Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle, Ten Ton Hammer: Jeffrey Steefel is a 20 year veteran of the games industry, serving in an executive capacity at 7th Level, Sony Online Entertainment, and There Inc. before coming onboard at Turbine. But before all of that, I kid you not, Jeffrey Steefel was Jesus. This is probably the most fascinating thing I’ve found in all my researching of bios, but Jeffrey actually played the part of parts in an off-broadway production of Godspell in 1988.

So I guess my first question is: how different is your current position from your previous life as an actor, singer, and entertainer?

Jeffrey Steefel, Exec. Producer, Lord of the Rings Online: I thought you were going to ask how different is my current position from being on the cross. (laughter) In which case I would say: some days, not all too different. Significantly different. I’ve always been interested in technology, but we’re still entertaining people, we still have a tremendous audience, and in the case of LotRO I’m still telling stories. In that respect it’s not all that different, in other respects it’s night and day.

Ethec: And of course the big news this week is Book 7 which finally takes us into Lorien.

Jeffrey: Yes, absolutely, that just launched yesterday (March 18, 2009).

Ethec: That’s phenomenal, I know it’s been a long road through the mines of Moria to get to this point. So congratulations on that; I remember it was just about a year ago on a rainy day in Birmingham at Connect ’08 when Mines of Moria was announced. So congratulations on getting to this point.

Jeffrey: Thank you. This is definitely a place we’ve been wanting to get to for a while.

Ethec: So my first question about Book 7 is the changes to the Book 7 experience. A number of re-organizational changes - minimizing travel times and consolidating quest hubs, that kind of thing - were made in the starting area for elves and dwarves in Book 7. Why was Book 7 the right time for these changes?

Jeffrey: I think we’ve been seeing a number of things. First of all, the community is maturing, the game has been out now for going on two years and as the game continues to grow and the audience continues to grow we are getting a broader audience. We’ve got new people coming to the game who can benefit from something that pulls you even more into the early parts of the game, things we didn’t quite do when the game launched. We also have the benefit of learning from everything we’ve done in the last two years.

On top of that, the whole industry, the genre of MMO, going through a slight transformation over the last couple years in terms of what players want and what kind of experience someone wants when they first come into the game. So there’s a combination of making some things better, just in general, because we can. And also just making it even more facile and accessible in the early parts of the game for some of the newer players that are coming to join us.
Ethec: Book 7 content, aside from the Waterworks of Moria, which is the new raid, and the occasional sortie to break the muster of the orcs at the gates of Moria, the content in Book 7 seems kind of restive compared to some of the books we’ve seen in the past. Is that intentional? Is this meant to be a break from the tension of Moria?

Jeffrey: Yea, I think it’s a combination of things. Yes, certainly, we feel that there’s been enough challenge in Moria for players to get to this point. And there’s the sense in all Middle Earth and in the Lord of the Rings story that you get through all of this long travail through Moria as the fellowship did and you get to this relative sanctuary. First in Galadriel’s Garden and then eventually into the really secure area of Lothlorien and eventually into Caras Galadhron. And it’s also consistent with the tone and feel of the books around this place - this is a heavily guarded place, this is a place that has a good amount of secrecy to it, and that breaching the walls of Lothlorien is something you do only as a trusted person. Once you get there, you get to rest and rejuvenate, and be with the elves of Lorien. It felt appropriate at this particular time for players to do that. There’s still plenty of conflict and challenge at the borders as you mentioned with the orcs, and some of the things that take you back into Moria.

Ethec: We should mention too that Book 7 is the first book in a while that doesn’t require you to complete the previous books to begin it, even though that’s certainly recommended. Why was this change made? Was Lorien too fundamental to the Lord of the Rings experience to not prevent players from diving right in?

Jeffrey: Early on, when we launched the game, we knew it was very important to not force players through a linear path. But I think more and more we really have the opportunity to say that if we really want you to experience the game in the way that you want to and not force you to follow a particular path, the better off we’re going to be. So I think that Lorien offered us another opportunity for that.

Ethec: Ok, and along with that, is Book 7 a must-complete? Will players have to complete Book 7 in order to continue on in the path of the fellowship in the future?

Jeffrey: There are certainly things in the epic quest that players will want to complete, I don’t think there’s anything in particular that must be completed in order to move forward. But, for example, there’s certainly going to be some item advancement components, some loot that you’re going to have gotten going through the instances and clusters that we have in Caras Galadhron, Moria, and even the reputation that you gather with the elves in Lothlorien is going to be valuable to you as you move forward. So very little of it is absolutely required and essential, but you’re going to want to have done a fair amount of it as you move forward.

Ethec: Another side of Book 7 is the number of improvements you’ve made for crafters, specifically crafting instances and daily quests to get crafters what they need. Will any of this break up the often criticized strict interdependence between crafting classes, or is it just about raw materials?

Jeffrey: Certainly, first and foremost, the way to provide people with access to materials is to make it easier - that in itself is going to certainly make it easier, more plentiful, for people to get what they need. Interdependence in the way the crafting system is created is definitely something we’re aware of and I think that this may help with is, but there’s more things we want to do in the future to combat that. I think that form of crafing is something that a lot of players enjoy and I think a lot of players feel like it creates that dependence that they would prefer to be without. Going forward this is going to be something we do our best to address and give people a little bit less dependence on each other for crafting. And there’s a number of things we’ve talked about internally that we’re not committed to yet, but that’s definitely something that’s at the top of the line for all the designers here.

Ethec: One of the curses of releasing content is that impudent types like us automatically start asking about the next thing that you have in line for us - we have to, it’s in the contract. Could you tell us where we might be heading next? Are we following in the fellowship’s footsteps down the river Anduil towards a Nazgul and Boromir’s faceoff with Frodo or might we be following a different path?

Jeffrey: We’re not quite talking about what’s coming in Book 8, but we’re certainly continuing our exploration of this side of the Misty Mountains. There’s some things you can imagine players are going to find - clues in the epic story, and some of the things they encounter in the content in Book 7 that give some indication of where the conflict is. Whether we’re there immediately or shortly thereafter remains to be seen. But we don’t want to give everything away too quickly, it ruins the fun. But, again, we’re setting up some new conflicts with the orcs and perhaps where they might be coming from - some of the strongholds of evil that are starting to take root this side of the Mistys. Those will certainly be the sources of things that drive players moving forward. But at the risk of continuing to be so obscure, we’re not talking that much about Book 8 yet. But soon. Very soon. At least a week after Book 7. (laughter)

Ethec: We’ll give you guys a week off, at least, for a job well done. So we have about 50 people in the channel that are much more acquainted with Tolkien lore than I’ll ever be. So we’re going to kind of hand the mic over to them and let them ask some of the questions that they’ve been diligently coming up with. Over to Cody for the first question.

Cody Bye, Ten Ton Hammer: From Sandkin62, how will housing change or get better in the future?

Jeffrey: With housing, we’ve always said that the big thing going forward in terms of expanding that functionality is in the neighborhood. That is still the potential that exists for housing. We haven’t been able to take advantage of it quite the way we wanted to yet simply because the number of things we’ve been trying to address in each update is gargantuan. We still have great desire to focus more on the neighborhood experience, in the short time we’re still focused on adding new decorations, different types of decorations, give players more things to do in their existing houses. And then it’s just a question of when’s the right time, balancing this against all the other different types of development that we have to do for the game, to start addressing some of the different neighborhood designs that we’d like to push on. And I don’t have an answer for when we’d like to do that yet. In a world where we could do everything at once that’s something I would hope that we could begin to work on as quickly as possible. But right now, housing is fairly status quo. We’re certainly going to be providing more materials, more decorations, but in terms of overall funcationality - at least right now, it’s not changing.

Reuben "Sardu" Waters, Ten Ton Hammer: I’ve got a question from Rolleil, do you plan on continuing this trend of redesigning and making more fun the levels 15-50?

Jeffrey: Now that we’ve launched this revised 1-15 experience, we’re going to spend a fair amount of time looking at what’s happening. How is players’ behavior changing? How much more quickly are people moving through that particular experience and what have we made better? What have we maybe not made better? Are people enjoying it more? We’re going to be doing surveys, looking at data, doing lots of comparisons between how things were before to how they are now, and that’s going to give us information about what we should be doing going forward.

That said, we’re definitely continuing the work we started in Book 7 moving forward, in fact, we have developers working on it as we speak. Again, moving past level 15 and continuing to make the experience even more fun - to remove any unnecessary friction from the experience. This is mean to be a game about exploration and discovery, and we still want that to be in there and be a significant part of the player’s experience. But anything that feels like it’s gratuitous friction is something that we’re going to try and smooth out.

So, you definitely expect to see continuing improvements to the existing game in addition to expansion of the game going forward.

Cody: The next question is from Elderban: if there’s only 9 books in Volume 2, are we going to be seeing an expansion sometime earlier than this last expansion, or is something going to change in there that we don’t know about yet?

Jeffrey: First of all, we haven’t determined how many books there are in Volume 2. That remains to be seen. In terms of how we’re going to be expanding the game for the next expansion - again, we’re not talking about detailed plans yet, but as we’ve said in the past, we have every intention of having both the regular book updates and also having the more significant expansions to the game on a fairly frequent basis. So we’re working on some pretty cool stuff right now, we’re just not talking about it yet. It’s definitely coming - later in the year we’ll be talking about it. But 9 books might not be the end of Volume 2.

Sardu: Have their been any other ideas tossed around for hobbies beyond fishing?

Jeffrey: All kinds, some of them really cool, some of them really scary. (laughter) We have a number of designs for more hobbies, we have some ideas that we’re hoping to put in this year. There’s all kinds of things, everything from... lest players interpret this as things we’re doing or not doing, this is a standard disclaimer... all kinds of things like explorer, treasure hunter, painter, and anything else you could think of in terms of hobbies - anything that is going to give players a reason to explore the world and find things that put an extra personal touch on who they are and their experience in the world. But again, that’s just another vector of the game that sits on a list of things we continually want to improve. When that actually happens is not entirely clear yet, it just depends on how it stacks up against everything else that players want and everything else we’re trying to get into the game.

Cody: Sandsword asks a question about getting 1st and 2nd age items. He says that auctionhouses are filled with inflated prices. Are there any plans to help players attain their wanted items and furthermore a choice to actually get the legacies on the items the players want and need?

Jeffrey: Let me try to break that down. Auctionhall is always a challenge, because we don’t control the prices at the end of the day. I think what the player might be asking is how do we combat the large amounts of lesser valued things - I wouldn’t say junk - that players are pushing in the auctionhouses. That has to do with how we continue to bring new items and new itemization into the game and the relative value of that. It’s a constant challenge and we’re continually trying to make that better.

In terms of - if I understand the second part of the question, it’s how are we going to make more varied legacies available to players through items that are sold in the auction house. Does that sound right?

Cody: The player was asking in particular about how a player can get their particular legendary item that they want, then put the legacies and traits on it that they want to?

Jeffrey: I think it’s a combination of - certainly as we move forward - the more variety that exists in the world in terms of items, because you can go into the auction house now and try to find the legacies that you’re interested in. I think that the broader the variety gets in the world, the broader the variety gets in the auctionhouse. In terms of being able to get precisely what you want, part of what makes that challenging for players sometimes is part of what by design is in there to create the variety that item advancement has and that there’s a lot of randomness to what you pull when you get a particular item. I know that some players feel that makes it very difficult to get the precise thing that they’re looking for. Again, it’s just another one of those things that we’re constantly trying to balance. We don’t want to make it so clearly defined that it’s really just a set path - you and I can follow exactly the same steps and find the same kind of legacies and relics and put them into our items and build something that’s very similar. The whole point of it is to create that broad variety that allows us to be unique. That also means that we have a fair amount of randomization in it, and I think that that’s what makes players feel like they can’t get all the pieces that they’re really really looking for as quickly as they think they should.

Sardu: Following along in that same vein, Elliesk asks ‘setting aside the implications of to how armor is different from weapons, is there currently the available tech to allow customizable legendary armor sets similar to the legendary weapons?

Jeffrey: Unfortunately for us we can’t put aside all of those complexities, but right now it’s currently meant to support weapons and class items only. And that’s what’s currently in the design. In the system, there’s certainly the flexibility to expand that in the future, but right now, the goal is to just focus on weapons and class items. That just has to do with trying to manage the scope of how many different layers the system can have. Every time you add another layer, it just adds a huge amount of complexity and also just scope in how we have to support it going forward. So the current plan is to remain focused on class items and weapons.

Cody: Are there any plans to add boats on Lake Evendim and the River Anduil?

Jeffrey: We’ve always wanted to add boats, and we will definitely add boats at some time, it’s just a question of when. Evendim was certainly a place where we would have liked to have done it right off the bat. But as you mentioned, there’s some riverboat activity that might be beneficial going forward. We know how we’re going to do it when we add boats and I know I sound like a broken record - such is the life of development, it’s a constant tradeoff - everything we do creates new work, new focus, new risk. So it’s just a constant balance of... is that the most important thing, or is spending time on new player experience the most important thing, or is giving players new opportunities to do new types of instanced content, or is it leveraging our heightmap technology that we added in Moria into as cool or even cooler spaces as we move forward in the book updates this year. All of these things are constantly competing against each other, but boats is definitely something we all want.

Sardu: From Tiggad, is PvMP going to be leveled out? It went from freeps being overpowered to creeps being overpowered, are we going to get back to pre-Moria balancing?

Jeffrey: We made some attempts in Book 14 in Moria to add some new mechanics to the game to help balance what’s going on in the world as far as measuring population density on both sides and trying to make available some powerful session play monsters in order to even out the balance on either side. I think, like with everything else, we’re taking a look at that to see where it’s working and where it’s not working. That’s something we’re going to have to figure out going forward - where have we made it better, where have we made it worse. The implication from that player is that it feels less balanced than before we made those changes. Certainly we’ll be interested to look into that further going forward. And I imagine all I need do is look on the boards to find all the information I need in that respect. But it’s a constant balance, partially because PvP in general is not an easy thing to balance and also because of the nature of the way PvMP is created in our game. But we’re not done doing work on the PvMP mechanic and how that works, extending the functionality of it and also broadening it - making it more effective for players specifically on the creeps side, in terms of diversity of what they can actually do as compared to the freeps. So, it’s a constant work in progress, I don’t know that it will ever be over. Hopefully as we continue to make these changes it will feel better overall for players.

Cody: Someone who refers to himself as a former Perpetual developer asks if there’s any plans to give kinship leaders more control over their kinships?

Jeffrey: All kinds of plans, and it’s back to that when, how, who. We absolutely want kinship leaders and officers to have more abilities to do specific things with their kinship. There’s a lot of things we’d like to do, some of them have their own technical hurdles, some of them have to do with the amount of time and work that’s required to do it and do it right. But absolutely, everything from how you manage your house to how you manage your experiences together, how you get people together. We have lots of plans, it’s just a matter of which ones we think are most important and how soon we can get them into the game. But we’re well aware of the fact that our kinships would like more support for what they do, and they’re certainly very important to us. There’s a lot of things we want to do, it’s just when and what we want to do.

Sardu: Question from SilentNemesis - might we see any pet classes in the future?

Jeffrey: Not on the immediate horizon, but people think pets are cool and we do too. It’s just a matter of in what context does that make sense. So whether that’s adding a pet or herald or something like that for an existing class or it’s including it when in the future we add a new class remains to be seen, but there’s no question that that’s something that’s cool and something players like and we’d love to expand on in the future. It just depends on in what way and what and where and why. We’ve had many discussions and potential ideas about that but certainly nothing that I’d want to talk about right now.

Cody: We’ve got a question from an old Asheron’s Call player, and they ask if we’re ever going to see the random loot tables that players saw in Asheron’s Call?

Jeffrey: We love that too, there’s a lot of old Asheron’s Call player - myself included, and in my case old has many meanings - clearly people loved that. There’s pluses and minuses to that kind of system - we have a more similar system to that in Dungeons and Dragons Online. Making a fundamental change to how loot is generated is something that would be pretty significant to a game like Lord of the Rings Online and would have a pretty significant impact on the way the game is and the way that itemization and progression works. It’s unlikely that we’ll have anytime in the near future the munching of treasure that we had in Asheron’s Call, but again, as with everything we could probably have a 2-3 hour session on the pluses and minuses of doing that in this game. We probably had monthlong sessions back in the early days of development about it because we know how much people loved it. It just turned out to be not the best solution for this game on balance in terms of all the other things we were trying to do. We absolutely share that same kind of fondness for that particular mechanic in Asheron’s Call. It was a pretty much fundamental mechanic in AC.

Ethec: Kilithin and Sankan62 and about five other people were asking if there’s any possibility of seeing mounted combat in the game?

Jeffrey: Always that possibility. It’s just a matter of how and what does that really mean. We’ve seen in a lot of games that it’s something that has to be done with great care and done well. There are parts of Middle Earth that would feel awfully odd without an awful lot of mounts and an awful lot of people utilizing them in a more sophisticated fashion than you currently do in the game. It’s hard for me to imagine that that day isn’t part of our future, it just has to do with how we’re moving forward through the world, the complexity of the technology that we have to create in order to make sure that when we do it it’s absolutely the way we want it to be. In the shorter term, there’s some things we want to do with mounts in general, but until I’m confident that I can speak absolutely to what that is, that’s something we’re not speaking just yet. But that’s something we’ll definitely be talking about this year.