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Questions by Cody "Micajah" Bye and Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle
Answers by Jeffrey Steefel, Executive Producer for Lord of the Rings Online

There’s no doubt about it, the Lord of the Rings Online is arguably one of the most popular games in the MMOG marketplace. While the subscription numbers have yet to filter down to the public, news about the game draws massive attention every time a piece of info containing the words Balrog, Gollum, or Tolkien make their way to the public eye. Players and outsiders alike love to hear about this game, and Ten Ton Hammer continues to provide.

Every few weeks the editorial staff at Ten Ton Hammer gets on the conference call line with LOTRO’s executive producer, Jeffrey Steefel, and we march out the ways that the game has been changing and what’s in store for the players of the Middle Earth-based game. Our latest chat with Steefel features an in-depth discussion about Book 11, exploring areas of the upcoming update that were previously under wraps or merely rumored about until now. In our chat we cover the updates to the Loremaster and Minstrel, Gollum, the Balrog raid, housing, cowbells, pets, item balance, kinship vaults and much much more! So sit back, grab a pint, and light up some pipe-weed while you enjoy our interview with Jeffrey Steefel!

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Ten Ton Hammer: Book 11 is certainly on the way, and recently we’ve been seeing all sorts of Gollum screenshots and concept art from the update. In the books he “helps” Sam and Frodo on their way to Mordor, but what sort of role does he play in LOTRO?

The developers couldn't reveal much about Gollum's role in Book 11.

Jeffrey Steefel: I don’t want to spill too much. His role is going to evolve more and more over time, and his appearance in Book 11 is more of a cameo as players encounter him for the first time in Middle Earth. I won’t go into too much detail about what’s going on when you encounter him, because it’s really just a first taste. But as you get further into the epic story over the course of the next few books, it will become clearer how he’s involved with what’s going on in Middle Earth as it relates to the player. What you’re seeing in Book 11 is really just your first glimpse of him during those times when he’s just roaming about causing trouble.

Ten Ton Hammer: What have you guys been working on since we talked to you last? Have there been any big changes or improvements since that time? What are you currently focusing on?

Jeffrey: First of all, we’ve been focusing a lot on housing. Adding a big feature like housing in an update and not an expansion pack is a pretty big undertaking as you can imagine. First it’s “just” building it – with just in quotes because you don’t “just” build a feature like that – and doing it while building out the neighborhood areas for all four races. It’s pretty much like building four mini-regions – four towns if you will – for each race. That’s a significant amount of work. Then you have to make all the decorations and items that players will be placing in these various houses.

After that we’ve been really trying to make sure it works well. We’ve really been focusing lately on usability so players can quickly understand how to get their own houses, decorate them and share them with other people. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect any developer to do with a system like this.

Finally, we’ve started doing some testing on housing, and we’ve actually been able to run some on our private Isengard server. We invited a whole bunch of people into the housing and neighborhood areas to make sure that they could handle the player load that we expect will happen when lots of players rush to get their houses at the same time. And that went great!

*laughs* I can say that now because it’s over and it went great! We didn’t know if it was going to go great, and you really never know. That’s why you do these things, and it was very similar to a lot of the testing we did just before launch to make sure that the launch day rush wasn’t going to flatten us.

Along with housing, we’re continuously iterating the raid. That’s our other big, BIG focus. It’s a huge undertaking and it’s a very, very large experience. You eventually end up in the Balrog’s Chamber, but that’s only one of three sections of the entire raid.

Ten Ton Hammer: What are the sections and can you go into a bit more detail about each?

Jeffrey: Sure. First there’s “The Mines” which is the first section you’ll encounter. These are obviously large underground mines. You’re going to be encountering some pretty heavy duty monsters that you’ve seen in a rare fashion in the past, but you’ve never seen them work quite this way before. They’re basically down in these mines collecting ore. It’s an old set of mines that’s being occupied by Angmar, and they’re down their collecting this ore to create their weapons. It’s similar to what you see in the movies when the opposing forces are smelting all the metal to create their vast amounts of weaponry. There are lots of cool, scary and challenging things to find and fight in The Mines.

You work your way through The Mines and you’ll end up in these vast underground caverns, which are incredibly neat. If you haven’t seen screenshots of these things, they’re coming and they’re incredible to look at.

The next part of the raid is called “The City.” At the end of this section you’ll be dropped into what we’ve called “The Coliseum.” In this area you’ll encounter some new monsters that you’ve never seen before along with some new functionality that lends itself to make this area very, very challenging.

The Balrog raid may take between 3-6 hours according to Steefel.

Ten Ton Hammer: How in depth is this raid going to be? Is it an encounter where players are going to have to work a long time to complete, or is it a shorter sort of instance – maybe an hour or two – in length?

Jeffrey: This is a Raid, with a capital ‘R.’ It’s a twelve man encounter with three major components to it, one of which is huge. The goal is for someone not to be able to waltz through it on their first time. We’ve been testing this on Isengard and there’s always one group that will wipe and wipe and wipe and never get through it. Afterwards we’ll say “Cool, we’ve got a hard encounter.” Then another group will come through and they’ll beat it on the first attempt with four guys. We’ll just shake our heads and go back to the drawing board. But that’s the life of planning out a raid.      

It’s really very cool, though. There are great experiences in the raid, along with monsters doing some things that you haven’t seen them do before plus some different tactics that you’ll need to bring to bear to complete the raid. Hopefully it will be very challenging and very satisfying, especially with the new raid loot that’s been created specifically for this raid encounter.

Ten Ton Hammer: When players are attacking the Balrog, how are they going to kill it? Is it going to be something special, like some sort of cut scene that ends him? Or will some sort of super-strong NPC comes in and kills him when he’s down to a fraction of his life? I mean, in the books it takes an almost god-like character to take down one of these critters.

Jeffrey: Especially “the” Balrog in Khazad-dûm. It’s a pretty big instance with a pretty big drama sequence that goes on in there. I don’t believe there’s a cut scene in this particular instance, but again we typically only do cut scenes when we feel it’s appropriate to take control away from the player. That said, there’s a LOT going on when you finally get to the Balrog room.