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 LOTROs executive producer, Jeffrey Steefel, and we march out the ways that the game has been changing and whats 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!
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?
border="1">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/13622" title="Gollum">
src="/image/view/13622/preview"
width="200">
src="http://tth.tentonhammer.com/modules/gallery/images/pixel_trans.gif"
alt="" height="1" width="1">
style="font-style: italic;">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.
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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/13637" title="Balrog 1">
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alt="" height="1" width="1">
style="font-style: italic;">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.
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