Will the new LoTRO Player Council work?

If you hadn’t heard, LoTRO’s developers Turbine [are imitating EVE Online](https://www.lotro.com/playercouncil), and adding a new Player Council to give the developers direct feedback on improvements.

But will it work? Is the devil in the details? Will players be able to talk to the developers often enough and early enough to make a difference?

Veteran LoTRO blogger Doc Holliday took a look at the new proposals, and comes up with some very interesting points:

> “On the positive side, there’s quite a bit of detail to the makeup and roles of the council. Also the timing seems good as they’ll be able to interact with the team pre-alpha which should be early enough to actually make changes. It also seems like the council will more or less be the funnel for the community to really focus attention to the areas Turbine needs to pay attention to. The size of the council (30 to 50 members) should certainly be good enough to get a good cross section of the community and also not overly task any single member.

> However, I think the biggest issue will be the lack of feedback from the Council to the community. Again, this is another NDA protected avenue such that even though we’ll know who’s in the council, we still won’t be able to get an idea of what the council is actually doing.”

Read [My Hopes For The New Turbine Player Council](http://docholidaymmo.com/2013/03/22/my-hopes-for-the-new-turbine-player-council/)

Tagged as: player council

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Tankspot takes a look at the Council of Elders

The Council of Elders is the third boss in the Throne of Thunder raid, but the first that was open for testing on the PTR. Tankspot took a look at the encounter and put together a video that explains some of the mechanics involved with what looks like an incredibly complex fight. The video above is for the 10-man normal mode version of the encounter, and because this is the PTR, abilities and effects shown in the video may change over time.

Each Elder in the Council has their own set of abilities, and the fight requires three tanks to pull off successfully. But it's not that easy, of course. Also present in the fight is the pesky spirit of Gara'jal, last seen in Mogu'shan Vaults. Gara'jal will possess each Elder in turn, changing the Elder's abilities and making the fight just that much more hectic for players.

This fight has a very heavy emphasis on target swapping between both the various Elders, and the adds that those Elders spawn. Players must attack the Elder that is possessed by Gara'jal -- otherwise a raid-wide AoE will quickly stack to unmanageable heights and overwhelm the raid. In order to force Gara'jal to swap to another Elder, players must DPS the possessed Elder down by 25%.

Keep in mind that this is the first round of PTR testing for this particular encounter. There will doubtless be small changes and tweaks as the PTR moves on. If you'd like to participate in PTR testing, be sure to keep an eye on the official PTR forums for scheduling information regarding the different encounters in Throne of Thunder.

Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Tags: council-of-elders, frost-king-malakk, Garajal-the-Spiritbinder, high-priestess-marli, kazrajin, patch-5.2, patch-5.2-ptr, patch-5.2-raids, sul-the-sandcrawler, tankspot, throne-of-thunder

Filed under: Raiding, Raid Guides, Mists of Pandaria

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