We recently asked players to submit questions to the dev team. We had originally planned to publish 10-12 of the most common questions and their answers. Due to the number of questions we received, however, we’ve decided to publish several sets of questions and answers over the next few weeks. You can read the first set of questions here!

General

Q: Why is so much gear "Bind on Acquire"? If it is just to stop trading, why not "bind on Account"?

A: We want to have certain items be bound to the specific character. Bind on account would not accomplish this. It’s one of our ways to encourage players to engage content on their characters as they progress through the game using various classes. We are not considering Bind on Account at this time, however, it’s a nice idea for a set of “inheritance” items.

Q: Why are the loading times so crazy for crafting panel? I have 8GB of ram, Core 2 overclocked at 4+GHz and I still get a few seconds of frozen game every time I access the crafting panel for the first time after starting the game.

A: We have changed how the crafting panel is loaded and displayed with Siege of Mirkwood. You should see much better performance as a result.

Q: With the up and coming DirectX 11 with Windows 7 - Are there any plans to incorporate some of its specific tech like you had with the DirectX 10 features that are optional?

A: AMD’s recent announcement of their first DirectX 11 video cards included a mention that LOTRO was adding DX11 support. You will not see it with Siege of Mirkwood, but you should expect it to arrive sometime next year.

Q: Where does Mirkwood fit, size wise, with previously released regions?

A: Mirkwood is roughly 75-80% of the size of the Northdowns.

Q: Do you ever use auction prices to determine whether there is enough of an item? Or, alternatively, do you note if something never appears at the auction house?

A: We often run reports for specific types of items, if we want to gain some insight into rarity – that usually includes how many of that item are up for sale in the AH.

Q: Why do we have the enforced 25 second delay as part of the log out procedure? Is there any way to shorten this?

A: Two reasons. One of the heaviest loads on our servers is the login/logout process. If players could instantly log in and out at will this would place a tremendous strain on our systems. This could cause problems from lost data when saving player information to crashing the server itself. The second reason is gameplay related. If you were able to logout instantly you could avoid all manner of unpleasant deaths in both PvE and PvMP.