Finrod_Amandil said:

Opening statement

So I have written around 100 questions for the quiz plugin this week. All of you who read these Times and who got asked to help out a few weeks ago managed to write a total of ... 14 questions . Well, I'll take it as a challenge and will keep looking out for ways to make you guys hit your keyboards, and this week things get serious: For every serious, non-duplicate question that is submitted until next sunday, march 6th, I will donate 1$ to MCME. And yes, I am ready to spend 100$ or more for that.
The questions can be of one of the following four types: Free text question, number question, multiple choice with one correct answer, multiple choice with 1 to 4 correct answers. Here's an example for each, taken from the questions I came up with:

• free: Which Shire town is located at a lake? - Bywater
  
• number: How many miles south of the Brandywine Bridge is the Bucklebury Ferry located? - 20
• single: What is Gorhendad Oldbuck famous for?
  • First Thain of the Shire
  • Owner of the Golden Perch Inn
  • First Hobbit to visit Rivendell
  • Founder of Buckland
• multi: Who got trapped by the Old Man Willow?
  • Frodo
  • Sam
  • Pippin
  • Merry

Here's the link to the form to submit your questions: Questions for Minigame plugin
Now come on guys, this is the cheapest way to donate to MCME ever, please make me donate more than 5$ next week....

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Whats Up?

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Breaking News

@q220 has updated all the Resource Packs! If you're using the automatic textures feature you don't have to do anything; the packs should update when you next enter the respective regions. If you're one of the ones who swear on manual RPs: Download the updated versions here: Official Resourcepacks | Minecraft Middle Earth
Especially noteworthy is that the Moria Pack is now among the official packs. I hope the settings for it to be included in the automatic packs can be adjusted in the next week. Additionally you'll find the work-in-progress Mordor pack; it won't be of much use as long as it is in this state, but if you want to throw a first glance at the new textures, you can do that now!
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Project Progress

Forest in Lamedon - picture by @_Luk

Andrast (In Progress) - Lead: @jacenpeter

Only some minor changes in the White Mountains this week, some small terrain adjustments and material additions.
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Anfalas (In Progress) - Lead: @kisos

@kisos has taken over the lead of this project, and celebrating that has worked even more on it this week than he already did before. All the terrain is done, beside some rivers that @Ivan1pl and I are currently giving some more love.
Various Designers and Artists are currently trying to break the world record for "most villages and farms built within a week": kisos, @Tyranystrasz, @Fireinferno13, @Wraith_Knight, @Wroxxite and @toeyoman have each claimed a farm or village. Very soon Anfalas will be densely populated.
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Lamedon (In Progress) - Lead: @Eriol_Eandur

More rivers, more trees, and more root fixing, a lot more root fixing.
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Misty Mountains (In Progress) - Lead: @Emilio_ (Eregion), @Finrod_Amandil (Misties), @Mandos (Gladden Fields)

I have voxelled another hillside on the eastern slopes of the mountains, and after that decided on a (pretty much) definite layout for the Gladden Pass. Terrain will still be in progress for quite a while, but you can already check the area out using /warp Gladden Pass or /warp Gladden Pass Summit.

In the Gladden Fields Mandos has been giving the houses for the Stoor Hobbits a try. Check that out with /warp Gladden Fields.
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Fornost Reruin (In Progress) - Lead: @Fireinferno13 & @Demonataz

Progress continues along step by step! There are only a few more houses for Artists to ruin in the middle district, which will hopefully be completed in the next few days. As of this week, all of the roads have been re-ruined thanks to everyone who participated in the jobs this past week or so. Focus now shifts to wall jobs and ruining the main keep!
- Fireinferno13

Additionally work has started on the big sewer system of Fornost. They have collapsed in a few more places, currently work is being focused on all the corridors.
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[Public Project] Fennas Drúnin (In Progress) - Lead: @thomasd16

@Thijs1801 voxelled the terrain across the Bruinen today and yesterday and has made some really nice progress in that area during this weekend. Furthermore we have marked out the sections of the city with wool for planning. Best way to see it would be on dynmap. Fingers crossed voxelling wont take too much longer and we can finally move on the more fun sections
- thomasd16
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Plugin Development

Plotbuild Plugin (Last bug fixes in progress) - Devs: @Eriol_Eandur & @Ivan1pl

The Plotbuild Plugin will make it possible to make plots on the main map that can be claimed and be built on by anyone and then be easily reviewed and managed by staff.

Some small adjustments and fixes that were identified in the testing session a few weeks ago have now been implemented. Another testing session is now due to find the hopefully last bugs.
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New New Player World (Ready for implementation) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur, Assistance: @_Luk

A new Intro Quiz for new players.

No changes since last week.
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Moria Teleport Plugin (In Progress) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur

For seamless teleports to and from new Moria aswell as inside Moria.

Another week - another obstacle - another solution. Without wanting to confuse you with the technical mumbo-jumbo which I myself do not unserstand either: Eriol has developped another auxiliary plugin with which he hopes to get one step closer to a solution worthy of MCME.
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Minigames Plugin (Small fixes in progress) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur

A plugin to easily run various minigames like Hide and Seek, Races and Quizzes.

See opening statement!
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Randomising Plugin (Ready for implementation) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur

A small plugin for staff members to easily randomize growth stages on fields.

No changes since last week.
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Banner Editor (Ready for implementation) - Dev: @Eriol_Eandur

A plugin for easily editing and creating banners.

No changes since last week.
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Resource Packs

--> See Breaking News!

Mordor Pack (In Progress) - Lead: @bender400

I was able to add a ton of new textures to Github this week, awesome work that the Mordor RP team is doing! @NEEPcrafter has newly joined the team this week and is delighting us with some fancy 3D block models.
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New Doors (Implemented!) - Creator: @Ryiw

Banners (Implemented!) - Creator: @SKy_the_Thunder

Reeds and new flowers (Implemented!) - Creator: @Ma5terMinD

Inherited textures for Fennas Drúnin (Implemented!)

@thomasd16 has picked a few textures from the Gondor pack he'd like to use on Fennas Drúnin.
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New Glass Textures (Implemented!) - Creator: @mattlego

I almost forgot about these, thanks to Arde of the proofreading team!
The new stained glass textures have been created for the palace and cathedral of Lond Daer, but of course can aswell be used anywhere else in Eriador.

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Rank Updates

- none this week -
Feedback on Artist applications will follow in the next few days.
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Media of the week

We have one screenshot this week, created by @SmaugJuice. With the updated pack the Lilac flowers will now look like Reeds

Fennas Drúnin.​

Other news

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Motivation series

@smogpaster has messaged all staff members and asked them about their motivation to build/play on MCME and he got a bunch of really interesting answers which I deem worthy to share with everyone!

@bender400:
For me it has been an educational hobby about what it is like working for people, with people, and over people. But one of my greatest reasons for being a part of MCME is that it brings people who are either artistically talented, or who appreciate art, together on one project.

I also love architecture and being able to recognize beautiful aspects of buildings, MCME actually sparked this interest which I hope to pursue later in life.

Building is definitely what I do best on this server, but I can also fulfill the second half of my job description as a terraformer.
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Audiobook review

- none this week -

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Lore Bits #5: The AT-AT attacking Minas Tirith

In a few of the recent Themed Builds many people built figures from the Star Wars universe, like the AT-AT. That this is in fact not plain nonsense can be seen in this lengthy article about the similarities of the universes and stories:

http://middle-earth.xenite.org/2015/12/17/how-is-star-wars-like-the-lord-of-the-rings/​

Upcoming

Themed Build

Project Build 2 weeks:
Theme: Meduseld
Resource Pack: Rohan
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Scheduled Events

Audiobook session 5

The next Audiobook session will take place on Saturday, March 5th, 19:00 GMT.
We will listen to chapters 9,10,11 and 12, an extended edition of the Audiobook which will last about 3 hours, with which we will conclude the first book out of six.
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Tours

There are no Tours announced for this week yet, but keep an eye on this thread and request a tour if you want one!
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Jobs & Plotbuilds

Jobs for next Saturday will be announced in this thread over the course of the week. Be sure to ask Designers for jobs at any time, maybe they can offer something!
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Community Outreach

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MCME Reunion LAN Party

On next sunday, march 6th, from 9am GMT onwards, @Will_em will host the probably biggest LAN party in the history of MCME, a lot of old members of MCME will tune in, make sure you save some time on that day to meet some of the First Age of this server!
More information can be found here: http://www.mcmiddleearth.com/threads/mcme-reunion-lan-party.2954/
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Screenshots for Facebook

@Tyranystrasz has access to the MCME Facebook page and is regularily posting screenshots of our builds there! Lend him a hand and submit your best screens here: MCME screenshots for Facebook
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Closing statement

A bit in reflection of tired me sitting down, after I have just returned from an energy-sapping skiing weekend, to write the Times in time, I'll leave you with this quote:




These Times have been proofread by @anubisthefrog and @Ardelenia.​

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Finrod_Amandil said:

We're currently on 38 questions, subtract the 14 from before these Times and we're at a donation score of 24$. Keep the questions coming guys

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Finrod_Amandil said:

Watch out guys, we got one or two badasses over here.
I'll add an additional 10$ if the badass who wrote these also has enough balls to pm me.

Spoiler

View attachment 5505
View attachment 5506

Thanks for these two very elaborate questions tho:



Other than that: We're counting a total of 106 responses, minus the 4 above, minus 14 from before, minus 3 duplicates, we currently have 85$ to be donated I'm proud of you guys!

I got asked about how hard the questions should be. My tip is: They should either be as that a "normal" LotR/Hobbit fan can know the answer
(e.g. "What is a long meeting of Ents called?", "What was the surname that Frodo used in Bree?", "Who killed Smaug?")
or they should be pretty hard to know, but are interesting or entertaining questions
(e.g. "From the moment of its creation, to the time of its destruction, how many people touch the One Ring?", "In the history of Arda, how many places were named 'Minas Tirith'?", "Who becomes ruler of Rohan following the death of Theoden?")
however questions that are hard and not really interesting facts to know I may rather not include.
(e.g. "According to "The Silmarillion" who was the twenty fourth king of Numenor?", "Who was Feanor's third son?")
Additionally, please try to avoid questions with long answers, usually questions starting with "why" or "how". In the end you have to type the answer (and it has to be exactly correct to be taken as that) or I got to make it a multiple choice question (and finding plausible alternatie answers is a lot of work).
(e.g. "How did Saruman change after doing business with Sauron?", "Why could the Eagles not bring the dwarves farther in The Hobbit?", "The Ring inscription could only be seen when the Ring was what?")

Keep them questions comin'

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