to level, what regions to play, in what sequence, etc.

The particular problem I was addressing, at least so far, is unique to Dunland. Throughout the rest of the game, you can pick and choose where you want to go to quest, and if you do or do not want to do all the quests in a particular area before moving on. Undoubtedly, this has to do with the fact that ONLY in Dunland do you have quests for levels 65-75, which give commensurate XP and IXP. The comments I've heard, even from the Casual Stroll to Mordor Folks, are not about power leveling, but about the desire to avoid doing Epic quests... in Dunland, Turbine has changed things, you really have to follow the Epic quest line. This may all change as Update 6 hits "next week," (I assume I'll be in the beta as they haven't indicated that they will be sending out new invites until the Riders of Rohan beta begins in, probably about July.) Update 6 is a HUGE geographical area with, according to Turbine 170 quests. -- for what levels? Unknown. Don't know if the level cap is being raised with Update 6 this Spring or not until the ROR release in the Fall.

Hard to say just what, but from the Dev Notes being released for Update 6, looks like a lot of PvMP changes... speculation has been rife that the large open expanse of the plains and the coming warbands will be the long talked about "second Moors" (PvMP)area.

BTW, I haven't won a mount yet, but I've got 100+ fireworks, 50+ pints of Ale and 50 bags of pipe-weed!

And, taking a different turn, but still talking about "strategy." There is discussion and commentary beginning to surface regularly on the "double edged" direction that Turbine is moving in... F2P low levels and PvMP vs high-end "Epic story line" content with increasingly higher Level Caps. A surprisingly large number of comments have implied that leveling to 50 is now "trivial" -- done in a week's time or less (i.e. pre-moria content). Then another week to get from 50-65 -- through Moria, Mirkwood and Lothlorian. In a recent interview with Devs on one of the Podcasts (I forget which one) they mentioned that Moria was "the next area" for a significant "do-over" as had been done with the starter areas, Evendim and the Lone Lands.

And now for something completely different! I just noticed a new "toy" from Turbine -- go to "www.lotro.com" -- click on "Explore Middle-earth"

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 17:41, 23 February 2012 (EST)

Lottery -- Thanks

... great improvement, big thanks. Zimoon 17:25, 23 February 2012 (EST)

Your welcome, and thank you. I needed your good start to get me going. RingTailCat (talk) 17:30, 23 February 2012 (EST)

Problems uploading images "again"

Don't know who to really point this one at, so I'll pick on you :)

I'm again hitting a problem I had once before. (And I have no idea how it was resolved then. I didn't do anything.)

I uploaded an image [[File:Stalking Huron.jpg]] spelled Huron instead of Huorn. Since it is not possible to more or rename File uploads (or at least I have no idea how to do it), I tagged that image for deletion.

Then I try to up load the same image, but with a different name.

The upload complains and provides 3 buttons:

Submit modified file description
Ignore warning and upload file anyway
Cancel upload and return to the upload form

Selection option 2 does (apparently) the same thing as option 3... no upload happens and you return to the upload form, but only partially filled out. (The choose file section is "blank".)

[[File:Menacing Huron.jpg]] is the same issue. They go to the respective creature pages.

My first thought was delays. Sometimes you need to refresh the page to see the new image.

But I see you are having the duplicate image problem. Hit the button to ignore warnings to get back to the upload page. Make sure you check the ignore warnings box, enter the filename to upload and click upload. IIRC that should get the image to load even though it is a bit-wise duplicate of another file.

If you have high enough privs, you can rename File namespace pages. Not sure what it is, but I do have that priv, and use it to ~~hide my dumb mistakes~~ correct image names.

You can always request a rename just like we had to in the early days for normal pages. And of course wait for someone to get around to doing the move on your behalf.

Does this help? RingTailCat (talk) 23:43, 8 March 2012 (EST)

I've actually had the same problem, that selecting the option to ignore the warning doesn't work as it sounds like it would, it just sends me back to the original form without uploading the image. I can't remember ever figuring out how to get around it, except by getting somebody with enough authority to delete the duplicate or move the file or whatever was causing the warning to appear. I don't know if I was doing something wrong or...?

I've gone and deleted those two images though, so for now you should be able to upload the new ones. -- Elinnea (talk) 00:47, 9 March 2012 (EST)

Select the "Ignore" option at the "start screen" and send again; and yes, this is not very intuitive. However, the proper way is to use the { {Move|the-new-name} } template. The administrator who moves will also use the "what-links-here" and correct to the new name. Zimoon 02:33, 9 March 2012 (EST)

For me, selecting the "Ignore" option and trying the reload did not work. (Tried it multiple times.) I suspect that will only work if the previous image has been successfully deleted. (Yeah, I know you shouldn't get the message then, but I think you do, and THEN the "do it over again" trick works.) I have a vague recollection that when this happened before there was some issue, not with local browser caches, but with lotro-wiki caches. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 14:04, 9 March 2012 (EST)

Wow... that was an amazing Bot !!!

Kudos -- That was truly an amazing bit of "bot-logic!" (converting from tables to Quest box.)

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 13:50, 9 March 2012 (EST)

Thanks. Once you learn regular expressions, you can do magic! RingTailCat (talk) 14:04, 9 March 2012 (EST)

Your bot-job on the quests seems to have done an amazing job, mate. My biggest and warmest thanks /kowtow -- Zimoon 07:25, 11 March 2012 (EDT)

Thanks. If you have any suggestions for other tasks it could work on, I'd be happy to look at them. Visit User:RingTailBot to see the selection of things it can do now. It is really quite limited at the moment. If I can define something to be replaced using a regular expression, it is relatively easy to code up a fix. As yet I have not tried to do more complex things, like template validation or transformation. Some day, though. For now, I'm going after the low hanging fruit, as they say. I found myself doing (or wanting to do) the same simple edits on almost every quest page. With the bot doing that stuff, I can concentrate of the tougher problems. RingTailCat (talk) 07:41, 11 March 2012 (EDT)

I just noticed an OOOPS, See rewards under Quest:Chapter 8: The Unmarked Trail, either the Item template must end in a &lt>br /&gt> (hardly since it is used where new line is unwanted), or you need to run over everything and enter a BR. Zimoon 07:50, 11 March 2012 (EDT)

That page should use * {{Reward|Himhar}} instead of {{Item:Himhar|mode=imlink}}, although even * {{Item:Himhar|mode=imlink}} would work ok. RingTailCat (talk) 07:58, 11 March 2012 (EDT)

I will fix, sorry for the noise. Zimoon 08:04, 11 March 2012 (EDT)

Bullroarer is closed

Bullroarer closed today at 4:30 PM EST... guess we can expect it to go live in about 2 weeks. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 20:22, 9 March 2012 (EST)

Duh... posted on forums -- goes live on Monday!

Title Reward Template

I've discovered the Title Reward template you made recently, and it's pretty slick. The new class titles in Update 5 were added as class quest rewards (I've just verified the format with Quest:A Defence in the Darkness) and it'll be good to make use of it. However, in that quest the title happens to have the same name as the trait that is also a reward. Could the template have a name-display override, or should I enter it as "Ward of Justice (Title)" instead? -- Elinnea (talk) 18:59, 14 March 2012 (EDT)

I'd like to add another parameter to carry the display name. Now we have:

An alternative would be the pass the link to the template instead of the name. E.g. something like:

Nicer would be to do something like:

{{Title Reward | Explorer | title page name | display=display name | separator=nocomma }}

What do you think would be easiest to use or remember? RingTailCat (talk) 19:45, 14 March 2012 (EDT)

I could see using either of those two options. Speaking for myself, I would have an easier time with your first alternative, with the pipe inside the link. I'm already used to that format from making links everywhere in the wiki, and it would save me from having to remember whether the template order goes page-name-then-display-name or display-name-then-page-name. -- Elinnea (talk) 22:48, 14 March 2012 (EDT)

I've modified the Template:Title Reward to handle the case where you want to display a different name from the title page name. The solution I chose was:

{{Title Reward | title-type | title-page-name | display=display name | sep=nocomma }}

Almost all titles have the same display name as their page name, and almost all titles are separated from the name using a comma. That means that most of the time the named parameters are not required. This way, using the Title Reward template is very similar to using the Reward template. RingTailCat (talk) 11:07, 15 March 2012 (EDT)

Ah, that does make sense. Reward and Title Reward should resemble each other since they'll often be used together. Thanks for fixing it up! -- Elinnea (talk) 11:18, 15 March 2012 (EDT)

Laerdan's Letter

I recently accepted Quest:Chapter 1: The Champion of Angmar and received a rather lengthy letter from Laerdan to deliver, and I can't find it on the wiki. I found Item:Laerdan's Note (Quest) and Item:Laerdan's Note (Epilogue) from further along in the quest chain, but not this first letter, which seems strange to me. Do you know if the letter text is typed out somewhere that I'm not seeing, or should I add it? I've learned it's best to check with you before I start wantonly adding new pages. ;) -- Elinnea (talk) 18:39, 18 March 2012 (EDT)

Go ahead an add that letter. I have bypassed Angmar as much as possible. I go across the south side, up the right side to G.F. and off to Eregion as quick as possible. I might stay longer if it had no wind sounds. I hate that!!! Most of that area made sense when the level cap was 50. Now, a lot if it is pointless, because you are going to out level the mobs and any gear you gain since there is no level cap to hold you back. RingTailCat (talk) 18:52, 18 March 2012 (EDT)

Ok, I will. This actually takes place in Evendim, but your point is taken. It's not easy at level 52 to keep going through Volume I when I've already started Volume II and Moria is waiting. -- Elinnea (talk) 19:08, 18 March 2012 (EDT)

Is it Laerdan's Note by any change? Since it isn't an item in your inventory, but a thingy on the wall that gives you a quest popup, it doesn't start with "Item:". --Ravanel (talk) 05:29, 19 March 2012 (EDT)

PS - Oh never mind, that one isn't lengthy at all. Sorry or polluting your talk page. --Ravanel (talk) 05:30, 19 March 2012 (EDT)

Oh dear, that makes four of them. I'd never noticed how much Laerdan depended on writing to communicate. -- Elinnea (talk) 09:39, 19 March 2012 (EDT)

That made me laugh. :-D --Ravanel (talk) 08:40, 20 March 2012 (EDT)

Creature Template

Hey RTC. What was the purpose of this change? [1] The way it is done now, the region name should always go under that parameter, not the area name. Changing it the way you are doing would mean also changing this for all other regions, in order to keep things consequent. This would be a huge change, that definitely would need a member discussion before implementing. Since I cannot find any of those discussions (and if they would've been there, I'd surely have liked to be involved), I'm inclined to rollback your changes. --Ravanel (talk) 08:40, 20 March 2012 (EDT)

I observed that many of the creatures added (by other folks) for U6 had the area instead of the region in the creature template location parameter. I made this change to avoid going to all the creature pages and fixing them. I believe my change makes the template more tolerant of variations in user input, while still placing the creature in the correct category. I suppose the template could even be enhanced more to "fix" the incorrect input.

As an aside, we do not need to have actual category pages for the mob stubs and missing image pages. If we go to Special:WantedCategories, the Special:WhatLinksHere will find the right pages, even though the category page itself does not exist.

It has been very noticeable in Enedwaith, Dunland, and Great River that many creatures are unique to their area. I think this is what has prompted many people to use the area instead of the region in the creature template location parameter. I would be a supporter of categorizing creatures to the area level, but only in those regions where we see this phenomenon.

I should also mention that I believe that the business of adding and removing "The" from names can be better handled by the templates, and by redirects, instead of by edits and renames. When I got busy with quests to the south-east in the Great River, there were already variations in names for Rushgore and Brown Lands. Rather than try to figure out if I was dealing with "Rushgore" the quest group or "The Rushgore" the map area, I enlisted the templates to "do the right thing".

RingTailCat (talk) 09:11, 20 March 2012 (EDT)

I see. I can agree to your "Rushgore" and "The Rushgore" solution: this makes it easier and it doesn't really matter in the end. I strongly disagree with area names in templates, though. The reason for this is simply that it is inconsistent and inaccurate: both (new) contributors and visitors/readers get confused what exactly is meant to be put in there: area or region. There has been thoughts about this earlier, and we want one consistent system. If new contributors do things the wrong way they should be helped by explaining what is right, instead of allowing things to continue with different methods, because this will end up with a wiki mess.

I'll rollback the changes and try to see what exactly is going on. --Ravanel (talk) 15:20, 20 March 2012 (EDT)

I would strongly urge you not to roll back the template changes, but the enhance it to replace (translate) the area name with the region name. RingTailCat (talk) 15:25, 20 March 2012 (EDT)

It is not the intention of the creature template to be filled with all that area information while it is unnecessary. I don't have time right now, but will rollback once the creatures are fixed. Don't worry, I won't let them all float around uncategorized: that would be a horror to clean up. --Ravanel (talk) 15:30, 20 March 2012 (EDT)

Perhaps it would be good to open the discussion of using area and/or region in the creature location. The direction the game has taken since Enedwaith is to add mostly creatures which are unique to an area. This is especially apparent in the single level regions like Enedwaith and Great River.

It does not make a lot of sense to put a Thinglad Matron a broad category like Category:The Great River Creatures when that creature is never found outside of the Thinglad area. This is even more significant for something like the Marauding Stone-troll - no need to scare folks that this monster is wandering anywhere in The Great River region when it is actually only found in Limlight Gorge area.

Consider the Quest:A Parting Gift of Good Will. While doing the quest, I ventured along the border between Thinglad and Eorlsmead to research the issue. Eorlsmead beasts which wandered into Thinglad did not suddenly drop Item:Hides. Only Thinglad beasts, and all of them I could find, dropped the hides.

From the point of view of quest planning, it is good to know the population in an area. Knowing that Parth Celebrant will have lots of wolves, shades and brigands, while Thinglad has deer, bear and Wargs, along with Orcs of course, might help someone trait, equip and supply themselves for the area. I might get my +2 Stealth cloak out of the vault when I expect to encounter Thinglad Hunters, but take use something else where there are no stealthed mobs.

RingTailCat (talk) 16:01, 20 March 2012 (EDT)

The population in an area can be found via the Location pages, so there is no problem there. This is a real old point of discussion and history has learned that changing this around makes it a big mess. People get confused by the difference between areas and landmarks, some creatures do appear in multiple areas... etc etc. We really need one consequent way to enter this into the creature template. --Ravanel (talk) 05:51, 21 March 2012 (EDT)

Renaming of Category:Conjunctions

I wasn't aware that categories can not be moved easily like regular pages can, so your offer to perform the renaming via a bot is much appreciated since it would indeed be a chore to manually edit 48 pages. So, if your bot could rename the category to Category:Fellowship Manoeuvres (in keeping with the official game spelling), that would be great. Silver hr (talk) 13:08, 3 April 2012 (EDT)

Done. RingTailCat (talk) 16:22, 3 April 2012 (EDT)

Great, thanks. Silver hr (talk) 12:13, 5 April 2012 (EDT)

New Questchains

It would be nice if you tell me why you reverted this. --EoD (talk) 18:12, 6 April 2012 (EDT)

I'm on the road at the moment, so I'm not visiting this site as regularly as usual.

I did not get around to explaining my reverts for a day or so. I realize it was very abrupt, and that you deserved a better explanation than the short sentence I initial provided. I tried to explain in more detail on Quest Talk:Evidence of Foulplay why I did not think your change was appropriate. While the way I did those quests may not the be best way, I did strive for consistency over all the quests in the Great River. I adapted the idea of putting in the prerequisite quest name from the Lorebook, and from work by Magill in some of the Dunland pages he authored. One of the regular topics in the Forums has related to Great River quest prerequisites. There seem to be some quest sequence dependencies that are causing folks problems. Coding in a quest's prerequisites seems like one way to help our page visitors to find answers. The Great River quests (except for the Epic ones) do not use the in-game quest chain feature. I am hesitant to invent quest chains when they are not use in-game.

RingTailCat (talk) 10:13, 7 April 2012 (EDT)

This discussion is getting a bit widespread, let's continue on Quest Talk:Evidence of Foulplay. --EoD (talk) 13:39, 7 April 2012 (EDT)

Coords Javascript

I just saw some changes on the coords page I must have missed before and I have some questions:

1. What did you intend to do with:

	specialImageTitleOrig = specialImageTitle;
	switch (specialImageTitleOrig) {

2. What about the spaces? Have there been problems with spaces in maps?

3. Why did you add empty names? If I remember correctly, I wrote the code in such a way that you can enter *any* name and it tries to fetch "name "+"map.jpg". This should provide more flexibility in the future. See testwiki for an example (there's still the old code).

--EoD (talk) 05:02, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

1. This is intended to track changes to the "specialImageTitle". At present there is no code to detect if the image title changed, however, it is now possible to determine if that part of the image file name was changed in the switch statement.

2. a) Some lines were indented using spaces, some using tabs. This is not visible in the wiki editor. I performed my edits in Notepad++ (where I always have visible space set). If someone did a similar external edit with a tab with width different from 8, they would see different indentation for lines with leading tabs vs leading spaces. Also, IIRC, there were cases where we had TAB, SP, SP, TAB sequences. The file uses tabs for indentation for most lines, so I changed those to be consistent. It does not matter how the indentation is achieved, but being consistent is, I believe, preferable to not.

2. b) I don't recall exactly why I changed some embedded spaces to underbars. What comes to mind is the differences between article names at the wiki level and file/image names at the javascript level, and the caching of images. I recall that we were having some difficulty getting the Great River maps to display. I kept getting a javascript alert about the image file not being found, even though it appeared to be present and named correctly on the wiki side.

3. The default clause causes the Middle-earth map to be displayed. This prevented the Eriador and Rhovanion maps from being displayed, unless there is a clause for them. When xpos and ypos are left at their default values, no position marker is placed on the map.

RingTailCat (talk) 05:46, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

1. Yeah, but why do you want that?

2. a) Although I didn't mean that, that's nice. I also code in an external editor and I always used TABs instead of spaces, but I didn't want to change all whitespaces of the original code as this would have looked messy.

2. b) There should be no problems with spaces as far as I know. This javascript code calls the so called "MediaWiki API", which takes care of that stuff. I avoided of doing what you did in order to save a lot of lines (in javascript: more lines = less perfomance :) ). Are you sure we need that? We can always try it on testwiki.

3. I avoided the default clause, as this breaks stuff like ^{[Unknown map: Etten Caves]} which we wanted at the time of writing. Do you mind if I revert that?

--EoD (talk) 06:05, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

1. No doubt I had something in mind relating to tracking the weird problem with the Stangard map. I may have wanted to remove the likelihood of changing the variable named in the switch within the body of the switch. As is, the javascript alert will display text that is different from the incoming map name, which makes it a bit harder to debug.

2. I think I may have been concerned that some of the map image files had underbars in their filenames. I think they were uploaded to page names that included the underbars. (I'n not sure if this is still the case, what with some deletes, moves, etc.) It sounds like the underbars should be removed, so that we rely on the API to translate the names. But we can't do much to prevent folks from creating pages which include underbars. Also, any assignments that do not change the name should be removed, or if there is an alternate case, moved up so the name change only occurs for "translated" names. "Bree-land Homestead"/"Bree-land Homesteads" should be coded the same way as "Annuminas"/"Annúminas".

3. What do you think should pop up when you have something like {{Tooltip Coords|Etten Caves||}} (^{[Unknown map: Etten Caves]})? What about {{Tooltip Coords|||}} (^{[Unknown map: ]})? Right now these pop up the Middle-earth map, and the second displays extra brackets.

I'd like to continue to be able to pop up the Eriador^[Eriador], Rhovanion^[Rhovanion] and Middle-earth^{[Middle-earth]} maps on request. I don't like the idea of a javascript alert popping up when there is no corresponding map file. Not every editor previews their edits, or checks every coordinate for the proper map display. And, I liked the way we were able to stage the implementation of the Great River and Stangard maps. I "stubbed" the maps, so folk could create links immediately, to maps that did not yet have final images or coordinate translations.

RingTailCat (talk) 06:45, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

1. I think the alert displayed the proper name, it should have displayed the map after the code modified it. Any objections on reverting this?

2. Underbars and Spaces are the same on a Mediawiki. If a person uploads a file with a space, it will be converted to a file with an underbar. There are no "spaces" in both articles and files. That's impossible :)

3. Those feature were there before! Have a look again at Etten Caves and the other maps on Testwiki

4. We had *a long* discussion about the alert on the IRC a long time ago and we agreed that this error is a good idea. First. it will only popup for editors and second every editor should be *immediately* notified if s/he entered something wrong. I can expand the error message for new maps, in order to redirect the editor to one who can add the new map.

--EoD (talk) 10:12, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

<evil_mode> Quote: "I also code in an external editor and I always used TABs instead of spaces". Many programmers will hate you because this breaks the view in their favourite IDEs. Think this way: you may have set your IDE to display TABs as 4 spaces, others as 8, some just as 2. That will actually make your nicely looking code to look very differently for different engineers. If you then add a few spaces on top if the TABs here and there, then you have caused a mess 8-)

Some languages, such as Python, will either break completely, or malfunction, in the worst case malfunction with the weirdest outcome and when finally the TAB versus spaces are found, in what direction do you think the flame-thrower is pointed? muahahaha </evil_mode>

-- Zimoon 12:38, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

tabs vs spaces problems have burned me so often that I take a lot of care with them. RingTailCat (talk) 13:45, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

1. Without looking it up: Do the case clauses within the switch always test the same value, or do they always test the same variable? Does it depend on the type of variable? Do all javascript implementations exhibit the same behavior? I would change "specialImageTitleOrig" to an explicit local variable, but otherwise, as it is, the code is intended to eliminate any ambiguity.

2. I find file names like: "File:Great River_map.jpg" less elegant than "File:Great_River_map.jpg" or "File:Great River map.jpg". All three of these access the same image through the API, but there could be two cache entries because the cache key is not translated to a standard format.

3. I see. So {{Tooltip Coords|No Such Map||}} (^{[Unknown map: No Such Map]}) should display the javascript alert (not the Middle-earth map). That feels wrong, but… it does let you reference specially named images without including them in the js code.

4. If it was on IRC, it was as though it never happened. (Unless you posted the chat log for that session.)

RingTailCat (talk) 13:45, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

1. I think it tests against the value (I wrote the code as if it tests against the value). And even if the case clause tests against the variable, I don't see any problem.

2. What kind of caching do you mean? The file (the image) is the same, so the file gets cached only once. If you mean the link caching, then it's a few seconds to implement it.

3. Yes, that was the "feature".

4. And the alert was intentionally very noisy, because a lot of people seemed to save a page without checking if they had a typo in their map name or not. That's what has been discussed in IRC.

--EoD (talk) 14:30, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

I vote your non-commenting as an agreement and will incorporate the changes as soon as I have some time. --EoD (talk) 18:51, 14 April 2012 (EDT)

One last remark: If you want to play with the code (like adding and removing "The" or underbars) please go to testwiki, that's what it is for. First of all it's dangerous to break stuff here on our work environment and secondly testwiki's infrastructure is almost fully identical to this wiki here (especially javascript related). --EoD (talk) 10:11, 21 April 2012 (EDT)

noinclude

Hia, there is no need to stalk me on these categories, soon enough I am adding more to all of these categories, rest assured.
Furthermore, there is nothing that transcludes them, yet ;-)
-- Zimoon 14:31, 12 April 2012 (EDT)

And regarding those BR, I added a comment on one of them but as it may get lost in the noise I talk here too. I had a chat about them long ago with Seth, and some others did not respond when I told why the BR, so I assume they are OK. At least they do not harm anything. The reason for them is that the "text" kind of grows into the category blur. Should am ignorant visitor happen to stray into the categories it is not obvious that the text is very different than the stuff below. Just that :-)

Zimoon 14:40, 12 April 2012 (EDT)

I am a strong supporter of the separation of content from the presentation or formatting information. Inserting extra blank lines and elements is mixing up content and presentation. It is the responsibility of the browser to present the page. The content creator should not attempt to micromanage the presentation.

That ignorant visitor will not stay that way for very long, especially if they try to edit the page and find that the interesting parts of the displayed content is not there! And it should not take them very long to recognize headings - they see them on almost every page.

I believe that you should always wrap the parent category inside <noinclude> ... </noincude> elements. Those pages may not be transcluded anywhere yet, but while you are on the page is the best time to add that wrapper. Adding the wrapper makes the pages transclusion ready.

We need to use transclusion and <categorytree> and <DynamicPageList> more often to reduce the duplication of information. Making pages transclusion ready is a step in that direction.

RingTailCat (talk) 15:12, 12 April 2012 (EDT)

I agree on all points. Strongly!!!

Possibly it may be fixed in some template for layout, to add some empty lines at the bottom of the "body" of a page so it does not grow/merge into the footer (or, in this case, into the category blur). If that happens I am the first to stop adding BR. Until then...

I have also grown very pragmatic over the years; I guess that is an occupational injury, coordinating too many strong minds that not seldom are in disagreement (did I mention I am and I work with software engineers?), realizing that it should work this way, but for one reason or the other it does not. Yet.

If you want to add these noinclude I am fine with that. I will populate these categories within weeks and since they are not used by anything today I doubt that anything will use them today, tomorrow, or even next month. Hence I spare myself that trouble now. But I don't mind you walking after me, hehe, maybe good by the way, in the case I do some mistake. Don't spoil me though, I might grow sloppy(ier) ;)

-- Zimoon 16:29, 12 April 2012 (EDT)

problem with ISENGARD map

While moving various Uruk-hai out of the Uruk-hai NPC category up to Isengard or Isengard Depths categories, I noticed that NONE of the tooltips for Isengard worked.

Isengard depths worked fine, but not Isengard itself.

So, this works:

Fâsh is found at Fâsh's Command in Isengard Depths in Nan Curunír.^{[79.3S, 34.4E]}

but this does not:

Golb is found in Ring of Isengard in Nan Curunír.^{[Coordinate 58.6N is off the map (top is 76.3S)][Coordinate 12.7E is off the map (right edge is 1.4E)]}

The correct Map appears, but now "swirlie."

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magill (Contribs • User Talk) at 2012-04-12T18:36:20MDT.

I checked User talk:Eleazaros/coords.js. It looks like those maps work ok.

But, IIRC, the coordinates for Isengard surface when you are a prisoner are different from those later on. I vaguely recall that that was something I wanted to check when I was finally able to get to the surface from outside.

We may need to have a another different map. Notice that the coordinates you are using are e.g. 58.6N, but other coordinates are e.g 86S. RingTailCat (talk) 02:18, 13 April 2012 (EDT)

I concur with RTC, most of the "indoor" and "dungeon" locations have very different coords, if they are visible. Usually in the N/E span. This confused me a lot when I begun playing. I think we often have used the outdoor at-the-doorstep coords for such indoor locations, but if they are larger we would perhaps come up with solutions. -- Zimoon 02:46, 13 April 2012 (EDT)

I was recently adding Quest:Overseers of Isengard (a quest in the same location but accessed from the outside world) and there the swirly works fine. That would back up theory that the coordinates are different in the prisoner instances. -- Elinnea (talk) 12:11, 14 April 2012 (EDT)

I uploaded the interior map. Do you mind hosting this kind of discussions somewhere else? I found it only by chance. --EoD (talk) 19:29, 14 April 2012 (EDT)

Epic Quest Naming

Someone was talking about this recently, but I can't remember who or where...

Are the epic quests to be named following the quest log, or to be consistent within the wiki? I've just found the quest duplication Quest:Volume II, Epilogue: Gorothúl of Dol Guldur and Quest:Book 9, Epilogue: Gorothúl of Dol Guldur. The latter is the one that's linked from everywhere, but the former matches the name of the quest in the game. It was created months ago and they've been existing in parallel since then. I'd like to make sure which is the one to keep, before deleting and cleaning up the other. -- Elinnea (talk) 12:18, 14 April 2012 (EDT)

The different rules used for naming epic quests vs non-epic quests is a problem. New editors have to be trained to know that there are two different rules. It is error prone, often resulting in initially incorrect article names, and duplicate articles. It makes it difficult for visitors to directly find a quest using the in-game quest name - they must hope the ajax search offers helpful choices or use the search page. On category listings, quests from different volumes and books are sorted together by chapter.

I think having two rules is out-dated, and as the game continues to evolve, with new volumes and new books, it makes less and less sense to continue with the old pre-Moria naming scheme.

The naming of epic quests is one of the few, if not the only, place in the wiki where we name things differently from the name used in-game. I would like to see a "Grand Renaming" of epic quests so their article names are as close as possible to the in-game quest name.

RingTailCat (talk) 13:47, 14 April 2012 (EDT)

This issue has surfaced several times before. I know I brought up the fact that the Epic quests were all "randomly" named when I put together (cleaned up) the Index pages June-November 2011 (i.e. the Category pages that get transcluded) in making up my index (User:Magill/Sandbox-2). At that time, I went through and fixed a bunch of the categorizations for all of the Epic quests so that they would show up on their respective Category pages correctly. Interestingly, at that time (looking at the History dates) the "odd man out" -- Quest:Volume II, Epilogue: Gorothúl of Dol Guldur (August 2011) had not yet been created, but the "correctly" named one: Quest:Book 9, Epilogue: Gorothúl of Dol Guldur had been in existance for about a year (January 2010). I think at that time Zimoon and I (or maybe just me) went through and "fixed" a bunch of "erroneous" names. As I recall, and looking at Category:Epic Quests, there is still more to be done to "completely clean-up" the problem -- As RTC points out... Category:Epic Quests still has pages in it which should only appear in the lower "book" sub categories. Guess I need to go back and re-visit that project. I believe I started at Dunland and was working backwards to Bree. (Vol III to VOl I.)

In this particular case, one supposes that if you start at the page Epic Quests, it is "clear" (even if erroneous) that the Epilogs are NOT part of Book 9. (or Book IX) as that page calls it!) so one might be enticed to create a new quest with a "different name." Sadly, I've never done the Volume II ending quests (beyond book 7) so I can't comment on their in-game names.

BTW, it's interesting that the "links" to Quest:Book 9, Epilogue: Gorothúl of Dol Guldur show up the way they do in the "What links here" page. Those references can only be to the transcluded Category part of the page... so, should't they show up as "Transclusions?" And FWIW, I would just simply delete that "new" page until (or if) we decide to use the "full name" in the Epic line. And oh yeah, the reason for the naming problem is purely Turbine. In the beginning, Turbine never expected there to be a Volume II. All of their internal and external documents use the Book 1-15 nomenclature. Not until the Moria Expansion did they get around to switching to using the Volume names. So, in-game, I think (I'd have to start a new toon to verify) everything in Volume I is still referred to as only Book 1-15. But since all that info is maintained on their servers, they can change quest names across all players on all the worlds with a single edit ... who knows?

Looks Like I'll go back to working the earlier volumes, and at least clean out Category:Epic Quests

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magill (Contribs • User Talk) at 2012-04-14T13:38:13MDT.

Ok, I see. It sounds like a grand epic quest of renaming epic quests is needed! Perhaps the fifth anniversary would be a good time to lock in the page names with their game versions to prepare for the new ones that will come next. For now I will consolidate the quest information on the wiki-correct page, and clear out the game-formatted one until such a time as this quest can be undertaken. -- Elinnea (talk) 17:43, 14 April 2012 (EDT)

NPCs versus Landmarks

I noticed your edit on Ráthwald and I have absolutely no doubt he is truly just outside the border of Echad Dúnann. However, it fills no purpose to draw a hard line and not being flexible, rather the opposite. A player who knows where Echad Dúnann is located is more likely to find Ráthwald than just reading at the quest that he is in the area of Nan Sirannon, is she not? That is the reason why I sometimes have used a "rubber-band border" to include NPCs that stand just outside of the warmth. The Minstrel NPC, a Hobbit, just outside of West Gate in Bree, where is he standing in most players mind? In Southern Bree-fields? I doubt.

I have no want for wiki-wars, but I wish you'd asked. In this case I consider Ráthwald part of the staff of Nan Echad Dúnann simply because of the vicinity. I believe most players will tell each other that he is at that landmark, "a few meters to the east". I believe there are many other NPCs that are described exactly the same way in casual talk, thus I think we are doing a mistake by enforcing strict borders for everything. However, going too far in any direction is not good either, but I strongly believe we come a long way with common sense.

In the end of the day most players that really use the location pages is better helped with a list of NPCs at, or in the close vicinity of, a landmark than a longer list of NPCs spread over an area. The same goes for quests, players are better helped by a list of quests that are starting at one hub, though a few more meters radius, than a longer list of quests for the area but no hint of in the west or east, north or south end of the area. Think it over and tell me what you think.
-- Zimoon 12:39, 18 April 2012 (EDT)

Ráthwald is a significant distance out of Echad Dúnann, perhaps 75 meters. This is definitely not a case like the NPC on the edge of the Rohirrim Scout-camp who seems to move location depending which side of him you stand on. I would put Leland Underhill in Bree, because that is what the radar says. Putting him at the West Gate is incorrect as he is a significant distance away, close to 100 meters. As they say, "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades". RingTailCat (talk) 22:20, 18 April 2012 (EDT)

You are correct about the distances, but that was not really my point. However, the coordinates are correct and that helps our wiki-readers the most. Second best, IMHO, is an easily described location, and a landmark is always easier than describing exactly where in an area he is located; the text on his page is OK, but you cannot have that long text at the startinglocation of quests.

The main point is: In which lists is he best included for usability reasons? And I mean usability as in friendly-information, not absolute exactness. At the area lists of NPCs and starting/involving quests? Or the nearby landmark's lists? As long as the description is OK at the NPC page I favour the friendlier version of landmarks. Of course within reason, but then the questions are: what is reasonable?, what is nit-picky?, and, what is over-flexible?

So, again, at which lists do we want these NPCs included so that our visitors feel they get the best service? Bree would possibly be OK for Leland, but where in Bree? The Prancing Pony? Nah, outside West Gate ;) And so forth for others.

What is correct is seldom the way we humans describe things, we use a human/logical way of describing the world, without a meter-stick, we simplify models for physics, chemistry, geography, etc. So, if we want to provide logical lists of NPCs and quests we need to be flexible. Thus my next question is, would most players say that he is at Echad Dúnann, somewhat to the east? Or would they use some other description? (Silly Turbine that did not name that gate between the two areas something.)

-- Zimoon 02:53, 19 April 2012 (EDT)

Another fix for "Obsolete"

Thanks for fixing the case issue for the "obsolete" Template.

Just discovered another "problem" -- with the "type" parameter. It's kind of unexpected how the template works, so I don't know if this is an easy fix or not.

See: Item:Eregion Mark for example.

{{Obsolete|patchlink=[[Update 5, Armies of Isengard - December 12, 2011|Update 5]]|type=mark will turn into {{Reward|Medallion}}s and }}

Because the type parameter was moved (and not followed by a "|") to "make good english," the "item" is not placed in the Category:Obsolete Items but rather in the top level category Category:Obsolete.

If you change "mark" to "item" ... nothing happens, you get the full message and it stays in the wrong category.
However, if you change it to "item|" it goes into the correct category, but then the remaining comment is chopped.

The implication from the instruction page is that the parameter "type" is positional, not keyword, but it is apparently both.

And personally, I would rather see the wording modified to: "This xxx is now obsolete. See... for details." And in all of them I have read so far, the reference to the talk page has nothing to do with the issue of the item being obsolete, so I would just drop it.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 16:18, 20 April 2012 (EDT)

See the change I made to Item:Eregion Mark. This is one of the quirks of templates: the parsing into parameters is more like a string split than a more sophisticated parser that nests the '|' inside the local link. The template call {{!}} get processed after the Obsolete template has done it's thing. When all the template processing is done, the link gets parsed. It looks very messy for anyone (like me) that is familiar with parsing languages like C, Python, Pascal, etc. RingTailCat (talk) 16:56, 20 April 2012 (EDT)

Just a quick chiming-in to say I threw that template together very quickly just to serve a purpose; certainly feel free to modify, mutilate, and reword - or even scrap as needed - since I'm not actively maintaining any of my creatures at the moment, heh. Sethladan 18:18, 20 April 2012 (EDT)

Info on expelled users

In looking at the category Special Uncategorized files... I note several pages (and uploads) by User talk:Kajetan007 Who I note you questioned back in January, apparently the day after his account was created.

Basically, my question(s) is -- How does one tell if any particular account is A) blocked/banned (or whatever you admins call it)? (and what does being in red mean in the Special active users list?)

That being the case, the decision to delete those files is easy. However, to me at least, it looks as if "he" created the account in January used it for 2 or 3 days and then "got bored." I don't know for certain, but I suspect he thought he was somewhere else.

The images appear to be from The Dwarf Holds -- (TDH for short) is a modification for the Battle for Middle-earth, a real time strategy game by EA. see: dwarf holds at mmodb and The Dwarf Holds.net

All that being said, I believe these images and pages should all be marked for deletion, probably as "Not from or related to LOTRO". Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 21:44, 20 April 2012 (EDT)

As I recall, that guy was really struggling to create his character page, and then uploaded those 2007 images which may have been LOTRO promotional material. See the meta data for the images. I'd suggest talking to User talk:Lotroadmin to see if there is a policy for such pages. RingTailCat (talk) 22:02, 20 April 2012 (EDT)

Quest:Another Matter of Importance

Hiya! Happened to see your change here and wanted to check if the update to the Warden section was a bug in-game or just an editing error. Thanks! Sethladan 11:05, 25 April 2012 (EDT)

Oops, looks like I overwrote the warden message with the captain message. It's fixed now. I would have caught it myself later, when I verified the quest text with my own toons. If you have the text for the email you received on reaching level 30, please update Item:Another Matter of Importance. RingTailCat (talk) 11:38, 25 April 2012 (EDT)

Good idea about moving the mail text to the item. I think we had the same question on Quest:A Pressing Matter; there's kind of a confusion about what gets recorded where. Unfortunately, my Warden is already past 30 and I didn't think to record the text. I'll keep an eye on it as my other characters approach that level, though. Sethladan 16:36, 25 April 2012 (EDT)

Good job RTC, yes there was indeed some confusion and mixups and personally I had no clue which was considered the preferred way. Warden? Don't have one ;) -- Zimoon 02:59, 26 April 2012 (EDT)

Multiple Subscriptions

I have multiple subscriptions attached to my Turbine account. I have two LOTRO subscriptions and one DDO subscription.

When I start the LOTRO launcher, I get the usual login form with Username, Password and Enter last-played world "xx". On clicking Login, I get a form with a select box labeled Select a subscription to play, and a list of subscriptions showing the subscription nicknames I set on the account management web site. When I click Next, I go to the world selection form, where I pick a world and click Play or get auto-logged into the last played world.

Each subscription has a separate TP total, and bound-to-account items are restricted to characters created under a subscription. Interaction between the characters in the two subscriptions is just like what you have between accounts owned by different real-life players, although I can't play players from both at the same time.

Each subscription has a forum account. On my.lotro.com, I have a drop down on the name where it says Logged in as xxxxx that lets me switch forum users. When I enter the lottery, using the lottery gadget, I have to switch users and do it for each subscription.

I do not recommend this setup for the normal player. If you are going to ~~subscribe~~ become a VIP, be sure to upgrade your existing F2P subscription, if you have one. RingTailCat (talk) 17:43, 29 April 2012 (EDT)

Thanks for the write-up. Sounds basically like having several accounts, but all under the same name. Useful for testing, I guess, if nothing else? Sethladan 19:44, 29 April 2012 (EDT)

LOL - This "subscription" issue is an interesting one, of recent origin. I started out with an account in the DDO Beta that converted smoothly to live. When the LOTRO Alpha became available I had to create a new account at Turbine to "access it." Then as the beta ended, I had to create a new Beta account prior to going live! (Or maybe it was between the Alpha and Beta.) At that point in time, it was not possible to have multiple subscriptions on one account. I'm a Founder in both DDO and LOTRO, with an annual subscription to DDO - which I don't think they offer anymore, and a Lifetime sub to LOTRO. Then when Turbine finally got the multiple subscription business working, I discovered one day that my "primary" (default on the Forums only) account was my ID from the pre-beta (Alpha)! However, on Myaccount.turbine.com I only have the one account and subscription -- go figure.

So at this point in time, I have 3 accounts at Turbine -- DDO, LOTRO Primary and LOTRO Secondary, I created the secondary for my son, but he never really stuck around, so I use it simply as a second account. Both LOTRO accounts are Lifetime accounts. I CAN play both LOTRO accounts simultaneously (where "play" is limited to exchanging stuff in the vault, not being a dual boxer and all that. I have to steal my son's laptop for the second login.) The "Subscription to Play" business at login was new with, I believe Update 5 back in November of 2010.

In the OTG, several folks also have multiple lifetime accounts, not subscriptions and multi-box fairly routinely, something you cannot do with multiple subscriptions.

As I recall, the "Multiple subscription" thing was in response to folks who wanted to have "multiple accounts" at lotro.com under one turbine.com account. And the problem then, as also now with the F2P "upgrade" -- was the fact that you were most likely to create a totally new account, not simply upgrade an existing account! Needless to say, that annoyed a great many people.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 01:02, 30 April 2012 (EDT)

Tower of Orthanc

There are some lingering un-patrolled edits regarding the Tower of Orthanc (name?), in the list of un-patrolled recent changes. I have not patrolled them since I am not really there yet and I thought it would be better that your or anybody knowledgeable kept an eye at these things. I guess I could spend figure it out, but it is quicker if somebody around those places do it ;) -- Zimoon 09:29, 1 May 2012 (EDT)

Hey, I am new to the Wiki and I edited the Tower of Orthanc pages because it just happened that I ran them the previous weekend and put down mostly the walk-through information. If there is a better system/layout for these pages, somebody more knowledgeable about the wiki can easily make adjustments and I can add information from their. (Majikk17 (talk) 09:38, 1 May 2012 (EDT)}

I'm not really the best person to patrol the Tower of Orthanc pages as I really don't plan on doing those raids. I've raided on the moors, but never (really - never) elsewhere. RingTailCat (talk)

My understanding of patrolling is that you don't need to know a lot about the subject to patrol edits on it, its mainly to check that edits by new editors are not spam, seem sensible, and to pick up any mistakes (like item pages not showing properly because a special character was used in the disambigpagename). From a quick glance at the ones you are talking about, they look ok. Majikk17 even added a note on the talk page saying he had made some changes and after seeing that the tier 1 pages were wanted as well, he added the information to those as well. I'm sure there are still improvements that can be made and more information that can be added (just like every page on the wiki), but I would say they are fine to be marked as patrolled. Amphoras (talk) 10:15, 1 May 2012 (EDT)

Amphoras' description basically sums up my approach with patrolling (and I somehow managed to accrue a reputation as a patrol fiend last year). Basically, if an edit's not breaking anything or obviously decreasing the quality of a page, I would pass it. There's too much going on around here for us to stress over every edit - more than anything else, it's the single best way to catch spam and new users in need of a welcome and/or guidance.
Of course, I've done roughly zero patrolling since January, so kudos to all y'all keeping up with it. :-P Sethladan 12:25, 1 May 2012 (EDT)

Volume III Book 5 Quest

Hi, I notice a somewhat unorthodox naming scheme for the final 5 instances of Category:Vol. III. Book 5 Quests but have no clue whether that is correct or "invented" for some reason. Would you mind check them? Thanks in advance. -- Zimoon 05:01, 2 June 2012 (EDT)

Well, that's odd.

All five instance write-ups were created on March 3 (my middle son's birthday!) within minutes of each other. I still have screenshots from the RoI release, but I blew away the folder for those quests about 3 days ago. Ah, but I have the chat logs. The instance quest pages have the wrong names. I will fix them ASAP. I recall what I did now: I first did those quests on March 3rd on Bullroarer, so I could do the beta Book 6 quests. Then, on March 8th, I did them on a live server, and kept the log for that session.

RingTailCat (talk) 08:20, 2 June 2012 (EDT)

I've fixed the instance names, fixed up links, and remove unnecessary redirects. RingTailCat (talk) 08:38, 2 June 2012 (EDT)

Honestly, I did not look at "history" but turned to you as the resourceful guy. I'm happy to find something, sorry I put you to work this early of your day ;) -- Zimoon 08:42, 2 June 2012 (EDT)

I suspect I followed the red-links to create the quest pages, without checking too carefully. It's early Saturday morning, almost 7am here now. I was going to finish the third book in Game of Thrones series, instead of editing the wiki, though. RingTailCat (talk)

Quests and dialog markups

Hi again, I try to add missing dialogs to quests as I do them (making it easy for you to stalk me at Laurelin :P ) but.... Do we have some suggested standard for the markup of "extra stuff"? The dialog copied from the dialogue window is no problem, name in bold and the text as is. But the extras from chat and/or system messages that do not go into chat? I notice the following differences between different quests:

Zimoon says, Bla, blaha blaha bla!

Zimoon says, "Bla, blaha blaha bla!"

Zimoon says, 'Bla, blaha blaha bla!'

Zimoon says, "Bla, blaha blaha bla!"

Zimoon looks dreamingly to the horizon

Zimoon looks dreamingly to the horizon

The upper lines are the result by copying directly from the in-game chat-box or from a chat-log to file. But different quests follow different patterns. I have no stubborn preference on this subject really but am curious if we have some suggestions? If not, would copying as-is from in-game or file to prefer over copy+editing?
-- Zimoon 05:15, 2 June 2012 (EDT)

In the past, for chat dialog, I have done both

RTC says, Blabady, blah blah!

and

RTC says, "Blabady, blah blah!"

now, I try to use

RTC says, "Blabady, blah blah!"

Likewise, for chat messages, I seem to find that I sometimes did

RTC ponder the universe

but now I try to always use

RTC ponder the universe

I think the choices I use now help to distinguish the text from the chat log from the quest texts and quest dialogs. Each type of message is visually distinct. One thing I have also done, on occasion, is to modify NPC dialogs

NPC: 'Thank you, <name>'

NPC ponders your news.

'We must fight'

to

NPC: 'Thank you, <name>'

NPC ponders your news.

'We must fight'

I don't do this every time it occurs, and I'm not sure if it is a good idea. It does tend to distinguish the non-verbal part of the NPC's dialog from the spoken parts.

I like to see a lot of dialog, and action cues. I think it adds a richness to the quest description. It's always a quandary as to the amount of format adjustments I'll make in a quest write-up. Usually, the more changes I have to make, the more I will make. When I have the time, I try to make the write-ups have a consistent style. It's not a criticism of previous editors, but a polishing.

RingTailCat (talk) 07:50, 2 June 2012 (EDT)

I often update the quests as I play, having several tabs open, and I guess that is why I seldom change to much of what I copy and paste. The italic in the regular dialogs is great, the only other distinction is with-or-without a leading single quote.

Copying chat log as-is would mean italic only, but I actually thinks "no italic but quotes" makes more sense. And I speculate if that is not what Turbine wants it to look like, but using two single quotes for one double quote. Perhaps of technical reasons, many databases require special handling of quotes because the DB use them as string delimiters. With the enhanced wiki-editor we now have search-and-replace, so it is usually quite a quick process of -> " (but don't click "replace all" :P).

A agree, having system messages and non-speaking stuff in italic is probably the best way to make them different, non-spoken.

Effectively this means that we should perhaps suggest plain text for spoken stuff, and italic for "narrator-comments" and system messages. Cool. I just wanted some advice so I don't go mess up something. Evendim has many quests with pending dialogs etc., perhaps not the most played region :)

-- Zimoon 08:56, 2 June 2012 (EDT)

I have some very old toons who went through Evendim before the revamp. They have neutral standing with the wardens. In those days, you could do every quests up to about level 40, and still only have neutral standing. One of these days I need to take them through there to pick up the rep. RingTailCat (talk) 09:14, 2 June 2012 (EDT)

Sorry, I think I misread something and have used the ``RTC says, "Blabady, blah blah!"´´ version rather than ``RTC says, "Blabady, blah blah!"´´ for a few quests. Rectify if you please. I will follow your lead and use the latter version for the future, to keep a somewhat uniform style. I will also update the quest boilerplate with examples for future editors. Thanks again. -- Zimoon 10:13, 10 June 2012 (EDT)

Riders of Rohan -- pre-order quests.

Check out the collection of quests I just put up for the new RoR "teaser" quests. Especially the Talk page for Quest_Talk:Herding_to_the_Trollshaws

--Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 07:02, 5 June 2012 (EDT)

I noticed the new quest pages. I am disappointed that you did not use the same style for dialogs as the 3 or 4 thousand existing quests. I'm not in as much of a rush to pre-order RoR. Everything is times two here because I would never hear the end of it if I did not get it for my wife. And she is perpetually out of TP so I'd need to top her up as well. (That's Turbine Points, not ….) I always balk a bit at the expense, but compared to other entertainment, and the amount of enjoyment we get from the game, it's cheap! RingTailCat (talk) 09:46, 5 June 2012 (EDT)

To Magill's defence I have to say that he explicitly stated that they are in pre-final stage and that he had included comments that should later go into walkthrough. Please ease a bit, RTC. I were also baffled at first but found his note.

I am a bit uncertain what the questions are, could you please line them up, Magill? Explicit, simple questions as if asking a young teenager ;) Then we do not need to "interpret" them and maker that wrong. Sometimes you rush ahead in mind and not all you think of comes through to text, and when it does it is too much altogether ;) I do not say that as criticism but as an advice to a friend -- think through, order per importance, type, strike half it, read through, strike another third to half, reorder again, strike fourth item and lower. If lengthy text is a must, provide a summary that is as condensed as possible.

-- Zimoon 14:33, 5 June 2012 (EDT)

Regarding your revision...

https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php?title=Quest:Every_Last_Drop&curid=108127&diff=474015&oldid=474010 You never commented your commit, did you read the history and my previous commit? Do you really think we need to burden the quest with so many red lines reading the same? Sure, the quest reads that way, but are players so stupid that we need to mimic every tiny detail? In this case it just looks very very ugly and brings no extra value but a ugliness. -- Zimoon 13:36, 8 June 2012 (EDT)

Ellipsis character

I noticed that in this edit you changed three consecutive periods into an ellipsis character. I was wondering if there is a way to tell ellipsis characters from consecutive periods in the game text because while I was going through the quest, to me it looked like periods, which is why I changed it in the article.

It's not a question of great importance and I don't want to bother you much with it, but I am somewhat of a perfectionist and I like to know when I'm wrong :) -- Silver hr (talk) 16:02, 11 June 2012 (EDT)

Visually, in Firefox, Chrome and IE (on my machine), the ellipsis appears identical to three consecutive periods on displayed pages. In the wiki edit window, it appears as three small periods in the space of one character. When I copy and paste text from the chat windows and quest log, I have usually found that what appears as three dots is in fact three characters (...). When I type text which cannot be copy/pasted or transcribe from a screen shot, I usually enter the ellipsis character (…) where I see three dots.

On the page you referred to, one way to distinguish the ellipsis from three dots is to highlight the first character immediately following the 's' in 'yours'. When three dots get highlighted, you have an ellipsis. When one dot gets highlighted, you have a simulated ellipsis. Alternatively, you could copy and paste the text to a text editor such as Notepad or Notepad++ or other text editor which displays the ellipsis with a distinct glyph.

When I'm being strict about my transcriptions, I use whatever Turbine has used in-game, if I know what that is, however, I occasionally perform edits in an external editor where I sometimes globally change three dots into an ellipsis.

I think either form (...) or (…) is correct, although I tend to prefer (…).

BTW, an ellipsis can be easily entered from the keyboard (of a windows machine) using Alt-0133.

- RingTailCat (talk) 16:39, 11 June 2012 (EDT)

At least at my machine the ellipsis does not look equal to three dots. I guess it depends on user settings regarding font face and/or size. The form Turbine uses in Quest Log and chat logs are not ellipsis. -- Zimoon 16:47, 11 June 2012 (EDT)

I didn't know text in the quest log was selectable, that's good to know. However, it seems it's not selectable in the quest dialog windows, and quest comments and end dialog (which is the case in my example) are found exclusively there, not in the quest log. I've went through a number of quests in my quest log and in all the quests where there were multiple consecutive periods, they were that, not ellipses, so I'd be willing to bet that the same goes for text we can't check by selection, e.g. from quest dialog windows -- unless there is a way to tell them apart visually (in game). A further hint that they're probably multiple periods is that sometimes it's 4 periods instead of 3, which doesn't make sense grammatically. So as I am inclined to replicate game data exactly, I'd vote for the multiple period option.

Silver hr (talk) 20:14, 11 June 2012 (EDT)

I had a look at the Ellipsis article on Wikipedia. An interesting read. As I mentioned,

I think either form (...) or (…) is correct, although I tend to prefer (…).

looks like

- RingTailCat (talk) 20:32, 11 June 2012 (EDT)

As far as visual appearance is concerned, Zimoon is correct in that it depends on the font face. For example, the difference is clearly visible to me when editing wiki source text.

Silver hr (talk) 05:58, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

Here is what I see in my edit window:

- RingTailCat (talk) 10:28, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

ROR - Quests and categories

... Good thing I have multiple toons to run through Discovering the Descendant ...

At any rate. It looks like we need to create/plan for at least one new "category" -- "War-steed Skills" see: Favour of the Mearas.

This now shows up for anyone who has pre-ordered as a new Passive Skill category, so one assumes that it will be there for all come the release.

That said, one might argue that all of the "Discovering the Descendant" material should be in that category as it is clearly related now, and most likely will continue to be the way in which the skill is acquired in the future.

Will there be many more entries thereby causing the category to become over populated? Who knows, but at least initially, people are going to be looking for information about "War-Steeds".

Turbine has indicated that there will be multiple (and different?) trait lines available to F2P vs Premium players, much of the information won't be available until the beta begins. And depending on how strictly (or if) Turbine enforces the NDA with the RoR Beta, we will or won't be able to publish much.

Categorization for Shadowfax is purely speculative, but allows lore to be collected. (The image is in the top level Category:NPC Images -- to be moved later when a more appropriate location becomes obvious -- one would guess it will be "The Wold NPC Images," but who knows.

We could start building the new Categories now, but since we have only one absolute "Ares?" "Region?" to go by -- it would be even more speculative than I usually get :)

--Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 11:19, 12 June 2012 (EDT)

At this point, speculation about the requirements to document Riders of Rohan is premature. I would suggest we use existing categories and categorization styles for new categories for the content we have seen so far.

With out a doubt, the RoR beta will have two phases. During the private beta, the NDA will prevent anyone from admitting their participation and from discussing anything about the new content. During the public beta, the NDA will be lifted, and it will be like the Bullroarer betas for updates.

When we see the public beta, and not before, we can begin creating categories for RoR content in a form that will support any significant changes.

Creating a category for "Leader of the Mearas NPCs" does not make a lot of sense, after all it is likely to have one member only. A category for "Mearas NPCs" makes more sense.

As far as I am concerned, categorization is the result of generalization. Until we have a population which needs to be generalized, we are just blowing smoke….

I hate to sound negative and conservative, but let's not go rushing off in all directions until we know, really know, what we are dealing with.

- RingTailCat (talk) 11:49, 12 June 2012 (EDT)

Bullroarer is a "Test Server" comment from Sapience

Don't know if you saw Sapience's comment from yesterday (Tuesday) on the Bullroarer forum - quite interesting.

https://forums-old.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?463124-Is-there-gonna-be-Beta-Testing-for-RoR -- post 15

"Let's not confuse Bullroarer with Beta. Beta, despite taking place on the Bullroarer server in the past, is a very different thing (and Bullroarer is a test server, not a preview server. We changed that a couple years ago.)."

Interesting Turbine felt the need to make the explanation. (I assume you know about "Palantir.") -- Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 20:36, 12 June 2012 (EDT)

Assigning names like Alpha, Beta, Gamma, QA, QC, UA, test, preview, etc. to different phases of a product's life cycle and release cycle is a snipe hunt. We tend to have developed ideas about what each of these means as a result of our own work experiences, the books we've read, the methodologies we've used, the schools we attended.

Without being on the inside of Turbine, it's a bit of a guessing game what parts of this process they will make available prior to the official release. We have some idea about what Turbine has done in the past. That's no guarantee that they will do the same in the future.

And business concerns will almost always trump the desires and professional recommendations of technical and support staff. What we get is what we get.

- RingTailCat (talk) 21:06, 12 June 2012 (EDT)

Tool-tip pop-ups for Skills and Effects

I know I've had this discussion before with someone, someplace, but I can't find any useful traces of it now (and what I'm asking clearly does not exist), so I'll start over and pick on you because it seems like you, me and Zimoon, are the only significantly active editors at this time. Historically I would probably have gone to EoD, Sethladan or Amphoras . . .

Simply put: We have "Tool-tip" pop-ups for Items and Maps (Coords) -- and possibly other things, but I don't know what they may be.

What is needed is the same kind of pop-up for Skills and Effects.

I know that related changes have come and gone in the recent past -- "mode=imlink" being one such

I don't know if this is a simple addition to the Skill and Effect Templates, or there is something more involved.

Similarly, I have no idea if any of the other Talk pages, like MediaWiki_talk:Lord_of_the_tooltips.js are relevant, that one is clearly not current. [[Template_talk:Item_Tooltip#Pop-ups]] seems current, but not relevant, even though it should be.

On a related note: (I think) I have seen the following use documented someplace but cannot find it now {{Item:Mark|mode=imlink_plain|arg=149 Marks}}

One would think that there is some kind of "syntax" page(s) around, but I can't find any (Other than the one I've put together with stuff I often use. The simple question here is -- where do you find the values for "mode"? Nothing shows up that I can find in any of the "obvious" (to me) template pages.

--Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk)

I'm not sure if I can help much at this point. I have researched now the item tooltips and coordinate tooltips work, but I would have to retrace that analysis to get up to speed again.

The first step should be to determine what results we want to see. It's the usual question of scope. Then we could discuss how to implement such changes, determine who has prior experience and needed skill, try them out on the test wiki, and finally migrate the changes into our production wiki.

A good starting point might be to setup a project page to coordinate on going discussions, perhaps over at Talk:Lotro-Wiki Contributors' Corner. It looks like there are several years of archived discussions there that might help.

- RingTailCat (talk) 01:58, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

Work on popups for other stuff was started, but it wasn't completely finished as we all ended up being busy with other stuff. They work for effects to some extend, see {{:Burst of Swiftness|mode=imlink}} for example. Don't ask why Burst of Swiftness doesn't work but Tome of Burst of Swiftness does, I'm not sure off the top of my head, and I haven't had the time to check at the moment. If you just want the link with the popup, you can use {{:Burst of Swiftness|mode=link}} though.

I think effects were pretty much finished. Skills are going to be more of a pain as the template is more complicated in the kind of header section that should be taken care of by {{Tooltip}}. It could be done, but it would require a lot of work (I think EoD and I decided we would leave it for Seth as its his fault {{Skill}} is so complicated :P).

There's a load of other stuff I was working on as well, cut down templates for each type of item (weapons, armour, etc.), modes for other templates like traits and deeds so the class trait tables could be automatically populated and updated, a template to show which content was free/premium/vip, and possibly other things. It should all be in various pages or linked to from pages under User:Amphoras/"whatever its called" if you want to use any of it. Amphoras (talk) 14:03, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

Direct links for items create pop-ups because EoD specifically enabled links to the Item namespace to do this. At the very beginning of the modern tooltip era when he'd pretty much got everything working the way it is now, we had to do the same thing that Amphoras mentioned, and this is where [[Template:Item]] came into play, I think. This didn't last long as he found a shortcut and here we are today. That code is probably in Mediawiki:Lord of the tooltips.js

Because skills and effects are in the main namespace, I don't think this same technique would be possible (that is, just having popups on plain links) but we could certainly make "shortcut" templates in order to force the popup - something like "Template:Elink" for effects and "Template:Slink" for skills, perhaps. These would just look like [[Template:Item]] or Template:Reward and just hide the mode=link part, keeping appearances a little neater. Sethladan 14:30, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

Ok... so question one becomes --- Since it appears that if "Skills" and "Effects" were in separate name spaces, the issue of pop-ups would be simplified.

Why are "Skills" and "Effects" NOT in separate namespaces?

Which begets:

Is there any significant change to the Skill/Effect Templates?

What is involved in moving the pages? One assumes that the process could be bot enabled to do one Skill or Effect at a time.

copy to new namespace
change "links" from the old to the new
delete the old

I suspect that most Skills and/or Effects really have very few "uses" (links), so it may not be as difficult or consuming a job as it seems. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magill (Contribs • User Talk).

One of the issues with multiple namespaces is that it makes searching a little more challenging - unless you know to prefix the correct namespace, you're not going to get any useful Ajax suggestions. This is less of a problem now that Lotroadmin has worked his magic with the search engine, however. Another is that there're an extra 6-7 characters to type each time you want to link to something - consider how easy it is to forget that you need [[Item: |]] and [[Quest: |]] to link to items and quests, and that the piped links essentially double the length of the wikitext (code bloat). I don't recall if Lotroadmin has expressed resistance to additional namespaces in the past, but I know other editors have since they add additional layers of complexity that may or may not be worth the trouble.

An issue with skills specifically is that several skill pages have multiple templates on them because of the same skill behaving in different ways in different circumstances. There hasn't (to my knowledge) really been a clear alternate solution, and this would probably need to be worked out before we add skills to the pop-up repertoire. Sethladan 20:28, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

Sigh, the one thing I miss about Liquid Threads -- the auto sig :)

At any rate, I just finished playing with the [[Template:Item]] -- nobody uses it anymore. I had used it extensively when I was working on the Moors pages, but subsequent editors have switched to Template:Reward and/or Template:Barter I converted the only page I found linking to [[Template:Item]] which eliminates the "Item:Item:" issue. That also allows the merge of [[Template:Item]] to be replaced with a "delete."

In the process, I also updated the Template:Reward/doc page.

--Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 20:50, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

Quest NPC Question

I noticed you just did and updated the Quest:Instance: A Spear at the Southern March. I have, since I worked with Bree, wondered where Toby Thorndyke is located, more exactly. Could it be South Gate? Or where? ;) Bree is fine but if there is a more precise place... . -- Zimoon 16:01, 20 June 2012 (EDT)

I have a screen shot of the fight with the final boss, the Half-orc Leader (Bree-land). It shows the South Gate ruins in the distance to the south, and the radar shows we are in Andrath ^{[34.5S, 51.7W]}. I've updated Toby Thorndyke with that information. I failed to get his combat stats, nor those for Andrew Oakhurst. RingTailCat (talk) 16:50, 20 June 2012 (EDT)

Thanks, I noticed your updates and completed the affected categories. Big thanks mate. And we never fail, we are just a bit absent-minded when doing tough quests at the same time ;) -- Zimoon 18:10, 20 June 2012 (EDT)

Cloak of the Equine

I have read that upon acquiring Item:Cloak of the Equine there is a message to the effect that some kind of reward will be coming your way later. Similarly, the deed reads "Can be incremented."

Someone else indicated that it is not a pop-up when you complete the deed, but either that the title itself (in your character log) or mousing over it yields the message.

I'm assuming you have gotten the title, so could you check.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 13:14, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

I was trying to watch for anything special. I did not notice anything. I was hoping for something, after all a cloak and a title are not much of a reward for 30 days of work. I am definitely not the type of person to put in the effort to do those social deeds for titles or emotes. I have another character with 2 activites left, so I will be sure to check the chat log as well as any mouse overs and bill boards when he completes the Horsing Around deed. I'm heading out for a few days holiday later today, so it may be a few days before I get any game time, though. RingTailCat (talk) 13:28, 5 July 2012 (EDT)

Just completed the deed on my one toon -- nope nothing special, did not "increment." Guess we'll see if anything happens when RoR comes out.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 13:14, 30 July 2012 (EDT)

Auto-consumed

Regarding Quest:Desolation by Aughaire, what is the difference between non-existing and anything being auto-consumed in the sense the player can never see it, store it, whatever it? I vote against your latest edit as the item no longer is handed out and the player do not have to interact with it. Its existence is purely virtual, for a split second or less, I'd say it does not exist any more.

That the game has some odd, technical artefact from the previous way of doing this is just ... an odd artefact. But that leads to the next question: Should this wiki reflect odd, technical artefacts, or should we not provide information in the most user-friendly way?
Zimoon 02:18, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

PS: With "user-friendly" in this context I mean, by not linking to the, in my opinion non-existing item, a causal visitor goes straight to the page s/he really is interested in, what does this skill do. The extra link-click does not add any useful information, but if it does I suggest that information is mirrored at the skill-page in some useful way.

Slightly off-topic, but still at the user-friendly subject: Personally I am less fond of those extra clicks that forces the visitor all over the place. For example, click a link for let's say a weapon, .. ooops, you ended up at a recipe, okay, click next link and then you found it. Many users are not interested in the recipe but the item. The two could of course be displayed at a page that transcludes from both, but that would be a bastard page that is neither the recipe nor the item, but highly useful though ;)
-- Zimoon 02:31, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

Perhaps, but Item:Guide to West Angmar isn't exactly the only item that's auto-consumed. Several other things, like emote-granting tokens, are consumed as they're acquired. Consider how most people who opened Envelopes during the Anniversary festival and got a Grant Toast Emote wouldn't have seen the item. Does that mean we shouldn't have data on it? Further, consider if someone saw the Guide to West Angmar listed on the game's quest page, as a quest reward. And when they completed the quest, they didn't find the item in inventory, and didn't realize where it went. What if they were curious what happened to it? And what if they tried to look it up here?

( It might sound silly, but remember that people are not exactly perceptive. Sapience once mentioned that one of the primary challenges of the Moria launch was the fact people couldn't find Moria, despite the world map sporting a quite visible "TO MORIA" on it. Never underestimate the ability of users to completely miss key points of information, or to latch onto minor details in place of them. )

User-friendliness is of course a concern, and streamlining the flow of information according to likely use is definitely something to keep in mind. But I'm not sure we should be so consumed by it as to start denying the very existence of game items. The item very clearly does exist. How we link to it, or bridge the divide between quest and end-prize skill, is another matter. Just remember, we can't predict every case of who wants what information. Who would be interested in so much info about quest items? Does anyone think twice about Item:Meal for Dondhreg? Perhaps not, but it exists, and someone might notice it and be curious what it does. OR perhaps notice that it was removed and wonder what it was. Comprehensive information is as much a goal of a wiki as user-friendliness. -- JnK (talk) 02:50, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

Auto-consuming items are an interesting mechanism. We have things like Item:Guide to West Angmar, which appears very briefly in the inventory, gets auto-consumed, and grants a skill. It seems very unlikely that one would ever find such an item in ones inventory, although if we watch closely, especially with a fast machine and slow internet, we will see the item briefly flash into and out of one of the bags.

More common are the emotes and steeds offered as lottery prizes or found in gift boxes. If we have already learned the emote, or acquired the steed skill, or if we have not acquired the riding skill yet, the normally auto-consumed item remains in ones inventory. We might be able to use it later, or give it to another character or player, but usually we have to sell or discard the item.

Perhaps not so obvious, but all store purchases are delivered as auto-consumed items. Sometimes that mechanism fails. A case in point: the store failed to deliver my purchase promptly, so that I ended up purchasing the Item:Upgrade Personal Vault to 45 Slots twice. When the first one arrived, it was auto-consumed to upgrade my personal vault to 45 slots. When the second arrived, it could not be successfully auto-consumed, since I now had 45 slots. Luckily, that item was "Bound to Account" so I was able to give it to another character through the shared vault. (BTW, I kept screen shots of the item tooltip.)

Auto-consumed items can sometimes end up in ones inventory. Usually, they are auto-consumed as soon as they arrive. But there are situations, either abnormal such as bugs, crashes, or normal such as requirements not met which reveal the reality of these items. I believe the value of honouring the actual game mechanism far outweighs using a shortcut to save an extra click or two.

- RingTailCat (talk) 05:41, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

I'm inclined to agree with JnK and RingTailCat here - if the item is still granted by the quest and still grants the skill, then I can't get behind calling it obsolete. Zimoon's point about extra clicks, however, is valid, so I wonder if we couldn't say something like (Auto-consumed; grants the skill Guide to West Angmar) and call it a compromise. (I know the auto-consumed bit is already there.) I'm not fond of additional verbiage, but this would allow us to be "accurate" (maintaining that the quest actually grants the item) while pointing users who want to find the skill directly there. Sethladan 10:18, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

The quest does not say it grants an item per se, actually it displayed the same icon as it does at the in-game skill page (passive skills icon?). Curse myself that I did not take a screenie :(

I do not recall that I have ever obtained a hunter-travel-skill item to be interacted with, but I would hold it for certain it was once granted to the player but it has since been changed into "auto-consumed". Thence I think we should reconsider this topic and avoid synthetic nonsense that merely reflects how Lotro once was. I do not doubt that it briefly touches inventory during consumption, as do items you move between shared and private vault, etc. That is still a mechanical thing that we should not reflect. Though RTC's point on errors is valid, thence we should definitely retain the item pages and not make them obsolete.

That many other rewards are "auto-consumed" is not an argument for not moving forward to how Lotro looks like today. Such situations should be straightened out, not conserved, don't you think? And whether the items exist or not is more of a thought, the skills or emotes bounce the inventory (if you have a quick eye and slow connections) and that is it. You will not be able to interact with it the way you do with recipes, etc. (unless special happenings per RTC's comment). And that is what I meant with "technical artefact", the "item" being a quickly vanishing shadow of something Turbine used in the past but has since been changed in perhaps the only way they could.

As a compromise I rather suggest: we link from the source page (quest, token, etc.) to the skill/emote/whatever, and from that page to the "item" page. That would take the visitor straight to the wanted page, which would maximize user-friendliness without losing information.

Perhaps we should create a template "Auto-consumed" which explains this phenomena and the error-happenings RTC mentions. This mean, I suggest that we reconsider and update our minds to how Lotro works today. Then we move on and link to the skill/emote/whatever, to add that template to the target page together with a link to the "item page", and to add that template at the "item page" with a link to the skill/emote/whatever page. That hunter-travel-to-Angmar was one page I happened to came across, probably all hunter travels are the same. And JNK seems to know several more pages and their "hand-out pages" :)

Zimoon 13:30, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

The most common case is when you acquire another one of which you can have only one! (apologies to the Highlander) -- I've gotten several different steeds as lottery winnings which I already have either on that toon or account wide. As a result, I get the normally auto-consumed item sitting around in my bags. Can't do anything with it from there except throw it away -- it's usually bound or not-sellable. You can actually also do this with recipes and "guides" -- and it can be particularly annoying when Turbine screws up and allows a Rune Keeper to buy Muster in Mirkwood! --i.e. something they can't use. (I think those bugs are currently all fixed, but I don't know.) It used to be common to be able to buy Rep Recipes that you could not use because of the wrong profession and they were BoA items! I just bugged another batch of those with Stangard.

From what I'm reading about War steeds, we are going to see a whole bunch more of them appear with RoR.

And as far as "auto-consume" being a technical artifact -- I don't believe so. For one thing, it is a new addition to the game. You used to have to click on all "mounts" or Hunter/Warden ports to add them to your skill inventory. I believe it was a mechanism created and used to deal with two situations. One being the ability to control that things cannot be sold/traded/etc. to other entities which are intended to be single toon/use. The second is that it is the interface, as RTC pointed out, to the LOTRO Store (and the DDO Store before that). I believe it does pre-date the Bind to Account mechanism, but I'm not certain on the timing there.

As to the "real problem" -- Look at Guide to West Angmar vs the Guide to West Angmar. Why are those two identical Wiki entries different? That is where the real confusion and "extra clicking" comes in for the general wiki user. Mouse over the first entry and you get a pop-up. Mouse over the second one and "nothing happens." Yet to the reader, they are identical. And if you look at each page separately, it takes a CLOSE reading of each page to determine how the two pages differ one from another, especially because the illustrations are on opposite sides of the page. The differentiation is really pretty poor. A much better solution would be Item:Great River Boots Recipe where the pop-up is the "give away" but the page contains the complete information. (Needless to say, the lack of pop-ups for skills and effects has been a complaint of mine for ages.) See: User:Magill/Sandbox-12 (combined the two pages - don't know why the pop-up isn't working)

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 13:33, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

I believe the pop-up is not working because the "item" is not in the "Item:" namespace. RingTailCat (talk) 17:12, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

Magill, I explained above what I meant with technical artefact and you actually confirmed it, sort of. Previously players had to click "something" to get the skill/emote/whatever, but to afford players with less clicking Turbine switched to "auto-consume" and that we happen to see an item flashing by is an artefact from the previous behaviour. Depending on how the underlying software looks like this is probably the simplest solution they could come up with. That the store uses the same method is not surprising, it exists and Turbine does not have to implement something new, I would do it myself unless somebody gave me enough time to implement something better. Business is always a matter of pragmatism ;)

I still think we should reconsider, items that "flashes by" or just "bounces" inventory, should not be directly linked to but the links should go to the "whatever" the character obtains. But to not leave the "item" as an orphan we link to it from the "whatever" pages.

Zimoon 17:38, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

So you're not fond of the idea of listing both at the quest page, either? Sethladan 00:50, 17 July 2012 (EDT)

I agree with you, it adds unwanted verbiage. The only situation when a player has to deal with the item is after an error or an exceptional happening, so that it ends up in the inventory. Hence it is good to keep all those pages, even if the "item" normally never shows up anywhere but is auto-consumed. And it is not the quest nor token that should bear this extra burden of information, at least not the quest which started this long thread as it did not promise an item but a skill. Again I curse myself not taking a screenie.

Zimoon 02:00, 17 July 2012 (EDT)

The quest did NOT promise a skill. It very definitely promised an item which would grant that skill when used. For your convenience, that item was auto-consumed on acquire. Open your quest log and have a look at the tooltip that comes up. It is a different tooltip from what you find in the skills panel. RingTailCat (talk) 02:28, 17 July 2012 (EDT)

It could be one of those quest-log-does-not-read-as-live-quests do, as we have seen for many many quests by now; I have seen this for all of the vocation/profession-quests, and for quite a few of the festival quests. The live quest and the "history" while the quest is active reads one thing but the log later reads differently. I do not say this is it, but it may well be. - Whatever, not too far ahead there is another hunter-travel quest and I will pay extra close attention.

Either way, I still believe we are more helpful by linking to the skill/emote/whatever page than to an item that most, but not all, players won't notice. Seth's suggestion is not entirely bad (the extra verbiage considered) but what if we rather had it "Guide to West Angmar - (auto-consumed from)" which is less extra text and even more informative?

Zimoon 04:16, 17 July 2012 (EDT)

PS: I created a Auto-consumed Items page, not claiming it to be 100% accurate as you guys will surely find flaws or improvements. Go ahead. Exactly what it is used for is open for discussion. Parts of this discussion may perhaps be continued over there. DS. Zimoon 07:30, 17 July 2012 (EDT)

Meal for Donhreg

And now for something completely different -- Item:Meal for Dondhreg? Something I've never seen before... and I just completed the cited quest the other day. -- and then the Cited quest -- oops.... it is TWO quests, yes TWO quests in one. (sorry too much TV over the weekend). First off, there is no mention of the either the meal or Isengard in the basic quest -- oops, there is an instance in the middle. The implication being --- the wrapper quest is wrong as is the citation on the item page. And the Categorization is wrong -- it is NOT a common Item, it is actually a unique or quest item only. If you get rid of the Quality parameter, it then reverts to "Quest Items and Items. It should be in Quest Items Only as indicated by "First Category" -- clearly the template has a bug in it: First Item is defined so any arbitrary categorization should be overridden. I've seen this happen with other templates also. I don't know what got changed recently where, but something clearly did as the number of "items" is much less than the number of sub-categories contain. And the sub-category "Quest Items" winds up under "*" instead of under "Q".

When one talks about "obsolete" artifacts ...[[Category:Items|*]] is clearly one! Why was it used? Oh well, that one is fixed.

- Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 13:33, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

Fixed it. I do have a screen shot of the tool tip and icon. The item tool tip confirms the text we see on the wiki, however the item is present in the instance, and removed on completion of the instance wrapper quest. RingTailCat (talk) 17:12, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

BTW, the icon always has the red border, as you never get to meet Dondhreg under circumstances where you can give him the meal. If the item was actually in your inventory, I know how to grab a screenshot without the red border, but it cannot be done when the item is only present in the quest log. RingTailCat (talk) 17:14, 16 July 2012 (EDT)

This icon? (Pardon my sticky fingers exploiting Magill's developer code.) Sethladan 00:50, 17 July 2012 (EDT)

Bywater and Farmers Faire Quests

I added category and updated some minor data for those quests that show up when arriving without prior completed quests. Since I had just accepted the invitation quest I am pretty sure the current quests (as in now) in Category:Farmers Faire Quests do not have any prerequisites. I will probably not do many quests there, if any, so I cannot tell whether other quests will open up later. Just wanted to let you know. -- Zimoon 10:14, 27 July 2012 (EDT)
PS: Later I will bring over my hobbit to take some screenies, to have them levelled with the targets' faces ;) DS. -- Zimoon 10:15, 27 July 2012 (EDT)

Quest Accuracy Question

I noticed two edits to Quest:Foreword: Bulwark of the West, the first one is this one. Since I am not yet level 50 (but closing in, slowly) I turn to you to verify, our quest expert. Question is, is Captain-General Daerdan summoned from Echad Garthadir in Evendim to travel with the Grey Company from Echad Dunann in Eregion? Or ... is this another captain? Or ... is the edit incorrect? Thanks in advance. -- Zimoon 04:55, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

This is a bit of a puzzle. I believe at one time, before I had a character at the level to do these quests, you only could obtain that quest from Captain-General Daerdan at Echad Garthadir. The quests were subsequently changed to be granted (or also granted) by Barbethnir outside the Last Homely House. I gather that someone noticed that they could be obtained from either quest giver. To complicate the documentation difficulty, there are three variations depending on your race. If you are in a rush, you will take the quest from Barbethnir, talk to Elrond, and never know if Daerdan is still involved.

To properly document this quest, one needs to take the quest from one of the quest givers, talk to both of them, see what Elrond has to say (but not advance the quest with Elrond). Then cancel the quest, wait 5 min, and take it from the other quest giver, talk to both, then talk to Elrond and advance the quest. (That is essentially what I did when I wrote about Quest:Foreword: Hobbits Far Afield in [2].) Of course this is painful if you are not a hunter or warden. If you're not grouped with someone who is fully sympathetic to your documentation efforts, that's the way to earn the disdain if not outright enmity of your fellows.

I'm not sure what you're asking about Daerdan and the Grey Company. I don't recall encountering him away from Echad Garthadir, and a search for him only shows him in Evendim.

- RingTailCat (talk) 07:20, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Yes, I agree. If you, me, or whoever else who arrives at this quest could do that it is great. I will try to remember.

Daerdan, I ask since that is what the edit turned it into, and at Echad Dunann in Eregion. I did not mark this quest patrolled since I wanted to ask you first, what the correct solution is.

If this Man-quest is given by different guys we simply have several quest-givers, as we have for other quests. But I do not know whether the edit I linked to, and the subsequent edit, are correct. So the question is more of that, what is correct for this quest? And I know about the race-versions ;)

--Zimoon 12:15, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Sorry for the noise, I should never do anything before my first cup of coffee, the two edits nullify each other, my bad.

It seems though, as if the quest-giver at The Last Homely House is not specified.

--Zimoon 12:33, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

As an ex-coffee addict, I can assure you that your facilities do return to normal after a while. There were a number of stealth changes to quests to stream-line progress, or perhaps to make it easier for players who did not have all quest packs. It is easier to conclude that the quest giver has changed than it is to verify that there are now two quest givers. We tend, I expect, to assume the simpler change. Perhaps we need to trust our fellow editors more. And be sure to fact-check changes. Enough, I'm rambling. RingTailCat (talk) 14:59, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Quests in Gloomglens

DId you just recently go through the Gloomglens? It seems to me that several quests have been eliminated/modified recently. The original quest to "patrol" took you to the goblin village. Now it does not... but the Goblin village has its own set of patrol points.

And the Broach isn't there any more (near the Ox shrine), and the topology seems changed.

Or am I simply "mis-remembering" things. (It has been a while since I went through this area.) - {{Unsigned|Magill|2012-08-09T11:51:21

Yes, I have just sent my Woman Hunter/Scholar through the Gloomglens. The landscape is changed a bit since I was last through here. I vaguely remember some remark in some release notes about changes to the landscape, but the whole region was also re-scaled. It seemed to be easier to get around - not so many canyon walls.

I could not find the Item:Sigil of the Rhi Helvarch to start it's quest, and I could not find a non-repeatable quest from the mayor to kill Bugans. The flow seemed a bit different as well. I think one quest moved from Echad Dagoras to Echad Idhrenfair.

With the scaling of quests and mobs from all 65 or 66 to 61-65, Enedwaith was much easier to handle solo. Especially those tough wolves in the cave (20k morale down to 8 or 9k!). Of course, without the level cap, by the time I was done I was level 67, so that made a big difference.

It is a pleasant alternative to the dreary Mirkwood to get you from about level 60 to level 65. I have always preferred the vivid colours in most of the region over the blaa scenery of Moria and Mirkwood.

- RingTailCat (talk) 15:40, 9 August 2012 (EDT)

- updated with links. Searched for patch notes relating to Enedwaith and Gloomglens. I could not find them. The re-scaling must have been a stealth update. RingTailCat (talk) 19:30, 9 August 2012 (EDT)

Rohan Maps

I added a set of maps for Rohan Category:East Rohan Maps. The Category talk page has, what I believe to be, the correct coordinates for the tooltip coords.

I don't know if you or Seth are the "responsible parties."

I have begun creating the top-level "locations" page User:Magill/Projects-ROR-Eastern-Rohan‎ I'll probably start on the regional Navigation templates tomorrow.

Beta 4 is looking "art wise" pretty finished. New icons for various crafting resources and armour appear to be in place, etc.

Biggest problem is still MTBF -- it seems to have dropped to 90 minutes from 120. And is making working in B4 absolutely painful.
Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 23:22, 30 August 2012 (EDT)

I missing Beta 3 while I was out of town, so all my characters have been wiped. The Character Copy utility is still only offering to copy characters from the old European servers, so I can't get my favourite toons to Bullroarer. It is simply not the same, playing with a character built and leveled in the Eyes and Guard Tavern. It works, but I have no rapport with the instant-rolled toons. During B2, I got caught by one of those failures: "The server is going down in 19 seconds, please find a safe place to log off". Ya, right. Given that I have not been able to successfully run the summer festival keg-races, my confidence in Turbine's software development process is challenged. I don't really plan to do anything serious for the lotro-wiki with RoR beta until perhaps early October. I will play test, and get a feel for the area, but I don't feel like documenting it twice.

- RingTailCat (talk) 04:24, 31 August 2012 (EDT)

NPC Loot Drops Wondering

Hia, while ogling at my farmer I begun reviewing creatures in the Shire and found that at many of them was added a number of equipment items. I wonder ... don't you think these are random names for randomly put together items? I mean, do you think the devs really have put together a few hundred items just for loot dropping?

I would guess they have put together an algorithm that creates those more or less on the fly, based on the creature's level, randomly pick some bonus or two which also determines the name from a few choices. If my guess is right that would mean quite a few possible permutations, hence we should not really bother creating pages for those items since they may or may not show up again. Also, there is a large risk for name<->level clashes in the longer run. But if I am wrong.... So what is your thought on this one?

Personally I never bother capturing these equipment items, so far almost nothing have been even close to what I have been wearing, including the lowest level guys. So, IMHO those pages are pretty useless anyway. One must be an über-completionist for capturing them, right?
-- Zimoon 15:19, 31 August 2012 (EDT)

You may or may not be right about what is in-game now. However you will be right about things like that when RoR is released.... or so it would appear.

The new "remote looting" option implies as much. User:Magill/Projects-Ror-blank-page#New_game_Technology_.28and_terms.29_in_RoR

"* Every player gets their own loot pull from a remote looting mob. So if you are in fellowship, you will no longer need to roll for loot… everyone will get their own."

The implication being that either NOTHING will be class/level specific, i.e. loot will only be "vendor trash" - or that it will somehow be determined to be class/level specific!
Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 15:28, 31 August 2012 (EDT)

In DDO, there is a scheme for generating equipment. When you added a specific prefix or suffix or plus, the stats changed in predictable ways.

In LOTRO, there is a similar pattern to generated equipment, so adding a prefix of "Enduring" or a suffix of "of Might" will have a very similar, but level dependent, effect on the attributes of a basic piece of equipment.

Depending on the region, or perhaps the prevailing development philosophy at Turbine, mob drops are determined by slightly different strategies. In the older regions especially, the loot tables seem to be a bit more static than in the later regions.

What is a loot table? It is a list of possible drops, with associated probabilities. Here is break-down of the drops from the Dusk-wolf Runt from the human/hobbit intro:

100%	Corpse:Dusk-wolf Runt x 8
	112%	Mangy Skin x 9
	75%	Rough Fur x 6

This shows the trophies from 8 kills. I collected 9 Item:Mangy Skins, so on average, I got slightly more than one per kill. 3/4 of the kills gave me a Item:Rough Fur.

Later in the game, the loot tables can be much more complex, and I would suggest that they are perhaps even nested, in the sense that you have a first stage probability of getting a level appropriate scholar's material, and then there is a second stage loot table that determines which of the level appropriate scholar's materials you get.

We know from release notes, that Item:Mathoms and Item:Well-kept Mathoms are random drop from humanoid mobs in certain regions and level ranges. I believe similar rules are followed for many other drops.

There are, however, very repeatable drops which look random, but are probably not. For instance, the same mobs will drop the same equipment in the Barrow Downs. In other words, when you kill the mob at a specific location, it will drop "random" loot from a fairly short pre-built loot table.

There are several reasons to care about the random drops. You might be collecting for tasks. In any given "band" you may acquire anywhere from 6 to 10 different task trophy items. If you cross band boundaries, you might double that. Typically, furs and skins are more common than ears, so if you are short on inventory space, you might want to drop the ears. If you are in a region with a lot of equipment drops, like the Barrow Downs, you need to plan your excursions and inventory management to match your task and vendor sales goals. Playing a F2P or Premium character with only 3 bags is vastly different from a VIP character with 5 or 6 bags! If you don't craft your own gear, or get it from your kin or auction, you may be dependent on loot and rewards for gear. The random loot shown for mobs may not be exactly what you will find, but it does show the range of value of the dropped equipment.

- RingTailCat (talk) 17:59, 31 August 2012 (EDT)

Thanks. I am very well aware of "loot tables" and their different implementations in several games. The question was only about equipment items, not task items nor "reputation" items nor items-for-crafting, all those seems very stable, just a matter of likelihood for a certain drop. And thus my thoughts go: are tables small enough to even be possible to track? And if they are per area and not per creature/mob, would they not rather be kept in some "summary loot drop table" per area, rather than on each creature page? If at all since the dropped equipment very seldom is worth more than what the vendor is willing to pay me for it ;)
-- Zimoon 18:33, 31 August 2012 (EDT)

This stuff always makes me think about Diablo II if I look at it too long. I agree that there's probably some finite set of suffixes that are mixed and matched to make items. I'd also be curious to see some sort of "summary loot drop table," whether per area, per creature type per area, or however it breaks down. We could then intelligently link/transclude that table from creature pages based on the entered location/level/genus/species. Would require an awful lot of research, though! Sethladan 18:45, 31 August 2012 (EDT)

To some extent, I'm an empiricist at heart. If we don't have a reported looting policy, I would like to discover it from evidence, rather than speculation. I would like to see generalizations developed, however they must be based on a body of evidence, that to date, we have not often bothered to collect.

I can't personally comment on Diablo, but I'll quiz my son, who is a dedicated player of all three editions.

- RingTailCat (talk) 18:51, 31 August 2012 (EDT)

Quote: "I would like to see generalizations developed, however they must be based on a body of evidence".

Definitely, no arguing on that one. Whoever will do it is another subject though. I was more after, is it even worth bothering with those equipment items as they seldom, if ever, are of any use. Whatever, it is bedtime for me :)
-- Zimoon 19:07, 31 August 2012 (EDT)

I could be wrong, but I believe that certain instances which drop loot at the end (e.g., School/Library) scale the equipment loot rewards depending on the level when run above level 50 (I think). That could be how they handle these world drops.

However, if you look at Lorebook entries, for example, Heavy Spiked War Axes, you'll see that there are multiple weapons at different levels and with different suffixes. So it seems to me that Turbine could have created each and every one of these items and that they're all in certain level range loot tables for creatures.

Speaking of gathering evidence, and hopefully this isn't too far off-topic, do any of you know of a plugin that will track the loot you gather from mobs? A simple chat parser should suffice. It'd just be nice to automate that instead of keeping track of it manually. Neum (talk) 09:56, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

Item:Heavy Spiked War Axe is a good example. Interesting that we don't have it, although I have seen the level 27 and the level 21 of the Goblin-wars versions. (The lorebook entry shows the lvl 32 stats when you hover over the lvl 27 item, but the lvl 21 goblin-wars stats match what I've seen.)

I have an off-line chat log parser that collects some things I am interested in. Now if there was a way of automatically turning on the chat logging when you login, I'd be much happier.

- RingTailCat (talk) 10:10, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

I do not but that would be handy. Right now I have a dedicated chat tab, filtering on Standard, and log to file. Manual inspection, which I hope to be able to script into something, maybe a neat Python script.

Typing in parallel with RTC I notice, is that parser something you could share? -- Zimoon 10:14, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

My log parser is still under active development, although the basic core classes are pretty stable. It's written in python 3 in order to handle the special characters nicely. I run it under Cygwin, but it's designed to also work with Windows and will detect an unknown platform. It has zero documentation and very few comments, just the ones it needs. It is not very elegant, or especially creative, as it uses brute force pattern matching to identify lines of interest and ignores the rest. It cracks them open with regular expressions, and passes the interesting bits off to worker methods. RingTailCat (talk) 11:07, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

Writing a Lua plugin to monitor the chat for loot messages and looted items would be trivial. This would have the same limitations as any other chat parser, though - no level information for the mob you killed and ditto for the items you loot (any of which might have the same name). With a little more investment, it might be possible to track the mobs you kill for their level, but this only helps if you loot them in the order you kill them. I also spent some time trying to decode the way that item links work in chat, but haven't gotten that down to a science yet (and that pretty much stymied my efforts with plugin development indefinitely). If that could be done, we could identify by ID which item you're looting as you're looting it, as well. Sethladan 13:35, 1 September 2012 (EDT)

New indentation : Talk:Creatures#Longer Discussion on Same-name Creatures - Zimoon 08:02, 29 September 2012 (EDT)

Quest Chain Question

Now I have stumbled on three quest chains in the Misty Mountains and all three share, per lorebook details and per my own observation, one detail: one of the initial quests is not required for the successive quests. See for example Category:Scales of Vengeance Quests, "Thorkell has Fallen" is not required for "Eliminatin the Trail", but "Business Before Vengeance" is required. Both ThF and BBV are available right away. Still it feels wrong to use the common

- ThF
- BBV
EtT

style we are using as it implies that ThF is required. Adding - Optional is of course a way to go. Or

ThF

BBV
EtT

but that also looks odd, does it not? Probably Optional is the way to go, but I want to hear your opinion as our quest-guru.
-- Zimoon 08:15, 7 September 2012 (EDT)

Oh, a shiny new title. Must use that more often.

But, yes, I have seen that pattern many times before, and endeavoured to research the relationship with later characters. BTW, I very rarely refer to the Lorebook, and have the attitude that it may have been correct at the time it was written, but may not have been as diligently maintained as our site.

We don't distinguish very well between

- ThF
- BBV
EtT

where both step one quests are required to proceed to step 2 (AND competion) and

- ThF
- BBV
EtT

where one or the other of the step one quests are required to proceed to step 2 (OR completion) nor

- ThF
- BBV
EtT

where you have to take both the quests, but you may need to only complete one of them before the step two quest is offered (AND taken).

There is a question about being technically correct regarding the quest gating, and honouring the flow of the story. Off the top of my head, and without actually offering any concrete examples, I will put forward that sometimes doing that pair of quests, more or less in parallel, advances the story in a logical way. Where there is a real problem is when one of the pair is much more difficult than the other, or requires a different size fellowship. Being able to "play through", and come back later with your fellows, or when you level up a couple of times, or just learn the right trick or get the right gear, may make the questing experience more comfortable.

When it gets so complicated that you need to think twice about documenting it, that sounds like a good time to add a note in the walkthrough&notes, or even the quest chain. I'd suggest going for the helpful rather than the technically right solution. But that's just me waiting for the Hobbit Dance Leader to teach my baby elf to dance like a hobbit.

RingTailCat (talk) 08:48, 7 September 2012 (EDT)

Yeah, maybe mention it in the walk-through is the best way. Reading "Optional" in a quest-chain will definitely raise some question marks for some readers, maybe even myself ;) But reading a few more words in a walkthrough is better, very much like Quest:Preparing for the Dark which I did yesterday, very very hard indeed :P

-- Zimoon 10:28, 7 September 2012 (EDT)

TODO

split Item:Elk-haunch into Evendim and Forochel versions.
confirm World Renowned deed text.

Bot Proposal for guild recipes

There are lots of guild recipe pages that need edits along these lines, and it seems like a good candidate for bot work. The most important are changing all of the "1 day" to {{recipe-cooldown|small}} (same for the other two cooldown sizes) and changing "Kindred" to "Artisan of the Guild" (same for all the rest of the guild rep tiers). There's a map of the old rep names to the current guild tier names partway down the page at Lotro-Wiki.com talk:Crafting. Is that something RTB could help with? -- Elinnea (talk) 14:04, 10 October 2012 (EDT)

This does look like a change that RTB could make. I may not be able to look at it for a day or two (still unpacking and getting back into the game), but it looks fairly straight forward. RingTailCat (talk) 16:19, 10 October 2012 (EDT)

Sure, no problem. It's not urgent, I've just been poking around while preparing for crafting updates with RoR, and I find the dark corners that were never cleaned out. -- Elinnea (talk) 16:26, 10 October 2012 (EDT)

Quest Icons

Just wanted to say I am sorry that I messed it up for you, hopefully the latest changes are OK after I followed up the other items as well and deleted those duplicates. I was confused about the Barter template as it requires same-name icon. We really need to merge Reward and Barter, there is really no point in having both I presume, or is there? -- Zimoon 16:56, 14 October 2012 (EDT)

Those two templates seem to be very similar. I have a suspicion that the Barter template was created due to bug in the Reward template that caused an undesirable formatting effect in the tables where Barter is often used. Maybe a stray line break at the end of the template? Or maybe it had to do with the cost of the Reward template vs the Barter template. Reward looks up the icon, while Barter calculates the icon name. I think Reward used to calculate the icon name long ago. RingTailCat (talk) 17:03, 14 October 2012 (EDT)

And I think Reward did not have the "plural" thing to alter displayed text from start. I may be wrong. Either way, something at my todo-list. Sorry again for the icon thingie. -- Zimoon 17:06, 14 October 2012 (EDT)

I suppose I should have a disclaimer on some of those pages that it is OK to delete icon files referenced from them. RingTailCat (talk) 17:17, 14 October 2012 (EDT)

Proposed bot task?

Just noticed Eggolass removing some stub/beta tags around and went to try and help but saw that the list is huuge. Its quite fair to assume that at least 90% of those are from rohan and will have to be removed (don't think there is any that doesn't, actually, only a few select pages which are using it for other non-rohan purposes), so maybe you could do that with the bot? Even if you need to go through the list to see which pages will be excluded I guess its still much less work than editing every single one :P There's 620 pages. Gwenwyfar (talk) 02:07, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

The bot present a Y/N/A/B prompt for every change. Y=make the change, N=don't make it, A=make all changes, B=open page in browser. So, I have a lot of opportunity to control what the bot does. It is very easy to direct the bot to work on all pages in a category, or a category and its sub-categories. Also, I can restrict the namespace of the pages, so, for instance, I could work on all pages in the Category:Stubs/Beta in namespace Item:.

The danger with automatic removal of the beta tag is that the beta page may reflect a version of a quest, item or whatever as it was during one of the beta cycles but not the version in the release. One would hope that the version from the latest beta would be pretty close to the release version. This applies especially to the quests and items; perhaps not so much to the articles completely written by us. I see most of them are items.

With the Rise of Isengard expansion, I believe we manually removed the beta stubs after eye-balling the release versions of quests and items. I know there were a lot more beta quests ('cause Magill and I wrote a lot of them), and less items.

I guess I am advocating caution in removing the beta tags. If we can generate a clear consensus in favour of blanket removal of the beta tags, especially from the editors who created those pages, I am willing to go ahead with a bot edit.

RingTailCat (talk) 02:36, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

To say I am ambivalent is probably the best. As RTC says, the beta tag indicates "take a second look in-game" and that will make the task daunting and will not be completed in a long time. On the other hand, having beta tags hanging around forever, and when anybody knows there is no beta around, reflects somewhat bad at this site. Hmmm, being between a rock and cliff, right?

First we should probably walk through things we are confident it has not changed and remove the beta tag, that way reduce what is left. Then we should verify the remainder things in-game. But then, what is likely to change and what not? Is there a natural sectioning of outstanding beta-pages so that we could make lists of things to do? That would ease the process for us poor editors ;)
-- Zimoon 05:53, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

I'm guessing that during beta our editors looked at the things they were interested in working with in the release version. If they are anything like me, they will be following in the footstep they laid down in beta now that the expansion is released. I'd like to think they will step up and review the beta pages they created as soon as possible. Of course, it's more fun just getting into the game for a while, but… doing the review has got to be quicker, in most cases, then doing the original page creation. Perhaps we should wait a few weeks, or a month, before rushing to remove the beta tags. There will probably be another beta cycle prior to the Yule festival. And I suspect that there will be a patch or two in the (hopefully) near future as well. RingTailCat (talk) 06:11, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

Truth. -- Zimoon 10:08, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

Yeah, you're right. It would be nice if it wasn't so hard to check (or get your hands on, for that matter) all those items and quests. I probably can't help checking much, I'm just a lvl 30, so I'll just check what I see on AH :P

I think maybe items with no stats (like components) should be safe to remove with a bot, but then again, I don't think there's a whole lot of them, so it doesn't make much difference either way.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 12:56, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

But on a different topic, there's another proposal too (I was going to do it manually before since it was going to be something different, but now a bot would probably do it better and I just check later for anything else missing): Changing all "*rare*" notes on farmer field pages to - random, and change a note that seems to be used on most pages for another. Example

Gwenwyfar (talk) 13:04, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

Whoops, the conversation is already moving on, but about the bot clearing beta tags - I'm against it for many of the reasons that Zimoon stated. I've seen some tags being removed from skills I added that I almost wish hadn't been, because I'd been planning to go back and check them against live data, but with the stubs removed it's harder to tell which still need verification.

Like RTC says, I generally added things I was interested in, which are also the things I tend to look at now that it's released, so I can check my own work. Personally, this is the only reason I add things from beta: to save myself some time now, so that I have a bit of time left to enjoy playing the game for its own sake. I'm not really adding anything new to this conversation, I guess, just want to say that I agree with the points that were made, and that I would appreciate it if people waited a bit longer before systematically taking off all the beta stubs. :) -- Elinnea (talk) 18:33, 20 October 2012 (EDT)

Oh, nevermind about the farmer proposal, there's not too many, I'll just do it myself :)

Gwenwyfar (talk) 01:13, 21 October 2012 (EDT)

Would it be possible...?

...to extract which creatures that have an inspector-level further than let's say 5 levels from the level of the creature?

Background: Today we have two pending tasks with creatures, but for the second item nobody really knows exactly where to go:

Creatures with old templates or no readings at all. --- Easy, they exist in "Category:RegionName Mob Stubs", either in as existing categories or via Wanted Categories. Thence no worries, we just need to push forward that information.
Creatures which have inspections but the LM was reading a creature much lower level (or higher) than herself, causing inaccurate readings. Finding these creatures is impossible today, other than manually browsing the pages.

I believe it would be possible to let a bot create a TODO-list for creatures with an inspector-lvl = SOMETHING and a level a bit too far off. Such as "ABS(level - inspector-lvl) > 4" or some reasonable value. However, a problem is that many creatures have "level = 32-34" or alike --- I think simply using the first value would do fine, or using the average.

I am uncertain about how far off is OK though, when does a LM reading become less accurate. My LM could see differences between same level and &plusminus; 1 compared to those 2 levels away. Not much, but variations such as Fair becoming Poor and so, almost negligible but still visible. Is 4 OK? Or 5? Or must we use 2 or 3? To begin with I think 5 would do fine. In the future, with the less to do, we may change that value.

Running a bot on "Category:Creatures by Location" and grouping the results per region would be very helpful for Lore-masters who want to help, don't you think? And save the bot-code for future runs ;)
-- Zimoon 10:58, 23 October 2012 (EDT)

With semantic mediawiki, can't we just add an annotation to levels and create a list that displays monster level and LM level from that? Don't know what would be the limitations of this, however... Just an idea, though, running the bot may be better due to the server load of creating lists :P

Gwenwyfar (talk) 11:27, 23 October 2012 (EDT)

Another issue: When I was going through Great River a couple of days ago, I re-scaled the level, morale, and power for a creature that had an LM reading on it. I wondered if I should touch that information, or if it was still gave a valid read on the relative strengths of a mob.

Actually, I seem to be able to solo every normal mob on level or even a couple or three above. Groups should be able to just wade on through. (Mind you, I am mostly playing hunters and champs.) I wonder if the value of the KoLM information is less than it used to be. Mind you, my highest LM is only 31, so I haven't really taken my squishies up against the tougher mobs.

I wonder if it might be useful to review why we inlcude this information on the creature page. Is there enough distinction in the KoLM display to allow you to choose to kill it with fire instead of ice, or to use an Ancient Dwarf damage weapon instead of a common damage weapon? What level of LM vs level of mob gives the best decision support information? Do people really care about planning battles any more? Or do they just hack and slash away until the mob is dead?

-- RingTailCat (talk) 12:34, 23 October 2012 (EDT)

Answering from the little I know, passing on the rest.

Readings are best when at same level as the creature. I can see minor differences if I go back to "the same creature" after having levelled up two levels, sometimes already after one level. Being too far off the creature will have considerably stronger or weaker defence, depending on if you are weaker or stronger than the creature level-wise. Those weak spots begin to fade in accuracy.

Good point in asking about the usefulness. For many creatures I guess the whole idea is more based on us completionists. Normal creatures, and also some weaker elites are no problem solo. I never look at these pages for normal creatures. Ever.

For elites, and certainly those a bit above your level it could make a difference. If I am defeated I go here and try to adapt somewhat, though there is not much to chose from except some buffs, as you mentioned.

For tough group encounters I advice people to at least ask their LM (or go here to have a look) for tactical advice. Rushing in without a clue, sure, you can win by brute force, but how good is that chance? Whether these pages and their readings are good or not is hard to say. Perhaps people rather look for tactics on tougher bosses, or do as most nØØbs do, die ;)
-- Zimoon 14:22, 23 October 2012 (EDT)

On some other game, I'd look creature pages all the time, but it worked differently, in lotro? Nope, never, not even for drops... Creatures in lotro are not really an important part of the gameplay or one with much secrets... At most I'll try fire or light in some mobs, but other than that I don't really care what skill I'm using as long as its dealing damage. Resistances don't even seem to make any difference in lotro... (In that other game, mobs could even have 100% resistance to something).

I can only think of it being useful to see in skirmish or dungeon mobs... More on higher levels too. At a low level its not like you have much skills to choose from, you can use all of them.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 17:21, 23 October 2012 (EDT)

I do not argue about that fact, creatures in Lotro is for the biggest part not the challenge, rather the level of elitism they have versus me or the Fellowship. In instances I have gathered it is rather the AI they have, not their LM readings as such, even if they do help to a degree. That is so sad, because Lotro has the potential to use all of that to a much higher degree to make combat more fun and challenging, I wonder why that is not the case?

However, there ARE completionists who like those pages, and who like to update them, and to read them, and to admire their work afterwards ;) We do not need to share interests. If we can we should cherish them. This is such a topic.

Why I came across creatures was mainly because of my devotion to locations, and locations have creatures, and quests relating to creatures. Secondly I am easily lured into the group of completionists at this Wiki, I need to stop that and keep up speed with game-play and locations .. having played since July last year and my highest level toon is 51, I blame the completionists :P Thirdly, I do have a LM and like her quite a lot, actually I hesitated since my experience with pets is that they easily stray away and pick up unwanted aggro. But ... then some creature pages were in bad shape (blaming Turbine here which changed the data set suddenly).
-- Zimoon 02:03, 24 October 2012 (EDT)

I agree... I hate that games nowadays seem to just like making things easier and easier. 1 year ago when I first played lotro it was harder than today, and from what I heard, this is being a constant process, with some older players saying things were much harder before. It is just silly, today you just faceroll normal mobs, in skirmishes I have to put it to tier 3 and add 2 levels above mine for it to be challenging.

Well, of course, I'm not saying that is reason to simply not have those pages or that information :)

I'm kind of a completionist too, but not that much :P I have a LM and was thinking of helping with that but I always put aside things that need me to go around the game... So I sort of always forget/leave it for later, heh.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 02:30, 24 October 2012 (EDT)

Thoughts on Playabilty

Talk about easy-mode: I just took down a 30k Warband (with 2 allies), solo, under-level, taking absolutely no damage to myself. Makes me wonder about the intended audience for the game: Tolkien did not write for that crowd!. I don't think that demographic is spending a lot of time doing research on this site. RingTailCat (talk) 02:39, 24 October 2012 (EDT)

But I think all "heroes" who feel über strong and powerful after taking down those goblins think Lotro is a great game. Endorphins from "accomplishments" have strange effects :P -- Zimoon 05:59, 24 October 2012 (EDT)

There is no sense of accomplishment (or it is greatly reduced) from something you had no effort at all to do, though. After all, if you could kill a boss with one attack, that is no accomplishment at all, just something common anyone can do without even trying.

Gwenwyfar (talk) 22:29, 24 October 2012 (EDT)

/me whisper: Gwen, I believe he meant that, how silly some combat has become. And I just spun cynically around that, using a smiley and all. -- Zimoon 02:56, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

When I started playing, most of my toons died at least once before they reached level 20. Later, most got to level 20+, but died doing skirmishes. More recently, my toons die from stupidity, either mine or theirs. I think I have incurred one death among two toons in East Rohan. I don't raid or skirmish (much), so I don't have the uber-gear. Sure, I'm more skillful, but …. With mounted combat, I have been knocked off my horse perhaps twice. The mobs are not hitting me enough to really hurt. Taking down the tough warbands (so far) is just a grind - not stategy - just kite them around and smack them until they die. The challenge of combat is missing. It's like taking a high level kinnie along to protect you while you quest - you are not in much danger, 'cause he can one-shot anything that gives you trouble. RingTailCat (talk) 03:23, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

Hehe, sorry about that, hard to get a joke on something written sometimes :P

Turbine probably thinks this is a good strategy to get more "gamer newbies" in (as, sadly, do many other games today. For lotro its probably not as bad as other games, though, because of the community it attracts, but still... When you don't have to care at all about what you're doing for most common mobs its just silly).

Gwenwyfar (talk) 04:41, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

Quests and blank lines

I've noticed that in the recent quests you've been removing the blank lines between paragraphs of dialogue text, so that all of a particular person's words are stuck together. In my opinion it's harder to read this way, and it's a break from how the older quests are formatted. I'm curious whether it's something you're changing intentionally, and why? -- Elinnea (talk) 15:57, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

Yes, I have been doing this intentionally. I believe the displayed quest box text appears identical, regardless of the presence of those blank lines. In the source, they more clearly group the dialogue lines from the billboard-only and billboard+chat log messages. I started doing that recently, i.e. since U8, because the new quests have more non-spoken parts in the dialog boxes, and there are more billboard-only and billboard+chat log messages than previous upgrades and expansions.

I don't really have a strong preference to separating paragraphs that start with a ":" with a blank line. ( Paragraphs that don't start with a : must be separated with a blank line, else they don't get recognized as paragraphs!)

I do have a stronger desire to see a blank line before headings, i.e. between the end of the background text and the "Objective 1" heading. But, one one blank line.

I do have a strong desire to see a space between the string of octothorpes and asterisks at the start of a list item.

BTW, I have not been reformatting the chat log dialogues to the accepted standard. I intend to run the bot over all the new quests to standardize the formatting at some later date. It can take a lot of manual rework to make those right, and the bot does such a nice job, if I may so so myself. Perhaps I should run it every few days instead of waiting too long.

One of the things I have noticed is the sequencing of some chat log messages vs the NPC dialogues. My position is that if the message appears in the chat log before I talk to the NPC, the chat log message goes before the current objective, rather than between the current objective and the NPC's dialogue.

Now, I like to consider myself trainable, so if I am doing it wrong, just tell me. If I can do it either way in new articles, but should leave existing ones along, just say so.

Whew, I'll bet you didn't expect that large a response! RingTailCat (talk) 16:39, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

Nah, I love getting walls of text, when I'm asking any sort of Why question. And besides, I got to look up the word "octothorpe"!

When you say that the displayed text appears identical, you mean how it displays in the wiki? I see a very definite difference between quests with a blank line before : indented lines, and those without the blank. I'm using it right here, and it adds a bit of space between the paragraphs, wheras your paragraphs look more mushed together. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, or perhaps it's a browser difference? But the extra blank line makes it more closely resemble the version in-game (making it easier to proof-read) and it also helps my eye see where the next paragraph starts (making it easier to read). It helps especially when they're small paragraphs, like this next one.

I'll happily agree about the single blank line before headings.

It's very true, if you're willing to run your bot over the So-and-so says lines, it would save quite a bit of manual work. I'll stop formatting those those too, then.

About the question you raise of where to put the NPC chat log text, I've been wondering just that thing lately, and hesitating between the two spots. I think your policy makes a lot of sense, and is easier to keep track of. It's challenging to be constantly watching for the objective to change, and listening for the little click. I'd be glad for one less thing to keep track of while a scripted quest is off and running.

As for being wrong, hey, you're the quest expert around here! When I have a quest to add I'm often running off to find an example that you've worked on, hehe. Since there have been a variety of approaches to formatting quests over the years, mostly I don't worry about little differences in quests that are already done. But it's nice to talk over something as a sort-of standard for the new quests, especially when I find myself progressing through the same quests that you are also evidently working on. -- Elinnea (talk) 17:31, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

Are there an example I may see? Not that my opinion matters much I guess ;) -- Zimoon 17:50, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

Let me see.

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OK. I see the difference now. I will put in and/or leave in the space between dialogue paragraphs.

I will run my bot later today. I'm trying to get a hunter to level 40, playing with my wife's burg, right now. RingTailCat (talk) 18:01, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

LOL, I meant a quest, but fair enough, a Latin lesson has never killed anybody, perhaps put a few to sleep, but not an eternal sleep. Yes, between paragraphs of the same style there need to be a white space. Certainly so if no : or ; are used, or any other mark-up that automatically creates some paragraph delimiting. I just found a quest (Quest:Expedition to the East Wall - while searching for an example) which did not even have space between common lines, which made them really flow together in a horrible way. I indeed hope Garabrand made a one-time mistake. -- Zimoon 18:08, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

Heh, I went to find an example, and come back to find edit conflicts from both of you replying since I left. Since I dug them up, here's one that bothered me: Corudan's Objective 3 text at Quest:Chapter 3: The River-walker, as compared to Objective 2 at Quest:Chapter 7: Shadow of the Argonath. But it looks like we agree, so I don't have to push it any farther. :) -- Elinnea (talk) 18:12, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

No, it seems we agree and I think it was just an oversight at RTC's side. However, it is good you picked it up, there may very well be display differences between different browsers and also operating systems -- thinking of Magill who clings to his old Mac ;) -- so that what looks great at one screen does not look so great at everybody else's screens. Thanks! -- Zimoon 18:29, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

Actually it was a quite deliberate error on my part. If you are editing for another reason, please fix up, else I will walk over all the ones I have done recently and fix. RingTailCat (talk) 19:14, 25 October 2012 (EDT)

Just wanted to comment and say that I agree with most RTC's first comment. Personally I like to group objective-header with its dotted list and following first dialogue-paragraph by not having a blank line, they are pertaining one to another, but I don't have a strong preference really. But before such a group, yes, otherwise it won't be a group.

I fully agree on the chat-messages, if I am focused I always listen to that special "ping" when the quest updates to make sure what isn the chat log and what not. Not doing that it is easy for editors to look at screenies afterwards, and then nothing tells what and when. However, sometimes -- very very few -- it seems that the chat is at random altering between a number of sentences, spanning over more than one objective, and then I guess it will be at random which line goes where -- exceptions though. And finally, no, I am not hunting those quests .. yet ;) -- Zimoon 05:07, 26 October 2012 (EDT)

Some chat log messages are associated with the quest, while others are associated with the NPC. Also, quest generated messages are visible to everyone, so you might also be seeing the messages that are appropriate for someone else's quest! Nothing is as easy as it seems at first glance. RingTailCat (talk) 06:27, 26 October 2012 (EDT)

Log in woes

Due to a minor error on my part, I have had to refresh the saved passwords in my browser (Firefox).

When I logged out of lotro-wiki, and tried to log back in, for some reason the first attempt (or two) failed, and I was presented the cat/dog box as well as the familiar userid/password boxes. My correct password was not accepted. I tried the password reset mechanism, but trying with that password failed (still a cat/dog box). I'm then got the too many recent logins message.

Beside the cat/dog box is a help link that leads to a Microsoft Research site. They say "Our site is temporarily down for maintenance." This leads me to wonder if the cat/dog box is working for anyone at all right now.

I am afraid I have nothing nice to say about a security system that gets in the way of legitimate log in attempts. Perhaps I have been incredibly lucky in the past in that I first signed up before the cat/dog feature, and have, until today, always successfully entered my password, when requested, on the first try.

The login retry delay has expired, so I am back in. But, I am not impressed with the frustrating difficult I encountered. It feels like it is a barrier to entry for new users. Would it not be less exclusionary to make it easier to sign up? In turn, perhaps we could more severely restrict the ability for newer members to enter the external links that spammers crave.

-- RingTailCat (talk) 13:09, 5 November 2012 (EST)

Bot job ?

Do you know if it would be possible to run a bot and compile a list of all pages with parentheses in their names AND the pages do not utilize the Other-template? I guess it would be possible, right?

Why? Because I frequently find pages that should link to each other bot...eeh...but do do not. I think NPCs and creatures would do for a starter, but not "items" and "files" (as in images and icons). And, this is not hurry, we both have items at our todo-lists I guess, so.... But in the long run.
-- Zimoon 05:57, 10 November 2012 (EST)

I have had problems getting my bot to drive off a search. It didn't work for me, but I did not try too hard to make it work. But, given a page list, we can use off-line tools to do the search.

An couple of examples (even after you have fixed the pages) would be useful. I'm guessing you are thinking about creature pages, although items also suffer from this kind of problem. It arises due to imperfect knowledge. We are operating in hind-sight mode: if we had known there would be two or three different Half-orc Archers in different regions (Dunland, Enedwaith, Rohan) with very different levels, when we saw the first one, we would have named them differently, and added Other templates earlier. Some are even worse, with variant stats when they show up in instances as well! Or consider the Eastemnet Boar, that scales across (at least) levels 76 to 84.

One thing to think about is creating a hidden category. Unfortunately, adding and removing a hidden category from a page might result in excessive edits. So, that does not sound like a good idea.

Maybe pulling a page list into a sandbox page containing a list of article references. (A sandbox page might be better than trying to work with an off line file of page references due to shared access.) I think I can work through all the articles referenced from a specific page. Perhaps start with a page of links to all creatures. Manually edit that to make a new page with just the ones with a parenthesis in name. Then search every one of those pages for a Template:Other reference, and remove those from the page list. (I can do that in my editor, or using some *nix tools.) In the end, we have a page containing references to a list of pages of interest. What do you do then? Manually fix them?

-- RingTailCat (talk) 09:09, 10 November 2012 (EST)

You are correct, the idea came from walking over creature pages and it is not uncommon I find pages that should have had an Other-link to either a creature page or an NPC page. Or both. The only way to get a "hint" is when finding a ()-page but no other, thus using search and see if there is one or not. Actually, there are a few page with () but no doubles, possibly somebody thought the double would show up but did not.

I nowadays add items with (Level X) right away, at least loot-drop items. Names seems to be recycled for certain attribute combinations, as you suggested in a talk a while ago. No worries, I can live without perfection too ;)
-- Zimoon 14:04, 10 November 2012 (EST)

Quest location categories

I have a question about the location categories that are manually added to quests. Are those always the starting area? Landmark? Is it the starting location but not the ending location? I tried to look for an explanation, but couldn't find it on the help pages or boilerplates I looked at. -- Elinnea (talk) 11:02, 12 November 2012 (EST)

I think it is intended to be the starting location, and never the ending location. I recall a long discussion about changing the template to generate these categories automatically, however, as I recall, there are problems with the accuracy or reliability of that field. There would be a lot of manual clean-up required. For instance, how do you recognize and deal with quests started by dropped item which is dropped by one of several different mobs throughout a fairly large area: e.g. Quest:Something Rotten

A complicating consideration is that the phasing technology means that the NPC quest granter may not be present, or even that NPC's location may not be accessible, unless you are at the appropriate place in a quest chain. This makes the meaning of the starting location less well defined than it was prior to phasing. Then, the NPC usually existed, but did not offer the quest; now, the NPC may not be present, or may even be somewhere else.

I believe the correct thing to do was to manually place the quest in a category determined by the location name under the radar at the time the quest is granted. With the introduction of landscape quests, this location has been muddied, as the quest is now granted out of thin air in response to some event: nearness to warband, specific location, completion of previous quest. And you may have moved from the granting location when you accept the landscape quest.

While writing up new quests for the Riders of Rohan expansion, I have not always followed my own guidelines strictly. I have been categorizing quests granted in settlement interiors to the settlement: for instance, using Category:Cliving Quests instead of Category:Mead Hall of Cliving Quests for Reeve Athelward's quests.

My thought process involves asking such questions as: What is better than nothing? What is most useful? How many members will the category have (Categories of one are useless!)?

-- RingTailCat (talk) 14:09, 12 November 2012 (EST)

Ok, thanks. Honestly, I rarely use these categories for quests, so mostly I'm concerned with not completely messing up the structures that are already in place. I've noticed you adding the remotely granted quests to Category:Landscape Quests. If more specificity is needed than that, maybe they could be grouped as "East Rohan Landscape Quests", or even "Norcrofts Landscape Quests". At the moment the number of these quests is still relatively small I think - it might not be easy to tell what categories will be most useful until we get another region or two that makes use of the new technology. -- Elinnea (talk) 18:11, 12 November 2012 (EST)

I am still discovering the different kinds of landscape quests. I think I have classified some as landscape which should not be - maybe on a second pass, or a pass by a second set of eyes, we will clean up the category. I have been adding anything that starts from the Quest Action Button box as a landscape quest. Most of them clearly are landscape quests, but some, especially that quest chain for the kid's toy sword in Entwash Vale did not feel quite right as landscape quest.

The quests that start due to acquisition of an item are much like the traditional quests - it is just that you do not manually loot a corpse so you are not stopped when you get the item - you could be in the middle of a battle, or riding across the plain. There are other quests that seem more clearly landscape quests. They are the ones that are granted due to proximity to something, like a warband or a landmark.

-- RingTailCat (talk) 18:41, 12 November 2012 (EST)

The whole idea of Location Categories for Quests is new. Only dating back to this summer sometime as I recall. And I find them to be at best misleading, more often than correct and useful.... but that's a separate issue.

Landscape quests are defined as "Any quest automatically generated" (and accepted if you have the right box checked!) See: Automatic Quest Bestowal -- the term "Landscape Quest" was coined and used throughout the Beta to describe them, although not necessarily accurately. :) Techincally, they (and the category) should be called "Automatically Bestowed Quests."

I believe there are only two types:

Location specific -- triggered when approaching a specific location -- such as the Brigand's Lair in the Langhod Arc. Quest: Crime at the Farmlands.
MOB specific -- typified by Warbands, but potentially others, again in the Langhold Arc: Quest: An Unnerving Display of Confidence (The trigger and trigger point for this particular quest have moved several times.) Another type, Quest:Vengeance for Elthengels or Quest:A Lot of Bull is triggered by an encounter with a roving MOB.

Other than the "big button," neither type is different from those which have existed before which triggered the "stuffed backpack" icon in your alerts, to notify you that you needed to accept a quest, typically from a MOB drop.

I just noticed that the page Entwash Vale has a alphabetic quest list, instead of simply transcluding the page Category: Entwash Vale Quests, which it strangely calls "starting quests." The real problem here is that neither list is "accurate." -- The "alpha list" matches your quest guide, but it gives you no clue as to how you might "pick-up" missing quests. The Category listing however, is, even more than in Dunland, absolutely necessary to figure out which quest you have to complete BEFORE you can get the next one. The Quest Gating in Rohan is merciless! I suspect that a better term than "starting quests" might be "Quests in Sequence of availability." Or a heading like ... to find the next quest to be done, look in this list.

And then there is Hybold... Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 18:01, 13 November 2012 (EST)

Fine grain location classification of quests is not so useful now as it may be for quests in non-phased areas. Due to phasing, you have to be at the right place in one of many active quest arcs to be offered a quest. It used to be, if you could get to the location of the quest giver, there he was, but with no ring. Now, in the phased areas, the quest givers move around, and appear or not depending on hidden variables. This makes the work we do with quest gating and sequencing even more important than it was.

Due to the complex hidden variables that control the presence of quest givers, and when they offer quests, I believe it is very important to have two lists of quests. One, being the simple level+name sorted list as one sees in the quest log; and another being the quest arcs.

I think that the two listings are required to meet two significantly different needs of our viewers. The simple level-name list is necessary to allow one to easily compare the quest log with available quests, particularly when you are stuck and wondering if it's you or the game that has a problem. The sequencing list is necessary as you progress through the quests, following the story.

It may be that we will need to swap the location of the two lists for some areas. But that is more an organizational issue than a content issue.

-- RingTailCat (talk) 18:34, 13 November 2012 (EST)

I totally agree. Especially for Rohan. The constant chatter in chat is -- "I'm in xxx but nobody has any quests for me!" I suspect that we need to modify the format of the "Quest" section of the Location pages to indicate that there are two lists - one the "Quest Log" list, and one the "Quest Sequence list."

I'm still not settled in my new place although I finally do have Internet access on a "consistent" basis (FIOS), even though it is far more spastic than my old DSL line was. (I.e. constant hang-ups with routers showing up via Trace Route. ... Plus, Apple has "recalled" my iMac because of a bad Segate Disk drive, a swap that should have only taken about 45 minutes is now working on 3 days ... sigh. And to make matters worse, a friend has conned me into playing ChefVille2 with them -- seriously buggy Flash game, but it has been educational. Makes me want to look at the time line to see which came first, Turbine's DDO Store or Zenga's Facebook games. And since playing ChefVille, I realize where the moaning and groaning of the salamanders in the Rohan Beta Came from -- definitely from ChefVille, where every "diner" groans after they eat -- very different than the environment everybody pointed to from the Sims. Interesting. Oh well, have to relinquish the Laptop I've borrowed to "catch-up." Later... Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 13:08, 16 November 2012 (EST)

Raids -- is that your expertise too?

If so, see https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php?title=Talk:Raids&curid=7683&diff=538756&oldid=384738&rcid=629425
I have no idea what to say there. -- Zimoon 03:26, 20 November 2012 (EST)

Not really, but that's never stopped me before. RingTailCat (talk) 04:08, 20 November 2012 (EST)

timestamp test

posting time is 02:05 MST (America/Edmonton in preferences) preview shows "04:05, 20 November 2012 (EST)" RingTailCat (talk) 04:05, 20 November 2012 (EST)

posting time is 02:07 MST (America/Edmonton in preferences) preview shows "04:07, 20 November 2012 (EST)" RingTailCat (talk) 04:07, 20 November 2012 (EST)

Lottery Prizes

I noticed that Category:Lottery Prizes now contains more than 200 items. Do you think we would have any benefit from creating sub-categories for those items, per lottery type? Such as Lottery of Thanks and other event-based lotteries, the level-based named lotteries, etc.?

I am not entirely sure about it, in one way it would be nice to see which items may be given when, on the other hand it will be even more to maintain for the editors. Also, some prizes may be handed out during many lotteries but not at each every, forcing us to add those to many sub-categories rather than the main category. Perhaps it is just simpler to mention lottery type in the info at each page?
-- Zimoon 15:20, 24 November 2012 (EST)

Categorizing an item as a lottery prize is secondary to its other categorizations. This is simply a quick and easy way to indicate that the item was offered as a lottery prize at some point. As you have, I believe, noticed, sometimes the stats for a lottery prize item are different from the stats for the regular in-game item, usually a crafted item. I am not sure if this is by design, or a consequence of item versioning, where the crafted item is the latest version, but the lottery prize is the earliest version. This is one of those bizarre consequences of having multiple items with the same name. So, you have a WTF moment when you find something in your inventory that has different stats than you expect, you look on the wiki, see the Lottery Prizes categorization, and it becomes an Ah Ha moment.

I don't see any benefit of sub-categorizing the Category:Lottery Prizes category. I really do not have a problem with large categories. Look at Category:Normal Difficulty and similar categories for examples of huge categories. Really, categories are more like keywords or tags. They are meant to be large. You use set logic at query time to drill down to items of interest. Things like Great River Slayer Deeds are the pre-joined result of a query for the intersection of the set of Great River Deeds and the set of Slayer Deeds. See my page User:RingTailCat/Sandbox-2#DynamicPageList for examples of how this works.

-- RingTailCat (talk) 20:39, 24 November 2012 (EST)

OK. I did not think of the category growing big, rather, is item X likely to drop from any lottery, or just from one or a few particular types. E.g. it seems Fireworks just drop from certain "event/holiday lotteries", etc. That was the sole meaning behind the original question, is it interesting to know "from which" lottery something might come, or not? Plus, I have noticed you track lottery prizes in a sandbox so I thought you has an interest in this. For me it is simplest to use a standard category.
-- Zimoon 05:41, 25 November 2012 (EST)

Tracking the actual lotteries is not so interesting as I thought it might be. Now, the simple fact that something may have been a lottery prize is perhaps still interesting, but which and when; not so interesting. RingTailCat (talk) 06:42, 25 November 2012 (EST)

Update 9 completely revises Stable-master window and Travel structure

See: User_talk:Magill#Update_9_completely_revises_Stable-master_window_and_Travel_structure

Mist

Your new cat picture made me laugh. Today I was using the computer at my grandfather's house, and one of his cats was climbing all over my lap and nosing my mouse hand. I finally banished him to the floor when he was drooling on the mouse. Oh, cats. At least it's nice to feel wanted. -- Elinnea (talk) 23:10, 28 November 2012 (EST)

Several years ago, I was sick for almost a year. Mist was my nurse. She would come and check on me several times a day, and keep me company for hours on end. Now she helps me on the computer. Most of the time it's no problem, but I use the arrow key cluster to move, so if I end up doing a lot of exploring, she will settle down with her head on the back of my wrist. Again, no problem, until I need to fight a mob! You never get bored with cats around. RingTailCat (talk) 00:21, 29 November 2012 (EST)

LUA question

I have not played anything with LUA but remember you once wrote you had a script or alike you run when logging in. Is it possible to make something to auto-run at login? or did you just have "something" you always manually run at login? Thanks in advance! -- Zimoon 12:38, 30 November 2012 (EST)

As far as scripting extensions go, the Lua scripting plugins are severely limited. They cannot push keys on you behalf. As a result, they cannot automate multiple actions, or automatically respond to certain conditions. At least that was the impression I gained when I was first trying out the features.

They can execute a number of interesting things in response to a chat command or a button press. I use the "Travel" plugin (found on https://www.LotroInterface.com) for my hunters. It places a suitcase icon on the screen that will pop up a list of all my travel skills, including milestone, housing and hunter wayfaring skills. It lets me save all those quickslots that used to be filled with rarely used wayfaring skills.

The other plugin I use all the time is one I wrote (really cut, paste and edited) that runs for every character at startup. It collects some info and puts it where I can find it to make a last login report, and it pops up a dialog box with a reminder to do certain things I want to do every time I start a session, like activate the Find the Path, Track Wood, and Stance: Precision skills for a Hunter. I don't think I could make the plugin activate those skills automatically, but popping up a message box, helps me to not forget to activate them.

My script executes some actions at start up, and again in response to chat window commands.

At start up, the Travel plugin performs initialization and puts its button on the screen. The rest of its activity is a result of interacting with its button and windows.

But, like I said above, the ability of Turbine's Lua scripts are very much less powerful than the scripting facilities you find in some other games, where using a plugin can make a huge difference in your ability to play the game. Turbine's scripting facility seems more oriented to adding convenience functions: alternate presentations of information and buttons.

The LUA API in LOTRO is "prohibited" from providing any kind of "macro" capabilities by the EULA and TOS. Consequently, as RTC points out, you cannot automatically execute any command. However, the LUA can "respond" to conditions but not perform actions. Classic example is "BuffBars" which dynamically displays any buffs or debuffs you have active and provides a "time remaining" slider for each... but it can't pop-a-potion for you!

As for "auto-run at login" -- it depends on what you mean. You can define which Lua's you want to load when you load a specific character (or all). These Lua's will execute and "do their thing" when that particular character loads. Many of them will "default" to displaying their "main screen" when you first login... Travel, AltInventory, and Lotropad are three that I use which do this. LotroPad is a "scratch pad" which allows you to write notes to yourself -- which are visible to all toons on your account on that server. ...however, you can "extend" that to all servers you have toons on by the judicious application of "symbolic links" (Unix/OSX term -- don't know what the Windows equivalent is). HOWEVER... keep in mind the fact that the Turbine Client is a 32 bit client which uses roughly 3.99GB WITHOUT any Plugins -- that's the reason why it crashes so often currently, and why Turbine requires that any reported crashes be reported on clients running WITHOUT any Plugins! Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 00:59, 1 December 2012 (EST)

Thanks for feedback. OK, you confirmed my thoughts. -- Zimoon 06:03, 1 December 2012 (EST)

A simple question...

I just got around to completing Volume III Book 6, which I though I had done at least once before. (Both on Bullroarer and on live, but maybe not.)

Boy do I NOT remember any of this!!!
Is it my imagination or is the end of book six (the deed) REALLY obtuse? Zero "pointers" in-game about what to do next; virtually invisible rings on quest givers for the deed... how on earth did you ever find them the first time around! (I don't know what I would have done without your quest descriptions on the Wiki), and even then I took me almost an hour to find The first one (Gamal) -- It also took me ages to find the actual deed in the deed log -- none of the quests associated with the Deed would pop-up in the quest tracker until you had accepted them... but when you completed the deed, "go visit Nona" did again appear.

An example, I just was walking with Nona through the rush gore and was jumped by a couple of Easterlings. Now I'm supposed to talk to her again, but have no idea WHERE she went (I got interrupted by a phone call and "blinked")... and even though the tracker says talk to Nona... no ring appears. I'm playing with the Mac Client, which has pretty high graphics resolution -- the Rushgore is FULL of tall reeds which completely obscure visibility... so I've had to Switch graphics options and disable "frills" trying to find her. Even then, she (and her ring were not visible until I got right on top of her, at the base of the rock pile.

So, I guess my main question is ... is this normal? or is it something I need to bug? ... I believe this quest/instance was one that during the beta had an assortment of Video issues.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 13:59, 16 March 2013 (EDT)

Hmmm... just noticed: some of the dialog apparently no longer exists...

Nona says, "Do you feel that?"

Nona says, "I don't feel safe here, <name>. Let us go up among the rocks."

Have to quit and run it again with logging on.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 14:02, 16 March 2013 (EDT)

Aha... that happened when "I blinked" -- if I had followed her at that time, it would have been easy :)

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 14:05, 16 March 2013 (EDT)

ARGH... turned frills back on -- chased the Captain and "thought" I went in a straight line so "theoretically" turned around to run back... wrong-o!! edge of the instance.... ghads... had to turn frills off again!

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 14:13, 16 March 2013 (EDT)

As I recall, and it was some time ago when I last ran that instance, I also lost track of Nona when I went after the easterling captain, and had a hard time finding Nona again. The second time I ran it, I knew I would likely loose track of Nona, and was more careful about noting where I should go after chasing the easterling. I recall a very panic-like feeling that she was going die at the hands of the nazgûl, and I would have to start over. That real-world response to the game: emotional reactions, jumping when a mob comes around a corner, disorientation peering over a long drop, desperate fights and flights, have all helped to keep the game real for me.

I vaguely recall that if you got far enough away from Nona, a quest arrow popped up in the radar. (Or maybe I tried to find that quest arrow by trying to get far enough away for it to pop up.) At least the terrain was familiar from traversing it on quests, so I was not completely lost.

I think there were some variations in the dialog, perhaps depending on how close you were to the action and how quickly you performed the quest objectives; but perhaps also due to versioning or updates. I have a feeling that Nona's plight is part of the drama, rather than a combat event, so getting lost and taking a long time to get back to her may not effect the outcome of the instance.

It would be interesting to hear if it was possible to fail the instance, except as a result of defeat in combat.

RingTailCat (talk) 16:56, 16 March 2013 (EDT)

Eaworth expansion/cleanup

Hopefully I'm not stepping on your pages, as I note that "you were there last week" :) I've been both questing in Eaworth and "filling in the blanks" (lots of images, mainly) for the Eaworth pages.

I made the Category:Eaworth Quests and Category:Eaworth NPCs transclusion.

AND have created a new page The Riders Four (the text is from the pre-release press release for Riders of Rohan (In the News/Riders of Rohan). As well as created and transcluded the Riders quest page across all.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 02:22, 6 April 2013 (EDT)

My available time for playing has gone way down recently. As well, for the last few months, I have been focusing on playing lower level characters, where they can actually get into dangerous situations with mobs that have a good chance to defeat them, unless I play well. I tend to "Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it."

If you are able, please try to fill in the Quest:A Frightened Child and Quest:Little Comfort, as the first seems to have bugged out for my top two toons, so I can't do the second. My next toons still have a way to go. Go ahead and finish up Quest:Resupplying the Line as well, as life is too short for me to fool around with quests that belong in some other game or on a game box. Likewise, there are some other quests that can't be completed when I play using the keyboard only.

My version of the new quest boilerplate includes that under construction template, so I don't forget to mark a quest as under construction if I save the page before completing the quest. My authoring style is to do the quest page as I do the quest. If I miss something, I can cancel the quest and have a second crack at it. Now, when I stop playing, I save the incomplete quest page on the wiki. I used to take tons of screenshots, but invariably I missed some critical dialogs. For a time, I saved incomplete quests to my local disk instead of the wiki,

I've gone through a number of quests and replaced the under construction template with the quest stub template, but I left a few that I thought I might get back to, and may have missed some others. If I haven't worked on a quest for a while, it is fair game for any editor to finish it.

RingTailCat (talk) 06:35, 6 April 2013 (EDT)

Wildermore

Can you check User:Eleazaros/coords.js and see my typo? (or whatever?)

Forlaw for example, finds the Forlaw map, but not getting the "swirlie."

However, if you mouse over the Wildermore coords, it can't find the map file Category:East Rohan Maps

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 00:39, 1 May 2013 (EDT)

I edited the User talk:Eleazaros/coords.js page to add rows for the Wildermore and Forlaw maps.

Your changes to the JavaScript code look just fine. That suggests there is a difference between the files. As I recall, the link to the file in the js code occurs at a level below the wiki code which changes spaces in file names to underscores. When we look at the files at the wiki level, the names look identical due to this space/underscore equivalence, but the actual file names may be different. You may need to delete the File:Wildermore map.jpg page and recreate it as the File:Wildermore_map.jpg page, or perhaps the other way around. It seems to me there are two files involved with an image: the text wiki page (where the categories go), and the actual binary image file. There may be a difference depending on if you create the page as a wiki page and then upload the image, or upload the file first. Also, check that both the files on your local machine have or don't have an underscore. Also, be careful of browser caching of both images and js code. Hope this helps; good luck.

- RingTailCat (talk) 06:27, 1 May 2013 (EDT)

I ran across a similar problem when linking to uploaded icon files for the new One Fund promotional cloak. In my case, the problem turned out to be I had uploaded the files first before creating the pages they link to. My image editor had saved the files as .PNG instead of .png, and the wiki upload script kept the file extension as this since it did not have pre-existing missing links to tell it to change the file extension as well. When I created the content pages, they could not find the icon files because they were looking for all lower-case file extension. The easy fix was moving the icon files to new page with .png extension, but this points out that the relevant scripts are also case-sensitive.

--Shardis (talk) 10:20, 1 May 2013 (EDT)

So far no cigar ...

both files File:Forlaw map.jpg and File:Wildermore map.jpg are sitting on my Mac with underscores not spaces "_map"
I deleted and re-uploaded Wildermore map -- AFTER changing the name on my Mac to "MAP-Wildermore.jpg" (how I store them for archival) and re-uploaded it using the "Destination filename" field to give it the name "Wildermore map.jpg" so that it had no underscore in the file name... no change.
I still don't understand why no swirlie for the Forlaw tooltips coords.

Argh... found out what is happening, but not what is going on!!!

If I copy and paste "Wildemore" from the "case "Wildermore":" line IN THE PREVIEW section ... when I paste it into the ^{[39.5S, 60.8W]} "phrase" it shows up as ^{[39.5S, 60.8W]} (spaces around " Wildermore ") --- but doing a copy and paste from the EDIT window of the js page does not do that. These spaces (and they do appear to be spaces, not a "del" or other unprintables) -- and copy and paste from the edit window into emacs doesn't show anything (except that the "prefix" to those two case statements is "different" (but so is "Wold").

I sent Seth an email to see if he has a guess what is happening.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 12:58, 1 May 2013 (EDT)

This is really weird ... now that I visited the js test page (the talk page) and checked the swirlies for Forlaw... they now all work on the Forlaw page! Maybe I was just not seeing the swirlie because of the snow!?! Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 13:07, 1 May 2013 (EDT)

Thanks for the email, and sorry you guys ran into trouble with this! I have found that, when dealing with CSS, JS, and even templates, a significant deal of patience is often required while the various systems admire each other's new cosmetics or something. Looks like you got the maps and the tooltip coords to work, though, so hopefully it was just a combination of caching and (possibly?) those little copy-and-paste typos that will get you every time.

As an aside, I was never terribly fond of that swirly gif and found it pretty difficult to see most of the time. Definitely understandable that it might be overlooked when laid against the snow. Carry on, soldiers. :) Sethladan 13:56, 1 May 2013 (EDT)

Anyone thought about replacing the swirly gif with something that shows up better? I also have trouble seeing it sometimes. Maybe replace it with a throbbing dot in a vivid color (or solid dot if don't want an animated gif). --Shardis (talk) 15:50, 1 May 2013 (EDT)

It appears that both maps are now working correctly... No idea why, unless it truly is/was a cacheing issue.

Just to remember -- once U11 goes live, we will need new copies of the maps for

File: East Rohan map.jpg
File: Wold map.jpg
File: Norcrofts map.jpg -- note this map has been bugged and will probably change again ("To Wildermore" is obscured by pull-downs.)
File: Entwash Vale map.jpg

all have new links to Wildermore. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 22:34, 1 May 2013 (EDT)

After reading the above note about both maps now working, I revisited the User talk:Eleazaros/coords.js page. The Forlaw maps worked, but the Wildermore maps still gave an error pop up. I opened the Firefox options, and cleared the cached web content. I exited all instances of Firefox, and revisited the test page. Now both maps work correctly for me. RingTailCat (talk) 03:17, 2 May 2013 (EDT)

I like your additions to the "test page" (User talk:Eleazaros/coords.js) good stuff to remember! Clearly, the cacheing business is something that we don't understand (and routinely forget about) -- why some things change on a simple page reload (i.e. preview or save) and others do not. And, I suspect, that these effects are browser specific.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 10:05, 2 May 2013 (EDT)

New Quest System

Elluu,
Regarding the new quest quest systems, auto-bestowed and varied levels, and trying to look ahead ... are there any new strategies you can think of regarding bestower, level, group, etc.? So far we have seen the Yule Festival quests are auto-bestowed and at least the two I have seen had varied levels. I guess we need a category for auto-bestowed quests, but then, should we try to foresee subcategories or should we wait?

I guess the bigger question is, what is beneficial to have categories for, from a pragmatic/practical aspect. I mean, probably some will be auto-bestowed because of reaching a level, and I guess those would be better kept in a category for level-up-bestowals. Others will be because of festivals/events. They may be regional. Class. Vocation/profession. Etc. But what is useful, and what is just theoretical/philosophical? ;-)

Also, what "terms" is better to establish early on? Your "Auto-bestowed" is spot on, and combined with the group-name it is informative. But others? I am not English native so I often struggle with these things and rather ask others to do the thinking ;)

Either way, I created a new category, plus a redirect from "Auto-bestowed" to Automatic Quest Bestowal. -- Zimoon 11:14, 18 December 2012 (EST)

I have seen several different kinds of remote bestowal quests (not all of them new!):

landscape quests bestowed when you arrive at a geographic location. A Lot of Bull
dungeon or instance quests are bestowed when you enter a dungeon or instance, they are a variant of the landscape quests.
slayer quests bestowed when you defeat the first of several enemies Nothing But a Nuisance
collection quests bestowed when you collect the first of several items. Threads of the Past or The Search for an Antidote
level-up quests bestowed when you reach a certain level. Destination: Lone-lands or Destination: Evendim

All of these have additional restrictions or pre-requisites, such as your level, your location, your quest history, your quest pack or expansion status. I am sure we will see more trigger types as we go along.

Another term for these quests is remote bestowal quests. You are remote from an NPC when the quest is bestowed. The ethereal dungeon master gives you a new mission in life.

The way quests finish can now be different. Formerly, you took almost all quests to an NPC to turn in and get your reward. Most of the rest completed when you left an instance or dungeon. There were a very few quests that auto-completed in the landscape. Now, there are many more quests which auto-complete, i.e, they do not require any action on your part to complete. This is different from the quests which are manually completed using the Quest Action Button. As far as I can tell, quest completion will not place quest rewards into the pending loot container, so you must have space in the regular bags for any quest rewards. And, of course, you must choose your own reward.

The term auto-bestowal should probably be reserved for quests that have no bestowal dialog. They just appear in your quest log. Likewise, auto-complete quests should require no interaction to complete.

Turbine seems to use remote bestowal, and that makes a certain amount of sense for quests that are bestowed remotely from any NPC, but do require that you accept or decline the quest. Remote completion would be the term for quests that require some interaction to complete, out in the landscape.

I'm not sure how important the actual mechanism of quest bestowal is. More important is the flow from quest to quest; the quest (story) arc which has more-or-less replaced the quest chain.

The pattern of quest flow seems to use quest clusters. You receive the first one or two quests in a cluster. As you work through them, you may acquire some more landscape quests, possibly including one which leads you to the next cluster of quests. This pattern was very noticeable in Category:Eaves of Fangorn Quests.

RingTailCat (talk) 12:03, 18 December 2012 (EST)

The thought which immediately comes to mind -- I would simply leave Festival Quests as Category:Festival Quests and not try to include them in any other grouping as they are in fact, unique. Anything else is simply muddying the water. The thing I would recommend here is to use as a pattern: Category:Summer Festival Quests and transclude that into the Summer Festival page.

As for quests which are automatically bestowed... I don't know that they really deserve their own Category, as we don't really provide any separate category for NPC specific quests. One assumes that we will see more of this kind of thing in the Future... plus as we see with Update 9, Turbine is likely to change certain automatically bestowed quests into NPC quests if/when they are critical to "quest gating." I.e. the Langhold Quest Arc "Quest:An Unnerving Display of Confidence" is now NPC bestowed.

Level specific?, there are apparently two kinds here -- those which are typically bestowed with the receipt of some in-game mail message. And those which are bestowed by some NPC -- typically a Class Trainer. I don't know that there is any differentiation needed beyond what we already provide for Quest Levels. We have Category:Class Quests which appears to adequately cover those. Others, such as from "G" or from Galahdril are tied to the Epic line or purchase of the particular expansion. i.e. do you get them even if you did not purchase the expansions or are they "enticements" to get you to buy them? And, now that the levels of the areas have been lowered, have those 3 quests also been initiated at a lower level?

The idea that "quests" are level related in Instances is not particularly valid as they are really related to "difficulty" level of the Instance.

The overall issue of Categories is still with us -- We don't really have a rationalized (tree structured?) Category system where one can figure out what category to look for. One usually stumbles into a category rather than logically finding it. ... Or that is what it always seems to me. I never seem to be able to guess what is a reasonable Category... and the search function doesn't provide a mechanism for them... you simply find them buried inside the listing of 200 or so other not really relevant "Items."

Race... have to read RTC's reply. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 12:22, 18 December 2012 (EST)

One thing to note: Turbine is anything but consistent in their use of terms. Frequently there is surprisingly little communication between the Devs and the Community support folks. The Update 9 changes of Festival tokens is a good case in point. The Release notes (written by the Community Support folks) said one thing, pretty succinctly, but as it turned not NOT correctly according to the Dev who corrected the explanation. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 12:29, 18 December 2012 (EST)

LOL just found another version of the term... The Update 9 Release notes call them "New auto-bestow quests". Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 12:37, 18 December 2012 (EST)

Since I have yet just seen a few I cannot really comment but I believe we will only going to confuse people if we try to be too precise with the terms. The "Auto-bestowed" you phrased somewhere is brilliant, it does not state that you accepted it, but you are bestowed the quest at your discretion. Only if you also have ticked "auto-accept" the quest will end up in the quest-log, am I wrong?

Neither do I think we need to complicate the "Auto-bestowed" phrase as such with details of circumstance, those are inferred from other details, right? I doubt many players will ponder long whether there is an ethereal NPC somewhere, or of they just happened to come across a note at the ground, or whatever they imagine. I was more interested in how to prepare for categories and sub-categories, what would be really useful and what would not. I do not like "Remote bestowal" as it implies there is always somebody remotely located, and I think that is not true, some quests I would rather imagine I found something by chance and ... The big blue button reads "Quest(s) Available" which is fine, neutral and does not imply neither of.

Neither do we have to think about completion I think, a note in the walk-through would do fine, right?

A problem I am thinking of is pre-requisites. Some will not be easy to figure out. Certainly if they are a combination of level + location, or race + class + something. If they then have some quests as prereqs ... geez, I think I go play Farmville for a change ;-)

Magill, I was not thinking of removing anything. Festival Quests are still Festival Quests and will remain so. We are more discussing how you obtain the quest, the "starter" ... since I plan to go ahead and update the Quest template with the initial job done by EoD the "startinglocation" will automagically put quests in categories, in this case into "Category:Auto-bestowed Quests". Perhaps we need no better granularity than that, and then we are done :-)

Mails versus auto-bestowed, I would not be surprised if this is changed from now on. Remember that last Yule you received mails which initiated quests, this year they are auto-bestowed and no mails. Personally I think the mails were the old-fashioned technique Turbine had to use, the only one they had. Other games have had auto-bestowed quests long since, mainly for events and festivals. That said, I do not dislike the mails, in a weird way they are appropriate for the time.

Well, let us just relax now and see what we find. We'll sort things out whenever. -- Zimoon 15:55, 18 December 2012 (EST)

Most quests will still be offered in response to some player action.

landmark quests should list the territory, area, landmark, city, dungeon, that you entered to receive the quest. Place that in the startinglocation, and leave queststarter blank.
slayer and collector quests should list the first thing you touch, so queststarter contains the item or mob name. We can continue to use [[Item:item|]] or [[File:item-icon.png]] [[Item:item|]] or {{Reward|item}} or [[Mob Name]]. If there is a clear geographic association, we can fill in startinglocation; otherwise, leave it blank. Mobs involved in the slayer quests will have quest rings and their tooltips will identify the quest both before and after you accept the quest.

New, are the out-of-the-blue quests that suddenly appear when you log in or level up:

event quests can have a link to the auto-bestowal game term or category in the queststarter parameter, although putting something like the festival name might be nice, e.g. put [[Yule Festival]] in the queststarter parameter. (We should have a page called, e.g. [[Yule Festival]] that redirects to the current version of the festival, e.g. [[Yule Festival 2012]] so we don't have to churn the quests every year, just change one redirect.

I think we should add the quest chain section into the default quest boilerplate. Every quest has per-requisites, even if we do not know them. Many quests seem to internally use the passive skills like Novice, Adept, etc. which are silently granted as you level up. From developer comments and experience, many quests also have a minimum level, specifically, tasks and class quests; with fall back to some rule about being withing 4 or 5 levels of the quest's level.

I expect that a F2P or Premium player above level 30, who acquires the Evendim quests, will suddenly receive the Quest:Destination: Evendim quest at whatever level they are at.

Which brings up the truly new thing: the variable level quest. Now that is different from anything we have seen before. At this point, I have not seen enough of them to draw firm conclusions, but I do think they are a positive step forward.

RingTailCat (talk) 18:16, 18 December 2012 (EST)

Nice summary. I agree from a quick read, and your suggestion about having festival redirects is splendid. Noted for in-between-Xmas-food activities ;-)

I will have a thorough second read later on. -- Zimoon 13:17, 19 December 2012 (EST)

For what it's worth... a number of the recent "new hires" at Turbine (especially at the executive level) come from Zenga. The new "Yule Festival" "pop-up" is much like the annoying ones I've just encountered in Farmvill2, but much less obnoxious, but just as annoying. This Yule pop-up cannot be removed. You must either accept the quest or cancel it. AND if you cancel it, every time you log back in, it re-appears so you are forced to cancel it again. It is getting to be more than slightly tiresome that every time I log one of my toons in, that I have this bloody blue arrow occupying screen real estate and being generally ugly... and NO, I have zero interest in traveling "NOW" to Frostbluff --- and that's just like the latest "Bubble-place" that pops up when you launch Farmville2 or Cityville2 you launch the game you want to play and this pop-up comes up telling you no, you can't play that game you must play the game we want you to play... or else you can't play. There is no ability to cancel the bloody pop-up. At least with LOTRO,you can cancel it and go about your business.

Sadly, this is the same strategy that Zenga employs to force people to spend money. (Despite this, Zenga is still hemoraging money. Theirs is anything but a profitable corporate strategy.) It's NOT pretty and were it not for the fact that I'm playing those Facebook games to "support" an bed-ridden friend of mine, I would drop them like a hot potato. With this year's Yule festival, all of the popular events from previous festivals have 24 hour cool-down timers ... UNLESS you buy Festival Tickets from the LOTRO store! You also see the same strategy employed with the re-design of the Stable-master. Just think, now anybody can go from Bree to Rivendell at level 5 without having to run the gauntlet of the Trollshaws!

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 21:59, 20 December 2012 (EST)

One thing (among many) that really irks me, lately, is that once you go to Frostbluff on that first quest, you are not done. The damned thing pops up the next day as well. I did not pay several hundred dollars a year (It's double cause my wife plays!) to be harassed to spend even more money, or to play content that has nothing to do with Tolkien's Middle-earth.

I think they have fallen into one of the software development traps that comes from not maintaining a large enough pool of permanent developers. It is like the problems with off-shoring, out-sourcing, and hiring consultants instead of staff. You end up with beginners, or at least beginners with your application doing mission critical work. Sure, it's a lot cheaper than keeping a large stable of experienced staff, but your product turns into stable refuse. You get development done by folks who just don't care about your product. They don't understand it, they don't have a feel for it, so new features are not integrated or well thought out. This leads to the kinds of unintended consequences that we've seen recently, with Hytbold instance farming and the demise of group play outside end game instances.

They have forgotten the basics of the game, the lore and the role playing, and that the journey is as important as the destination.

RingTailCat (talk) 23:05, 20 December 2012 (EST)

Monetization at its best, most unfortunately - also visible in the "Go-to" Quest NPC option. Very cool and potentially very useful for quickly burning through quests, but...again, directing you straight to the store. For what it's worth, though, I found at least one gem thrown to the fanbase - one of the last new quests in Moria's First Hall has a very brief but cool scene. Maybe quest design (as opposed to technical implementation) is handled by someone more creative? I like a lot of the new Moria stuff overall, but I'm not too hard to please most of the time. Sethladan 04:58, 21 December 2012 (EST)
P.S. How did you know the new guys came from Zynga? I'm kind of disappointed now: Part of me was holding onto the pipe dream of signing on with Turbine once I finished my BS/MS in computer science. Way things are going, though, I'm guessing it's probably best I look somewhere else, huh?

Addendum - because I'm not sure where else to stick it - the level 65 quests (beginning In Their Absence, Volume III, the prompt to go to Dunland) still come via the mail at 65 as of today (instead of auto-bestowal). Support for what someone may have said above about both systems still coexisting to some extent. Sethladan 16:14, 21 December 2012 (EST)

Here's a copy of the press release: [3] over at Wargamer.com - note that this occurred on 19 October while the "unannounced" layoffs happened 6 days later on the 25th. [4] Escapistmagazine.com -- the Boston Globe broke that story. However, Turbine (WB) still has several openings... interestingly now posted on the just revised turbine.com home page. The most interesting posting is not Computer science, but economics ... "Franchise Director" -- "...This position will be responsible for the P&L of the franchise as well as ongoing development of the game. ..."

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC (talk) 15:19, 21 December 2012 (EST)

Standard for NPC Quotes

First a smile :)
Then ... go see older NPCs then, for example all those near Mysterious Relics. And change them as well.

I dislike the bullets, they just chops up the page without reason, but I think the bold question-line is nice. I give another edit to Athelward and wait for your thoughts. -- Zimoon 06:45, 29 December 2012 (EST)

When I went to see Athelward to check this page, for one character, he was not there, and for two other, they were not at the right phase to talk to him. So, I could not confirm all the text. But you took out some place holders that are apparent to someone who can talk to him.

Remember that Bungo Grubb and his buddies at the other Mysterious relics were the very first NPCs to have these kinds of question and answer conversations. At that time, no one knew what those relics were about. The instances they set the scene for were not in-game yet. Since then, many more NPCs have these conversations, and they have become an important way of setting the scene, and passing along information that is not tied directly to a specific quest. In some cases, the quest dialogues actually refer you to an NPC for further information, e.g. Drewett and Quest:Instance: The Stone of Wyrgende.

Thane Utred illustrates all the features of this type of conversation. There is a introductory heading, followed by a list of conversations. The button to close the conversation has some text: Thank you or I see, in this case, but with variation in other conversations.

Now I don't have a problem with bullet items. They are a basic part of the technology. They are one way of making the point that these are not just some random bits of text. And don't forget that bullet items will get handled specially by screen readers and such, whereas the paragraphs, bold or not, do not get special recognition.

RingTailCat (talk) 07:45, 29 December 2012 (EST)

OK; I will put back the "pending" then, as they indeed filled a purspose.

The ; and : are also recognized by screen readers, since they form a Dictionary List (DL, DT, DD style). But I guess using plain ''' does not.

Dotted lists should be used for lists, not some meta-formatter used on our whim. A good rule to remember is that a dotted list could equally well be replaced by a numbered list, except that the difference is unordered versus ordered. If you cannot (as a thought process) replace a dotted list with a 1) or A) or i) style list, then don't use dots. DL-lists are special though.

In general, for easy reading the less formatting the better, and when it is used it should be as cosmetics for women, hardly noticeable but improve the looks. At least as long as there is no fancy party about ;-)
-- Zimoon 08:25, 29 December 2012 (EST)

I actually think the DT/DD list makes sense in this case, at least moreso than a bulleted (or numbered) one - those question-answer pairs are basically providing a query term or prompt and an explanation to said query. Works in my head, at least, both semantically and visually. Sethladan 14:30, 29 December 2012 (EST)

I tried that with the Hobbit-announcer of G.L.O.B.E. questions and answers.

Some of the NPCs are a bit complex. Consider Wulfin. He answers one question each day, depending on which pair of daily quests he is offering. I don't know what happens if you carry a quest forward from the previous day, i.e., take his quests but don't do your five Hytbold quests that day. I suspect he will have two question/answer pairs. His peers in the other 4 areas are similar.

Then, there are a few stationary NPCs who have a different choice of questions depending on your phase. And, of course, the travelling NPCs very often have different questions depending on their locations (which is directly related to your phase).

IIRC correctly, in one case I put one of the question and answer pairs inside a spoiler alert box to try to avoid spoiling the surprise.

RingTailCat (talk) 14:48, 29 December 2012 (EST)

Without having seen the "complexity" I would guess lining up all Q/A with a DL works well, but there could be a note that explains the connection between quests versus dialogue. In the end of the day, players are not stupid ;) Also, they probably do not come here for reading the dialogues, they are gathered for our own completeness hunger.

Your change to the G.L.O.B.E. guy looks nice, I went ahead and applied that look to some NPC in the regions I have visited this far. Perhaps we should add that format to the NPC boilerplate, should we?
-- Zimoon 18:22, 29 December 2012 (EST)

Sounds like a good idea. I feel it provides a bit of mood to include the text from the answer close button. As I recall, there was one answer where the button text made me feel down right skeptical about the answer given by the NPC. The definition list seems to be able to handle that just fine, but I think you need to manually enbolden the text from the button.

RingTailCat (talk) 18:31, 29 December 2012 (EST)

I agree and I will try to remember adding the button text the next time. -- Zimoon 06:37, 30 December 2012 (EST)

RE: Wulfin -- "I don't know what happens if you carry a quest forward from the previous day,..." Assuming it works the same way in which Discovering the Descendant works ... Yes, you get both sets of dialog and quests. The completion of the previous day's quest and the bestowal of the current day's. In fact, if you had simply accepted the previous days' quest and did not complete it, rather than simply did not turn it in, the same thing is true. When you talk to the NPC, he will show both quest.

Other than that, I don't know where/what started this dialog, however, Wulfin is quite a bit different when compared to Éogar (i.e. the "Quotes" section). Granted, this idea of NPC "scene setting Q&A" is another new "Game Technology" introduced with RoR, or at least I don't recall such a thing anywhere else before. One might assume that this "technology" comes directly from the WB acquisition of Turbine -- it is a classic theatrical technique aka "the Narator" Therefore, for me the question becomes, not just capturing the closing dialog, which is important as it represents the "Official," i.e. "correct" attitude of the Character to the information, but Where does such a Q&A belong? I don't believe it is particularly relevant to be under the NPC -- as folks are not likely to encounter it in a timely manner.

We first encounter this Q&A in Quest:The Wold bestowed by Dala on first entry into Langhold -- but we don't seem to have captured it anywhere.

I'm inclined to say that "Quotes" or "Comments" is probably not a good title, but rather something like "Scene Setting" (I'm too far removed from theater to remember the "technical term" for such dialogs... probably something akin to the "Narrator" in Winnie the Pooh or Our Town, or maybe "Backstory"... hmmm...

What I would propose is a new "Questbox" for the quest(s) involved.

Backstory from Wulfin

A dialog is offered providing the player with insight into the situation.

What can you tell me about Dígelon?
'Though the Dígelon now flows beneath the ground, it's rapids are still ferocious and powerful. Over the years it has carved out a network of caves and tunnels beneath the hills of the East Wall. A curious thing happened within the hot, steamy depths, a new plant began to grow. They look like any other mushroom you would have seen, but these glow with the light of the noonday sun. We hold these mushrooms dear, as they have brought light to an ancient violent darkness.'

What can you tell me about Gerngath?
'Gerngath is an ancient ruin built by Gondor long before my people came to this land. We used it as a place to store the tales and history of our people. The tomes within have no value in coin but are priceless in the hearts of the Rohirrim. We have tried to keep the library in good repair, but as the forces of the Enemy grew we were forced to abandon it. It has since been occupied by foul Easterlings, seeking anything they can find in order to gain any advantage over us.'

What can you tell me about the Defence of Harwick?
'Long have the defences of Harwick stood defending the furthest borders of the Eastemnet against those who would wish to bring harm to the people of Rohan. An army of Easterlings is marching upon the city as we speak. We now call upon these walls to stand firm and strong in the face of our enemy one more time.'

What can you tell me about the Ford?
'The Easterlings have setup a camp across the river north-east of here. This would not normally be troubling, as the rivers current is swift and unforgiving, but this one is placed near a safe crossing. My scouts have also reported seeing several Cargûl amongst the warriors. These foul creatures follow and serve the darkest and most powerful of the Enemies leader. Their presence troubles me greatly.'

Experimental backstory template and usages (Dala and Thane Utred) deleted Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 13:36, 17 June 2013 (EDT)

These could be set-up as a separate pages in Category:Backstory, which could be transcluded into multiple locations -- Location; Quest; NPC -- as needed. It could be added to a quest immediately above or below the Walkthrough and Notes and as simply another section on the Location page. See: Quest:The Thane of Langhold, Dala, Langhold, Thane Utred

Hmmm. Just realized, if we attach the backstory to a quest -- do we attach it to the quest being completed (when it is visible then) or to the Quest(s) being bestowed, if visible and more than one.

Done creatively, they could/would provide an interesting read all on their own! Much like reading through the Epic quest line in sequence. (And by using the collapsed box, we can "prevent" folks from reading things they don't want to until they are in-game.)

I don't particularly like the term "Backstory". In-game, the question and answer area is called Comments, I believe. The sections you see are "Current Quests", "Available Quests", and "Comments". Sometimes also "Available Private Instances" (or some such).

The NPC question and answer block was introduced with the NPCs beside the Mysterious Relics. At least, that was the first time I saw such a mechanism. IIRC, those appeared in the update (or the update before) the In Their Absence instances showed up.

RingTailCat (talk) 15:53, 30 December 2012 (EST)

How are we identifying auto-bestowed quests?

I'm updating (adding in) a bunch of the new Moria revision quests. Category: Moria: Zelem-melek Quests A number of them are auto bestowed upon hitting some trigger point. How are we identifying the "quest starter"? "Automatic Quest?" "Auto Bestowed?" Leaving it blank does not seem reasonable.

An interesting, related question. Is this new? -- Under deeds, Rhovanion/ Moria Central Halls -- I have a deed which I may or may not have had before -- Quests of Zelem-melek, which requires 20 quests to complete. Cleaning up deeds is what got me started on this project... I only had 4 of 20 quests, and had done all previously existing quests in 21st Hall. This was the only deed of this type which I "found" in my deed log. Others, for Nud-melek, were completed on one toon, but not on a second. I did find the "starting point" for the newly revised "Exploration of Zelem-melek" process, and have been documenting that under the category heading.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 12:21, 1 March 2013 (EST)

For auto bestowed quests, I'd look to what was done in East Rohan. See Category:East Rohan Quests, and its sub-categories.

In all cases, landscape quests are triggered by something. They are very similar to quests that start as the result of looting something, or finding something. But they trigger when we are proximate to an object, enter an area, remote loot something, or kill something. They are triggered by our circumstances, rather than our direct actions. As a result, they may trigger while we are busy with something else; so instead of having the quest bestowal dialog get in our face while we are fighting, for instance, we get a notification in the quest action button box. The quest starter should be identified by the starting object, or location. But materially, they are not really any different from other quests. The fact that some of them are also auto-complete or remote-complete does not change the fact that they are still a lot like the old familiar quests. After encountering several hundred of them, the fact that they are auto-bestowal is really not very interesting, or significant.

Now there is a type of auto-bestowal quest that might be interesting in a negative way. Unless the behaviour is altered by Turbine, the quests that start by killed a mob with a ring are problematic because they can not be started when the mob has a grey title. That means that for the first time, there are quests that you cannot do because you are too high level (ignoring Task quests, of course).

I'm training up some new toons to take through Moria for the first time. My previous experience with part one of the Moria revamp, using toons that had already started questing in Moria, was very unsatisfying - it was very difficult to distinguish between pre-revamp and post-revamp versions of quests. I decided to not try to use my existing toons to document Moria revamp part two.

- RingTailCat (talk) 14:20, 1 March 2013 (EST)

Combo of normal and landscape quest

While playing through Moria as part of working on quest updates after Moria revamp, I came across some quests in The Flaming Deep that can be started as both old talk to NPC quests or landscape quests using the new auto-bestowal mechanism. I have not updated the wiki pages for the quests yet, but they were Quest:Grimly Lethal and Quest:A Cunning Plan's Components which can be started from NPCs at Anazârmekhem. Grimly Lethal can alternatively be started by killing Grims in the appropriate area, and A Cunning Plan's Components can alternatively be started by clicking on ground spawn items.

My thoughts on how to handle this is take the old way of filling out a quest entry and combine it with how I am handling landscape quests in User_talk:Shardis#Auto-bestowed_Quests with " or " between starters. For examples,

queststarter = [[<starter NPC>]] or<br>kill [[mob type]]
or
queststarter = [[<starter NPC>]] or<br>[[<ground item>]]

--Shardis (talk) 13:12, 2 May 2013 (EDT)

I have encountered quests like that in the past where the quest was started by several far removed NPCs, e.g. Quest:Foreword: Bulwark of the West. The challenge with this type of quest is that you may be tempted to change the quest starter, thinking that the previous editor got it wrong, or that Turbine changed the quest. You may not notice that there are multiple ways to start a quest unless you have multiple characters questing in the same area. I found, even then, I wanted to cancel a quest and go try to start it the other way, just to be sure of the multiple starters or start mechanisms.

I don't see any problem having those quests in Category:Anazârmekhem Quests, and in the appropriate auto-bestowal category, as appropriate for the two start mechanisms.

Happy questing. RingTailCat (talk) 18:51, 2 May 2013 (EDT)

U11- Yellow Trait Tree changes for War-steeds

Please see discussion at: Talk:War-steed Traits. I have begun building a page of "stuff" User:Magill/Projects-U11-LM-mounted-companion trying to capture the information being presented. Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 10:24, 10 May 2013 (EDT)

what to do about this

I have move this discussion to User talk:Lotroadmin#what to do about this. RingTailCat (talk) 13:59, 20 May 2013 (EDT)

Quick Note

Also, in adding some mob drop properties I noticed that the items currently on your sandbox 8 are being recognized as sharing the property since its tagged there...which makes it pop up on the actual item page (the one or two I've updated anyway). Not sure if that botting process can begin yet or not, but if it will be sitting there for a long duration you might consider removing the property tags on your page.

--Savi (talk) 12:25, 28 May 2013 (EDT)

Could you give an example of where the property references are causing my sandbox page to show up on an item page? I'd like to look at the mechanism that is generating that reference. Please provide links to a specific page where this occurs.

- RingTailCat (talk) 16:56, 28 May 2013 (EDT)

Property reference - for example Item:Simple Celebrant Salve under the drops section. Once the item page is updated to query the property tags (listing all instances where said item is dropped) it finds all occurrences. It is picking up your sandbox because for testing reasons you have it coded with the Has Drop property.

--Savi (talk) 17:09, 28 May 2013 (EDT)

I see what you mean about the property reference. This could be a problem, if it restricts us from talking about properties or creating examples. Perhaps there is some parameter to #ask to restrict its results to a category tree or to exclude talk pages or user pages.

- RingTailCat (talk) 17:58, 28 May 2013 (EDT)

Talking about properties is not difficult. For reference, you can always link to its respective page, for example ~~Property:Has Drop~~. Regarding parameters...they do allow for that; in fact the Mount Index was set up that way - to only use the pages in the Category:Mount Items. However, when I tried to similarly apply the category Creatures to the item query, it failed to find any results. My guess is that it doesn't like subcategories. Technically no mob is under the Category:Creatures, but under a specific sub, sub category. And using a particular sub heading as a parameter would not work either as lots of items drop in several different ones (For example, light hides are not only dropped by some mobs in the Category:The Shire Creatures but also the Category:Ered Luin Creatures, among others).

This is my guess because when I tested the query at Item:Light Hide by adding [[Category:The Shire Creatures]] to the parameters, it correctly populated the drops from that category, but using the encompassing category of Creatures resulted in nothing.

Now excluding talk pages or user pages might work...I believe I remember reading something about that but can't recall the usage off the top of my head. That could probably be used for certain items where testing was done...it seems silly to have to add that to Every item query but I suppose that is a possibility as well.

--Savi (talk) 19:19, 28 May 2013 (EDT)

Welcome template

(Splitting the Welcome template discussion out from the "Propertyies" reference above...)

You seem to often be the one to catch new users and tack on the welcome to their page. In doing some editing today, I saw that rather than using the welcome template directly you should instead use {{subst:Welcome}} ... I'm guessing that is due to the sub not needing to refresh when the template changes? Not entirely sure though. Just wanted to pass that on as I stumbled across it ;)

--Savi (talk) 12:25, 28 May 2013 (EDT)

I'm not sure where you got the idea of using {{subst:Welcome}}. Don't use that construct. It inserts the text generated by the Template:Welcome template directly into the user's talk page. When you insert a reference to the template using {{Template}}, only the template reference is inserted, a difference of inserting 1,579 characters vs 11 characters. When you use {{Template}}, as well, future changes (such as you made today) will be displayed for all users whose talk pages include the template reference.

- RingTailCat (talk) 16:56, 28 May 2013 (EDT)

The subst addition was found right on the face of the Template:Welcome Reading your respsonse it sounds like that should be removed then. I utilized it twice only on new accounts so I can fix that momentarily also.

--Savi (talk) 17:09, 28 May 2013 (EDT)

Ah, I see why they might want to use the subst: to reduce the template references to the Welcome template. And most welcomers sign the page. I don't. And, when I was welcomed, User:Ravanel used the template on my talk page.

- RingTailCat (talk) 17:58, 28 May 2013 (EDT)

Using the direct template would also be less confusing to look at when the new user goes to talk on their page.

--Savi (talk) 19:19, 28 May 2013 (EDT)

I must say... I have never noticed those first lines in the Welcome template before.

My talk page created back in May 2011 uses {{Welcome}}. I can't tell who created it because "Liquid Threads" intervened :)
Using the template does not display those top lines, which make no sense to me in the first place.

Please remember to only {{subst|welcome}} this page, don't directly use it as a template.  Adopted from: [https://www.wowwiki.com/Template:Welcome WoWWiki].

As best I can tell, that first line was simply left in place when the text was copied from the WOWwiki. (The Image referenced does not exist on lotro-wiki.) ... i.e. whoever did the original template didn't do a very good job.

I would simply delete them as they are not correct.

Which also brings out the changes that Savi and I have made recently! Namely that the Welcome message isn't really terribly welcoming, in that other than warm-fuzzy words, it doesn't provide a lot of useful information.

In particular, does anyone still use the IRC channel? Like the wiki Forums that nobody used (and are now history) ... should we simply drop reference to it?

I stopped using it some time ago because there was never anybody there... except for someone who was permanently logged in to the channel and who never said anything (BurningFeetMan).

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 12:04, 29 May 2013 (EDT)

Item Drop Display discussion

Not sure where you want to continue this discussion... (See Quick Note above and User_talk:Magill#changes_to_item_drop_display)

At any rate... I don't really understand this whole "Properties" business. Special:Properties doesn't tell me anything. And so far, I have been unable to find "them" documented either on lotro-wiki; MediaWiki or the main wiki.

Is Extension:Semantic Incoming Properties what we are talking about? If so, it is flagged as no longer under active development.
is Extension:Semantic Extra Special Properties what we are talking about?

I also find: API:Properties

So far, looking at User_talk:RingTailCat/Sandbox-8 and User:RingTailCat/Sandbox-8 I don't see anything that makes any sense. They are simply lists of items with the "Has Drop:" suffix.

Clicking on "Has drop" on Special:Properties doesn't provide a meaningful listing.

Or put another way -- What is this trying to accomplish? What is the purpose?

Later, every item page would be modified to use a {{#ask}} template call which uses these properties to list the mobs which drop the item, in place of the manual list we currently have.

Is there a page existent which does this? According to Special:Properties there are over 700 "Has drop" properties.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 12:47, 29 May 2013 (EDT)

The introduction here is where I started. The user manual on the right side is very helpful. To give you a quick starting place: for properties, check this; for queries, see here. An item page that is currently using a query is the Drops section of Item:Light Hide. --Savi (talk) 13:11, 29 May 2013 (EDT)

User talk:RingTailCat/Archive2

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