LOTRO Mines Of Moria Part 2

18 Nov 2008 at 15:41:24 by Andy Alderson

Can you tell us about the new areas in the game? What can players expect from Lorien and Eregion?

Eregion is an area which was once inhabited by the Elves and was abandoned. Elrond and co. took a lot of things back to Rivendale. It’s a large area that leverages some of the higher level content. It’s a place to experiment with some if the new item stuff and there’s quite a lot of new encounter content in there. Some of the epic story happens in there, including the conclusion of volume one so, essentially, Eregion is Book 15. In Lorien, players are going to find themselves in Gladriel’s Garden – you’ll actually meet Gladriel. She will ask you to peer into her mirror and you’ll learn a little about your character’s future and it’s specific to the class of the person looking at it. Depending on which class you’re playing, you’re going to have a different experience with Gladriel. You also encounter Gwaihir, the eagle. You’re actually there at the time that Gladriel sends him to go rescue Gandalf from the top of Orthanc.

How have you tweaked the PvMP features in Mines of Moria?

There are a couple of major things. Firstly, we’ve changed the way that hotspots and keeps work. So, for example, the delving of Fror and areas like that which used to be gated by three keeps are now gated by all these various outposts. I think there’s about a dozen hotspots throughout the Ettenmoors . Now controlling a number of those is what opens up access to some of those gated places like the Delving of Fror. We’ve added an artefact system which is a type of capture the flag. If one side is able to steal an artefact and get it all the way back to their keep then that side will receive extra buffs and modifiers. Not just in the Ettenmoors, this also provides a global buff to anyone who’s on the side of good and evil.

We’ve also added a balance mechanic. One of the big problems we had in the Ettenmoors was that sometimes there would be overwhelming odds on one side or the other which made it very difficult and unbalanced. The system is now aware of the strength of numbers on either side and whenever it becomes significantly unbalanced it gives advantages to the weaker side. For example, the session play Troll and Ranger that used to be available to pretty much anyone (albeit in a limited number) are now being used to balance the sides. If your side is significantly outnumbered, you’re going to have more access to those session play characters than the other side.

Finally, we’ve made some pretty big changes to the way we’re using the landscape and the way we channel players. Now, players will end up concentrated together a lot more than they used to. Before players were getting too spread out and there wasn’t as much conflict as we wanted.

What have you learned from the beta? Did you encounter any major balancing issues?

Always! We had to make sure the new classes balanced well with eachother and existing classes and the item advancement system went through huge revisions during the alpha/beta stages. Everything from the feedback of the UI was covered. There was a lot of simplification of the UI and a lot of changes to balancing.

Where do you see LOTRO’s current position in the MMO genre?

Well, we still believe that LOTRO is one of the leading MMOs on the market and that we’re right up there at the top with one or two other games. We know that we’re an industry leader, that we continue to be and that we’re growing and evolving our game probably more aggressively and effectively than anyone else and players seem to be responding to that.

Was the timing of the launch an issue? Was the release of Wrath of the Lich King considered?

It’s definitely a consideration from a business perspective, but we try not to be intimidated. But we’ve concluded a couple of things. First of all, the MMO market is much more crowded now so we’re not planning around one launch every couple of years. There are a number of games doing expansions and if we spent our life planning around them all, that would be very difficult. Second of all, are games are not all the same. For example, we offer something different to what Lich King is offering.

The people we're trying to compete with all the time are ourselves. We want to make sure that everything we do feels better than the last time. We think that’s the thing that’s going to push us forward, rather than looking at everyone else.

With more choice available now for MMO players, are you seeing more people return to LOTRO?

Absolutely. It’s a constant part of our customer flow. We’ve got some people who come and stay forever, some who play for six months and then move on and then we’ve got a lot of people who come and go depending on where we are in our cycle and where other games are in theirs. There’s a lot of people who play more than one of these games at the same time.

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