The Decorator’s Letter – 2022

Let us take a moment to review what transpired in LOTRO housing and on D&Co du Milieu in 2021 and talk about 2022!

My dear decorator friends,

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and holidays! I hope 2022 will be a great year for everyone.

I will now take the opportunity, as I have in years past, to look back and take stock of what has occurred at the site over the last 12 months, and to look forward and set some goals for the coming year.

It is also at this time of year where I present lots of numbers (stats, data, etc.), give thanks, and make new year’s resolutions!

So let’s get on with it!

I wish an excellent year to all.

D&Co du Milieu in 2021

Some figures
(as of 12/31)

You might as well skip this if this sort of thing doesn’t interest you;). I’m not going to detail everything here, just a few numbers…

♦ Visits
It was a great year all around for D&Co.

• Yearly Visits
  The site was visited more than 310,000 times in 2021 (compared to 350k in 2020, 171k in 2019 and 87k in 2018), a bit fewer than last year, but there was a new housing neighborhood last year and 77k visitors at launch of Rohan housing. So, still a progression to me!

Many heartfelt thanks to all those who share my links or refer people to D&Co du Milieu. This has been a wonderful year for the site and I’m so glad to see how many people now use this website as a resource for LOTRO housing. THANK YOU EVERYONE!

The Decorators Community

Our discord server now has more than 415 members (175 last year) and I enjoy every moment we spend there, talking about housing and sharing ideas and information.

Thank you also to everyone who has helped me with the site!

The D&Co team: Thank you Rhuangar, Haflith and Khelsi, for aiding me with editing and translating my articles into the language of Shakespeare.

Thanks also to my favourite jurors who helped me again with contests this year: Prunaprismia, Kaels, Edward, Khelsi and Khaotil.

Many thanks to all those who helped me to fill the decoration database by using the “Submit a Decoration” page.

Finally, I want to thank all those who made donations to me via the Buy me a Coffee button. This year, your donations covered about 70% of website costs (the same as last year). Thank you!
As always, your donations should thus be considered to be fully reinvested in the site, for example, in order to pay for rental of the servers and to fund rewards for contests (mugs, expansions, VIP packs, LOTRO points).

Thanks again to everyone!

The Database in 2021

247 decorations were added this year to the site (319 last year)! A huge number, considering that most of these additional decorations were released this year (110+ only from just Gundabad!).

We therefore today have 1815 decorations posted on the site (I’m only missing a deco from the Gundabad Instances).

Also concerning the database, I also had to update the entry for every yard and interior item according to the new hook consolidations, which was kind of an enormous task (thanks Khelsi for helping me with this on the French website!).

I also updated more than 200 items with new pictures this year, and plan to update more in the near future.

LotRO Housing in 2021

Last year, we had new neighborhoods (Rohan) and new hooks.

This year, there were no new housing areas, but we had the hook consolidations of interior and exterior hooks. If you’ve had the time to play with this new system, I’m sure you already saw the benefits that you can reap from these changes.

⇒ Every changes made in 2021 can be found here ⇐

D&Co du Milieu in 2022

The Database

I have a list of things in mind that I would like to finish (or start) this year:

• In the next few weeks, I’m going to upload new pictures for Dol Amroth decorations and other items. Some are old and some are too dark. This needs to be changed!
• As always, I’ll work to improve the sorting, labelling, and categorizing of decorations to make your searches more productive (an on-going and never-ending task).

As always, if you have any other suggestions for the website, I would love to hear them!

The Website

In 2021, we made a few minor improvements to the website like an update to the Ambient Music page and a better way to display more housing items in a single page.

Last summer, I also moved the websites to shiny new servers.

Right now, I’m working on a few things that should see the light of day in the first part of the year:

• I am currently reworking the presentation pages for each neighborhood and adding interactive maps to those pages. The Bree-Land and Shire Homesteads pages have already been updated and I’m working on the others.
• In the next few months (probably after the release of the Erebor Homesteads), I’m also planning to work on the main menu in order to improve the “Locations of Items” menu which is, at the moment, quite messy.

Contests

The 2022 calendar is already filled with contests.

We currently have our Housing Week contest running, so feel free to participate.

As for all the recurring contests that have been running on the site (Housing Week, X-Creator, and the Demeure de l’Étrange), worry not, for they shall continue to be part of the schedule!

Again, thank you all so very much for your loyalty and your commitment to this site. I wish you all a happy new year!

~Yao
D&Co du Milieu