Coming Your Way…Eventually

Page Two

Graphically, LOTRO is a stunner. The game looks lush and beautiful. We watched our demo character explore places like the Shire and The Old Forest. Steefel explained that, at the moment, the map radar wasn’t enabled in The Old Forest. “It’s a maze,” he said. “Frodo described The Old Forest as confusing and frightening, and we want it to feel that way. I get lost all the time.”

While the map is disabled now, Steefel said beta would determine whether The Old Forest would have a map at launch. “It’s fun to get lost, and that’s sort of the point,” he said, “but it’s not fun to be lost for 20 minutes. If it doesn’t work, we’ll make adjustments.”

Steefel explained that the game was designed to be intuitive and easy to play. He described the game’s tutorial as “about 4 minutes long,” and said that players would even encounter a Nazgul, although “obviously you’re not strong enough to fight it.”

How easy is LOTRO to learn and play? Steefel used an analogy relating learning LOTRO to learning how to play chess. “When you start out, you’re just a beginner, and you can learn the moves and play the game easily enough. But if you want to, you can get deeper and become more and more advanced as your skills grow. That’s how we want LOTRO to feel.”

Progression in LOTRO is experience based. “You can still grind,” said Steefel. But what makes each character’s advancement more interesting is the addition of something called traits. As players explore Middle Earth, they will make accomplishments as they find a certain location, or have certain experiences. “Accomplishments give traits,” said Steefel. Traits are enhancements which can be added to a character, giving them certain abilities. Each character is capable of collecting many traits, and storing them in an inventory, but you’ll only be able to equip 12-15 traits at a time. The traits you collect, and the ones you choose to use, will give your character distinctiveness.