Interview with LotRO Producer Jeffrey Steefel

By Darkgolem and Cody Bye

This week Greg "Darkgolem" Stanley and  Cody "Micajah" Bye of Ten Ton Hammer spoke with Lord of The Rings Online (LOTRO) Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel of about what is coming with Book 14, Forge of The Elven Rings, the Mines of Moria and beyond.  Enjoy getting all the tidbits of information and insight into what the developers of LOTRO are up to!

(Darkgolem) Now that fishing is available, what sort of plans for that particular hobby do you have in the future?

(Jeffrey) For hobbies in general we tried make sure that we didn't just hard code fishing into the game, that we actually built a hobby system, so that we could begin adding other hobbies.  Probably not until next year, when it is appropriate we are going to start adding extra hobbies to the game, and they could be all kinds of different things, from painting or something similar.  We try very hard not to just add a system and walk away from it, so of course as often as we can in updates for Moria or anywhere we will be adding to fishing.  It all depends upon time and what other things are calling upon our time.

So tell me what is coming with book 14.  I know it is going to have the climax for the Shadows of Angmar, with Forge of the Elven Rings, but what else will we see?

Well, we take you to the forges where that occurred, and you get to do some cool things in interacting with the forges.  It also is our way of getting our feet wet with the region of Eregion, where the ring forges are in.  Eregion is a region we want to flush out for Moria.  It is the region that leads up to the Hollin gate and the entrance to Moria.

The other thing we are going to be spending a lot of time on in book 14 is looking at our event system and trying to leverage in a couple of new things.  We have a lot couple of cool live events planned for book 14.  We are also taking out our event system and using it for some cool new ends, that are different than what they have had happen before.

Is book 14 going to be a little smaller than previous books because of the work on Moria?

It all depends on how you look at it.. in certain areas, absolutely.  We are not adding a whole new region, like we did in a couple updates, because people are working on building out Moria.  We are adding a bunch of new content, maybe on balance not as much new content than as we have in some of the other ones.    On the other hand, we are having an awful lot of activity and stuff that you can do with some of this live event and event related stuff we are doing.  I would say, a little smaller than our other updates, but I want to be clear, that we have grown our LOTRO team in order to start building expansion on top of our live team, we didn't just sever our live team and throw them over to Moria and say "we will worry about the live game later".

So is most of the new content going to be for Mines of Moria and is Shadows of Angmar done?

No, absolutely not.  No part of the world is ever done, because the game is always evolving.  For example, we are changing the way that things happen with the fellowship in Rivendell, because we need to provide the same experience we have been providing to date, but at the same time we need to accommodate that the fellowship is moving on to Moria, so we want to make sure that the people who are in Rivendell feel like "this makes sense" and they can interact with the fellowship, but when they move on to Moria and meet the fellowship this makes sense as well.  Then there are changes in making the epic story more accessible to solo players, something we continue to do.  In places where it is appropriate, for example the Grey Havens are cool place, we will make it someday, but it will be when it is supports something particular we are trying to do for the game, not just because we want to add a new piece of land.

There are a lot of places we can expand in any of the regions, but at this particular time we think it is the right time to move on to Moria because Moria is so cool, and to the other side of the mines, because of the war that is brewing there.  Yes our focus is there, but we definitely are going to be doing work on the Shadows of Angmar content, not to mention we are adding classes that are available through the entire level advancement, and adding other systems that are available not just in the Mines of Moria and will enhance Shadows of Angmar too.

So the Mines of Moria expansion is strictly for level 50 and above?

No I wouldn't say that, there is stuff that is part of the expansion pack that are for many different levels.  A lot of the big dramatic, "Moria-centric" content is focussed on the high level player, a lot of the high level instances that we are adding, stuff like that, because we know that is a population that is really dying for new challenges and new stuff to do.  People who have not reached that level yet are still going to have new things to explore and do.

There was some mention of world changing instances, such as Hollin gate, and similar, is that correct?

We have a couple places where we have those instances, Archet, and some others.   We do feel that Moria is an opportunity for us to do it again, a couple areas will have that occur in Moria.

About the environment aware AI, could youexplain that in more detail?

Right now, our AI like most AIs in these games, has complexity mostly related to tactics.  A spear chucking goblin will throw from a distance and in melee draw a sword and start fighting, things like that.  What we are trying to do now is add to that an awareness of the environment itself.  How this happens is something we are finalizing right now.  A creature is in a water filled environment, how can that creature use that as a tactic against you?  How can a creature behave like they are more a part of that environment, so it feels less generic as if the monster is in the environment i was made for.

Is there going to be a sixth tier to crafting?

To make sure I am not over- or under-stating, we are growing the advancement tasks for crafters to match what is going on going from level 50 to 60, so whether it is more opportunities for mastery or an extended tier, or a combination, we will be talking about this soon.  Absolutely crafters will have more opportunity for advancement in their professions.

Ok this question I just need to throw in there.. are we going to be able to fight the lurker in the water?

You mean the watcher?  You are going to run across him.. it is clear to us that the Watcher in the Water is a pretty iconic character, and if your going to encounter it, which you will, how you will engage with it will be very unique to what people are thinking out there.  You are definitely not just going to have a sighting of the watcher.  There is a significant amount of activity that happens for you around the watcher.

There was some talk about this, but nothing definitive.  Was there a decision made about character slots, since with 2 new character classes and all that, players might want more character slots?

Still not definitive, it is something we are not talking about yet.

Recently you were given quite a bit of venture capital, and usually that means new products and services.  One thought was, is there a chance that you will be moving over to consoles with some of your products or do you have any thoughts on where that might lead to?

Some of the news about our funding has leaked out to the discovery of some regulatory filing, it is actually kind of amazing watching how quickly that news has spread from a very small corner of the private equity universe, and ended up all over the place.   We have not announced anything regarding funding at all yet, and until then we are not going to comment, but we will be let you know as soon as we do.

Regardless of how we manage or fund it, make no mistake that Turbine is growing as an entity and we are building on the success in LOTRO to expanding our other products and new products, and so on. We are very focussed in expanding internationally, such as in Korea and China and Russia and other places.  The next question for us is how we can grow our audience exponentially, and part of that is going to other parts of the world.  Some day, in ways we are not talking about yet, we know there are a lot of users out there who consume digital entertainment on all different types of devices and we would be crazy to leave that on the table.  So that is about as specific as we can get on that.

(Micajah) How much do you guys work with your teams in Korea, China and Russia to get the products over there, is it something you spend a lot of time working on those products?

We really do look at this as a collaboration.   These products are too big to just ship over there and they distribute it.  We parter with them because they know their audience, they know how to maintain it, host it, they know how to run customer service, which is different in China than it is here.  For example,  the team working in Korea is no smaller than the team working here.  They are very committed to having a good game in Korea.  We talk to them often, just ask our international guys.

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