Ten Ton Hammer: How long
do you think the Balrog fight is going to
take? Will players be going back and forth with this thing for hours?



Jeffrey: It
really depends on who the players are. We’re
estimating that an accomplished group should be able to make it through
the whole raid in three to six hours. Once you’ve done it and
go back in again, we assume that number will be closer to three hours.
But that’s for people that really know what they’re
doing.



Raid-locking is going to be in full-force in this encounter, just like
what we’ve done with our other raids. You can leave and come
back to your party. You don’t have to do it all in one
sitting. But I’m sure some people will!



Ten Ton Hammer:
There’s been some talk on the forums
concerning some balancing issues regarding raid items versus
player-crafted items versus dropped items. Some players don’t
see the benefit in raiding because they’ve argued that the
raid items aren’t as powerful as the player-crafted items.
Are you trying to alleviate that with this particular raid?

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style="font-style: italic;">The Turbine
develoeprs are still working on balancing items within the player
economy.

Jeffrey:
What you’ll find in this raid encounter is by far
the coolest stuff that’s been dropped to date. But beyond
that – onto the larger issue – you’re
talking about balancing across crafting economy in general, and
that’s a very high priority for us. It is something that
we’re going to be working on very soon, and it’s
going to involve really diversifying the itemization in the game
– in terms of diversity, in terms of balance, in terms of the
things that you’re really talking about. We want to make sure
that the difficulty versus reward values are in synch.

 

In some cases it is, but in other cases we know that we have some work
to do. Even in some of the earlier parts of the game where players are
like “Hey, I can make some crafting stuff and I
can’t wait to sell it at the auction! Oh wait, the vendor
around the corner sells it for less than what I can sell it
for.” We’ve already been fixing that sort of thing,
but it’s all part of this initiative to continually try to
balance out the economy.



We will have some very cool raid loot, but it won’t single
handedly solve all the issues with the economy. *laughs* I wish it
would!



Ten Ton Hammer: Are any
of the player classes getting a make over in
this particular update?



Jeffrey:
Yes, the Loremaster and the Minstrel. Even after this update,
we’re going to continue to look at the classes and subtly
making alterations to the classes that need the most work. It certainly
won’t be a heavy-handed update, one way or the other. Over
time we hope that the classes will become more balanced, richer and a
little bit more diversified. We do listen to the players and try to
find where classes are particularly deficient to help them out.



Ten Ton Hammer: Can you
give us some details on how they’re
being tweaked?



Jeffrey: For
the Loremaster our biggest focus was on some crowd control
type components. So we’ve really enhanced the
Loremaster’s ability for crowd control. Some pretty cool new
skills have also been added, including some new themed skills that they
can use to give some close range, multiple target support for different
types of enemies. The basic improvement, though, is crowd control and
making it easier and more significant for that class.



In terms of the Minstrel, there’s a couple things we can talk
about. They have three new instruments, and I’ll tell you
about two of them.



Ten Ton Hammer: You can
do that if you want.



Jeffrey: My
designers have a pet instrument that they don't want me to talk about,
and they'd kill me if I did. So the two new instruments I can talk
about are the bagpipes and the
cowbell.



Ten Ton Hammer:
I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription
is more cowbell!

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style="font-style: italic;">The Loremasters are
scheduled to receive a new pet - the lynx - which will help them with
new encounters like this one.

Jeffrey:
*laughs* We’ve even got some headbanging action
thrown in there.



We’re also trying to make some improvements that will allow
the Minstrel to be happier during solo play. This has really been an
issue, and the Minstrel’s are great at support but
it’s hard to solo with that class. We’ve really
tried to alleviate some of those problems by adding some new skills but
also by allowing them to self-buff a lot.



They also have a new skill system...kinda. It's called the Mentor
system and allows them to teach other classes how to use Minstrel
instruments. For example, if I have the right information I can
actually teach you how to play an instrument even though you're not a
Minstrel. It'll cost you, but you can do it. As a Minstrel, you have to
acquire this ability, but once you've got it you can teach it to any
other player. However, there is a cool down, so you can only do it like
once a week to keep people from teaching everyone in the world.



In the future, we'll be doing more of these Mentor type systems and
they'll also have cooldowns, but this is the sort of beginning of this.