Episode 3 -- Developer Interview Shownotes

Hello, everyone! Here’s Episode 3: Developer Interview a day early! Consider it my early Christmas present.

I’m very, very excited about this episode; the feature of the episode is an exclusive interview with Rowan, the Live Developer for LOTRO! You can find the RSS feed with the episode here. If you like it and you happen to have iTunes, head over to the iTunes shop and rate the podcast accordingly. I do request that if you want to give it less than three stars that you contact me directly first so we can discuss what it is you don’t like about the show.

In the interview, Rowan sheds some more light on Book 7, gives us some peeks at Book 8, talks about PvP, minstrels, hobbies, crafting, and even discusses “The Wall,” that my previous episode was based on! Yes, I know I need to work on shutting up during the interviews…I’ll work on that for my next few episodes (sorry if I cut you off, Rowan).

Also in this episode is a quick overview of the new Open Beta server, Bullroarer. You can find the official announcement of Bullroarer (try saying Bullroarer 5 times fast) here.

I apologize, but there is no Server Rundown in this episode since the developer interview clocked in at 22 minutes. I want to keep the episodes as close to 30 minutes or less as possible, so I had to shed this feature for this episode. It will be back in the next episode.

Looking ahead, the next episode will focus on PvP. The focus will feature a ‘creep’ monster player and a ‘freep’ Free People’s player discussing the current state of PvP and what can be done to improve it. Look for that in mid-March!

I am going to be adding a sidebar to the Lotrocast website called “The Fellowship” or “The LotRO Network” with links to other information sites, blogs, and podcasts. There is a ton of good information out there, so make sure you look around! If you are a proprieter of any such website, please send me a link to your site and I will review it and add a link!

The numbers are in for the first two episodes! There are some interesting trends in the podcast. First, the downloads for March are almost already out to 100. Considering that it is only the 3rd of March, that’s pretty impressive. I’m not sure how, but word is spreading. The downloads so far for all of February (starting with Feb 6th, the day the pilot was released) clocked in at nicely at over 500, which makes me happy. I am perfectly satisfied with those numbers. As of now, I have no way of telling what programs things are downloaded through, but already the podcast is ¾ of the way up the “most subscribed video game’ podcast list on the Zune Marketplace and is the 2nd most popular LOTRO related podcast on iTunes! Thanks to all the listeners who made this possible!

Phew! That’s a lot of show notes, so I’ll stop typing for now. Kick back and enjoy this episode of LOTROCast: The Lord of the Rings Online Podcast