Gameplay Questions

The game will cover the whole of Middle-earth, however to give each part the attention and detail it requires, this will be spread out over several releases.

The initial release of Lotro will cover most of Eriador plus a bit more -- from the coast of Lindon in the West to the Misty Mountains in the East, all the way up to the Ice Bay of Forochel in the North and down to the Brandywine in the South. If you look on the map in LotR, this means roughly the left upper corner of the map leaving the southern border a bit unclear yet. The expansions will roughly follow the path of the Fellowship with, for the first expansion, a short detour to Mirkwood and the Lonely Mountain. They will use natural borders (seas, large lakes, swift rivers, mountains, ravines) wherever they can to prevent us from running into invisible barriers.

The game will be set during the time of Lord of the Rings. There is not a single date and time set, nor does time flow: the map of Middle-earth will be divided in regions and each region is set in a fixed date and time. This will usually be "right after the Fellowship left" so that we cannot interfere with the main storyline. The story within a region only changes due to your personal progress e.g. because of quests you solved.

It has been officially announced that the whole of the initial release will be set "right after the Fellowship has left Moria".

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The game will not follow the storyline from the books and you cannot play a character from the books. But instead you can create a character all to your own liking and carve out a destiny of your own, participating in the epic storylines set against and gleaning from the stories in the books. The questing system works like this:

The magic system will be true to Tolkien's work, meaning that will be different from the systems we have got to know from the (MMO)RPGs. Magic within Tolkiens work is pretty subtle and the more powerful magic is used by characters who are much more powerful than player-characters can hope to achieve and/or simply not playable (e.g. Wizards). The following rules apply to magic system:

A previous article about Music suggests that music will have magical properties such as removing weariness and inducing fear.

Try your magic against this guys bad breath!

Further Readings on Magic:

Yes. There will be enough for solo players to enjoy the game very much. There will however be a very involved fellowship and kinship system.

You can visit every inch of the map using conventional travel but you can also use a fast transport mode.

Conventional travel
In the initial release you probably can only use your feet to cross the lands. Running will be the default setting and will use up stamina. Horses for instance will not be in the game until they reach Rohan: they want to do horses proper and make them rich in functionality; not just walking backpacks or 4-legged-7-miles-boots. Player controlled boats will not be in the initial release either, but some races will be able to swim (though you cannot cross all bodies of water since some are used as a natural border). There will be boats going to fixed destinations such as the Bucklebury Ferry.

Fast transport
The fast mode of transport allows us to quickly meet with friends. In the fast mode of transport you will move from one travel node to the other with cut scenes and the travel nodes will be lore appropriate (no spinning portals in the landscape): e.g. you enter a stable in one town, see a little movie of yourself riding in a wagon across the lands and end up in a stable in another town. The number of travel nodes will be moderate and connect highly traveled areas, not necessarily interesting adventuring areas. You will need to do something to “unlock” the fast travel mode, e.g. walk the distance once. The current estimate is that you need 45 minutes to cross the Shire and 10 hours to run from the Grey Havens to Rivendell.

The Buckleberry Ferry :

You will start the game with a basic map and your map can become more detailed as you progress. Some details are temporary and will fade away when e.g. you have finished the quest.
There will be a radar in the game, though actually radar is not a good word: it is a compact and neat way to show you information that you need to play. The "radar" will get a look and feel that is appropriate for Middle-earth. The reason for having a radar are:

If they do not provide us with one, 3rd party applications would be made, giving the people using those a big advantage. Encryption is not a lasting solution and a 3rd party radar would be VERY hard to detect. Sending the dynamic data real time is not a solution either: they must send some dynamic data to your PC ahead of time or else the game would not be playable.

Compensation for information you would have in the real world but not in the game: smell, tracks, sound (not everybody can use sound), peripheral view.

Compensation for slower machines: fast machines can set the graphics settings higher so that they can "see" further. The radar prevents that people with slow machines are set back.

It helps you keeping a fellowship together and navigate through the gaming world.

If you still do not like a radar, be glad to know that you can turn it off.

All the usual MMORPG communication methods will be available: chatting (reaching the ones surrounding you), personal tell, group tell, kinship chat and specialty channels. Communication is deemed to be a critical aspect of the gaming side and lore-issues have been second placed. Voice chat will not be supported but 3rd party applications for this purpose will not be blocked.

You can determine your level of communication: you can block each and every channel and also you can "ignore" annoying characters and everything they say is filtered out.

Answer:

A party of weary travelers rests their feet while sipping ale at a roadside inn. A master craftsman bends over his newest creation, smiling at the perfection he has wrought. Stooping over the corpse of a newly slain monster, an adventurer wonders what to do with his spoils.

The economy systems in MEO will allow every player to fill their own niche in the world, immersing you in the day to day life of Middle-earth!

Economy Features:

Players will have the option to advance in many different trade skills, which will give them the ability to craft and improve a wide variety of items, as well as repair those that have begun to wear out. The most powerful items in the game can only be obtained with the help of these master craftsmen.

Adventurers in MEO who seek their equipment in the wilds will find that monsters only drop realistic treasure. For example, orcs could be carrying almost anything, but Wargs would never carry a sword or armor.

MEO's economy will follow the guidelines set by Tolkien. For example, elvish communities operate strictly on a Gifting system, while the rest of Middle-earth uses silver and gold as currency.

Players will be able to buy, sell and trade with NPC vendors located in towns throughout Middle-earth. There is also an auction system which allows players to sell and by wares by auction. These auction NPC's are located throughout the major cities.

Players will have the option to advance in many different trade skills, which will give them the ability to craft and improve a wide variety of items, as well as repair those that have begun to wear out. The best items will be items dropped by monsters and improved through tinkering by master craftsmen. By tinkering existing items, players will be able to create unique items.

Crafting will play a role in the economy side of the game, e.g. making money by crafting to pay for the upkeep of your house. There will be no player-run shops, but you may be able to use your own house for this purpose.

Crafting skills will be available to every character: there will be no pure crafting classes. The crafting skills you initially have access to depend on your race, class and the choices with regard to vocation and upbringing.

Related Questions:

There are 10 crafting professions in LOTRO:

You will not be able to play as a member of the Fellowship. You will, however, meet the Fellowship and many other important characters from the books, and participate at times in important events that take place in parallel to the main events of The Lord of the Rings. The goal for LOTRO is to allow each player to create and grow their own Tolkien hero within an authentic Middle-earth mythology and environment, and to task them with their own heroic quest.

Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit or Human. Elves will be restricted to Silvan or Wood Elves.

For the first release, the answer is no. This makes sense according to the lore. In later releases however there is more room to play Easterlings or the like.

There is currently no PvP in the game. What has been added is called Monsters versus Players which provides the players an opportunity to play a monster character. These monster characters engage other players in combat in the higher level areas and can learn/train skills just like any class.

A traditional party in LOTRO is called a Fellowship and will be supported by the features you would expect like multi-channel chat, locate, and group rewards. In addition, LOTRO will provide Fellowships with unique and powerful group attacks that increase in strategic complexity with player skill.

A Fellowhip Skill is a group combat maneuver which is executed by multiple members of a Fellowship. Fellowship Skills reward teamwork and organization within the group. They start simply, but can increase in complexity for players who wish to fully exploit group tactics.

At this time, individual player housing is not in the plan for launch. We absolutely see this as an important part of the evolving world after launch and have plans on how to execute this type of system.

Turbine are using instancing in two basic ways in the game. As has become more common in other MMO's, instances place Fellowships (parties) in an environment that is private to them, so they can craft a compelling adventure that will not be interrupted or interfered with by other players. They have also developed a more complex use of layered instancing, to "change the world" as part of special moments in the story. In layered instances, the player will encounter an area that during the course of a series of adventures will be forever altered in the "public" persistent world. For example, an attack on a town might result in the town being consumed in flames during a battle – returning to the town later, the player will discover the buildings are burnt to ashes. This will remain the open, public world from that point on for any player that had experienced those events in the game. We'll explain this exciting mode of gameplay in further detail in the future.

The majority of the game will occur in open, persistent scape. We anticipate 10-20% of the world will be instanced in one fashion or another.

The current plan is to cap the levels at 50 in the launch version of the game.

6/28/06 - Jeffrey Steefel to eurogamer.com

"We're going to do an expansion roughly every nine to 12 months, and the expansions are likely to have significant functionality changes as opposed to just content. We're going to do quarterly content updates."