Participating in a Live Chat Event is a unique chat experience. The first thing you need to do is get connected. You may find information at Barliman’s. If you need help fire us an email. You will connect to our main chat room, and if the event is not there, you will be directed to it in another room.

Depending on the event, the room will either be open to all speakers or moderated. In a moderated room, the flow of conversation is structured and you may find that you are unable to ‘speak’ freely. Regular conversation happens after the main question and answer session. Questions are asked by patrons like yourself in private messages to staff, who relay them to our guest speakers. Please message the appropriate staff member(s) by typing /msg nick your question. For example, /msg Berendir When will the first series come out?

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We hope you enjoy your stay!

Two of the many great folks at Decipher will be joining us today in our very own virtual pub Barliman’s for a talk about their new Trading Card Game. These cards are awesome and the game is outstanding! Come meet and talk with TCG creators Tom Lischke & Chuck Kallenbach today! [More]

LIVE CHAT with Decipher

For a great overview of the game check out this Gaming Havens report from WorldCon this summer. [More]

Finally, here are details on how to participate: [More]

Two of the many great folks at Decipher will be joining us today in Barliman’s for a talk about their new Trading Card Game. These cards are awesome and the game is outstanding! Come meet and talk with TCG creators Tom Lishcke & Chuck Kallenbach today! [More]

LIVE CHAT with Decipher

For a great overview of the game check out this Gaming Havens report from WorldCon this summer. [More]

Finally, here are details on how to participate in today’s chat: [More]

Natalya, the webmaster of TORn Community Site Henneth Annun has requested that we post this sad news about the changing of Russia’s release date, and the reasons why New Line should keep the original date it promised of December 21st. [More]

If you’re a gamer… or if you’re not… you have to take a look at the LotR creations from the wizards at Games Workshop. I’ve had my hands on a lot of their first line product, and the quality and detail are outstanding. Gwaihir is HUGE! It feels like what we’ll see in the films is what we can play at home. [More]

From Henneth Annun

Kinowelt losing its rights on LotR movie and giving it to Warners in Germany, Eastern Europe and Russia dealt a blow to the Russian fans – the release date is moved from December 21 by Kinowelt to February 7 by Warners.

But what is especially sad about this event is that the other “Kinowelt” countries – Germany etc. would still get their release in December!

But Russia was singled out and placed with other Asian countries (who will also get LotR movie released in February), and this is an incredibly damb move from Warners: they’ll lose loads of money to videopirates, who would steal from movie theaters countless repeat viewings of Tolkien fans. (Most of the people who eagerly awaits this movie would buy a pirated video in December instead of waiting for February release, you may trust me on this! Just try to estimate the percent of people who can avoid spoliers on TORN and you get the idea!)

And let me tell you that in no country in the world the Tolkien fandom is as strong as in Russia. LotR was first published in Russia in full in the early 90-s, and since then, in 10 years, about 2.5 mln copies of LotR were published in Russia and it still goes on in full steam.

Reading Tolkien in the early 90-s was like a religious experience for lots of Russian people, who found in his work the new light and hope after the crush of the Communism system. Tolkien affected a lot of people in our country on a very, very deep level, and the LotR movie should create an enourmous interest and would sure break all box office records for Russia (they are modest, but still it can easily climb from current 5mln$ to, say, 15mln$ just because of repeat viewings by the millions of fans, let alone other people. Even with the average ticket price of 1$ in province and 4$ in Moscow).

And now Warners wants to throw the huge chunk of it to video pirates, which would surely happen if the movie gets released in February. I just don’t get it!

And another thing: technically it’s possible to make Russian premiere in December as planned, because dubbing usually takes 2 months, and Kinowelt’s Russian subsidiary Gemini-Kinomir had dubbing works well under way. Warners might take the works from Gemini-Kinomir and continue and they’d easy make the December deadline, but no – they plan to throw everything away and start anew. But even in this case they still have enough time to do the dubbing.

It’s all politics, and it’s very sad. I hope that somebody in New Line would listen to us and would change this situation before it’s too late.