f13.net forums - LOTRO: Siege of Mirkwood Interview

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At a time when Warhammer Online, Age of Conan and other high-profile MMORPGs are struggling, one is quietly getting on with the business of being successful. We're talking, of course, about Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online (you were thinking World of Warcraft, weren't you?). Why is it so successful? Because Turbine pumps out more updates than an update pumping machine, that's why. And it's getting another one, next month, in fact, called Siege of Mirkwood. The digital download only expansion will raise the level cap to 65, add new quickfire instances called Skirmishes, a new 12-player raid, improve avatar responsiveness and conclude the Volume II: Mines of Moria storyline. Here, in an interview with executive producer Jeffrey Steefel, we find out what the dark forest of Mirkwood has in store for players brave enough to venture into its branchy innards.

VideoGamer.com: Is Mirkwood in the films?

Jeffrey Steefel: There's not a lot going on in Mirkwood at that particular time. There's probably going to be a lot more reference to it in the upcoming film, The Hobbit, because that's where a lot of things happen. It wasn't touched on as much. It's one of the things that are going on. There is certainly reference to Dol Guldur and the tower and what Sauron's doing there. You get the sense in the movie that Aragorn keeps disappearing and coming back, and Gandalf keeps disappearing and coming back. There are other fronts of the war going on, and this is clearly one of them.

VideoGamer.com: Isn't Legolas from Mirkwood?

JS: It was the home of the Sindarin Elves. I think that was before his time, but don't quote me! I know people who know the exact answer to this question.

VideoGamer.com: Why Mirkwood?

JS: Because it was the perfect contrast to Lothlórien, a place we had just been. It was a great place to stage a battle against Sauron, essentially. And it's a stepping stone into where the war and everything is headed. So it was a natural step having just passed through Moria and Lothlórien, before we go down into some of the other elements of war that are going on in the game.

VideoGamer.com: Is Mirkwood comparable in size to your previous expansion Mines of Moria?

JS: It's a hard comparison. Overall it's fair to say that this expansion is smaller than Moria. It's also happening at a much quicker pace. And those two things are related, obviously. It's been a year since Moria. Moria took us a year and a half or so to build. It's also a hard comparison because Moria was so vertical. How big is it? I don't know, we'll have to start measuring in cubes instead of squares. Mirkwood is about one and a half times the size of our normal regions. The Tower of Dol Guldur is large, tall, vertical - a lot of space and content in there. It's hard to say. But in terms of actual region, landscape content, it's definitely less than Moria, because Moria was also part of Lothlórien and Eregion and all that stuff. But it's huge.

[PR interjection]: Quick rerun: Legolas was the Prince of Mirkwood.

JS: There you go. You can now say you know more about Tolkien.

VideoGamer.com: I seriously doubt it.

[PR] Here's the lore book [points to phone].

VideoGamer.com: You have a lore book to hand?

JS: Yeah. In our community over in the North American servers, we have a player-created - well we created it but the players fill it with content, a wiki. We started a wiki with a 40,000 entry library of Tolkien lore and now it's a wiki so players add all kinds of stuff and tie it to the game. We say a quest direction and you go here, but if you can't find it people will then go and give you much more detail.

VideoGamer.com: The Skirmish feature sounds great for players without as much time as others. Will it be possible to level entirely just through Skirmishes?

JS: Don't think so. You have to be level 30 first.

VideoGamer.com: From that point on?

JS: Skirmishes is more about rewards. It certainly helps you, because you're going to get a lot of the rewards you might need to advance, but you're not going to get a huge amount of experience. So probably not. It may be impossible. It was a design goal that this not supplant the game we have, that this be a compliment to it. This is something people would play a bunch for a while and then come back to from time to time. But not that this would become their new primary way of playing the game. That would detract too much from the PvE game we built. We want to make sure you still spend plenty of time on landscape and doing all the things we have for you to do there.

VideoGamer.com: You anticipate most Skirmishes will last half an hour?

JS: 30 to 40 minutes is the average target. Some longer, some shorter. Obviously if you go in there with a 12 person Skirmish and you've all got Soldiers and there are multiple objectives, it'll take a little bit longer. It's meant to be an accessible, bite-sized experience.

VideoGamer.com: Skirmishes will provide the opportunity to revisit some areas but they will be different. Can you give me an example?

JS: The Shire is almost reminiscent of the Scourge of the Shire. Bree, you go into the town of Bree and are met by a soldier in front of the Prancing Pony, who is saying, look the whole town is under siege. Women and children have locked themselves in the Prancing Pony and people are coming to try and burn it down and you need to help us stop them. It's dark and snowy in Bree, which it never is any other time of year there. You end up on Weathertop. You end up in other parts of the world you've been before. And also some places in Mirkwood.

VideoGamer.com: The expansion will be download only. Why?

JS: It's a number of things. It's watching some of the behaviour - a lot of people participated digitally in Moria, which was a surprise to us. This is not a replacement. This isn't a, we're not going to do retail anymore. This is a, well let's try this with Mirkwood, because there are so many changes happening in the industry and really all digital media. But games in particular, especially in the West, especially in the United States but it's beginning to happen in Europe as well, people are purchasing games online because it's more immediate. I can play at one o'clock in the morning after we've turned our servers on. I don't have to wait until the store opens the next day. And then we have some download technology in our Turbine Download Manager that helps bring things to the player a little bit more quickly, which also helps. It's another tool in the tool bag, in terms of the changes we're seeing and the way consumers are consuming content. We're going to see how it goes. Then next year, maybe we'll be back at retail. Maybe we'll do both. We're just trying to add capabilities and try new things and see what that does. It feels more accessible to players when it's online. There is enough broadband out there now that it's not a big deal like it was before.

VideoGamer.com: I guess if you're playing the game you've got an internet connection.

JS: Exactly right! 100 per cent of our players have an internet connection. This expansion content, while it services everybody in the game including brand new players, it's definitely targeted somewhat towards some of the elder players in the game, either to give them more things to do and continue to play, or to bring them back to the game. It's less about having a huge presence in retail to get a whole bunch of new players. We find as many new players online as we do in retail.

VideoGamer.com: If I played Lord of the Rings Online, but haven't for a while, why will Mirkwood convince me?

JS: That depends on who they are. Certainly the gameplay experience is improved through a lot of the improvements we've done. It depends how long they've been away. Skirmishes in particular are something people will want to come back and do, because it gives them an opportunity to do the kind of stuff they normally come back for, but do it a lot more and be able to repeat it and try new things. That's probably going to be the biggest draw. Also, just a new part of Middle-Earth. You get to fight a Nazgûl on the back of a Fell Beast. You don't get to do that in every game.

VideoGamer.com: You're raising the level cap, but there won't be many new skills. Is it the case that the community wants new skills when it isn't good for them?

JS: It's definitely one of the areas where we have to be careful and disciplined. Of course you want as much new shiny as possible, but maybe not, right? We change too many things and then we'll definitely be hearing from the players again. We're having to think now much more about longevity. We don't want to keep just bolting on and bolting on and bolting on. Even making some adjustments along the way, like we did with combat in Moria - from a percentage system to a points system, so we have room to grow. There's headroom there. There's a place to go with it. It's the same thing with skills. You don't want to just keep lopping new things on top of everything that already exists. So yes, in a sense, but not all players. But yeah, we're trying to be responsible with how we're growing the game and listen in a balanced way to what players are saying they want.

VideoGamer.com: Lord of the Rings Online is successful at a time when many MMOs are struggling. Why is that?

JS: It's a few things. Lord of the Rings helps. It's an evergreen IP. It never gets old. It's about to get a nice big refresh with The Hobbit films coming out. Turbine has been doing this for a long time. This is our fourth MMO. That helps, because we know a lot of things by burnt fingers not to do again. The biggest thing is we don't see this as a product we launch, we put in the market and then we come out with another add-on product. It's a daily interaction with the players. Everything from what they're telling us and how that feeds back into the game to how we're communicating with the communities to bringing people into the game - we often bring press in to come play with us in the game - it's about that constant cycle of communication with the player. And recognising the fact that we have an unbelievable opportunity than any makers of any other kind of media would kill for, right, that we have this relationship with the players. That's the biggest thing. It takes a lot of time and energy and effort and conscious thought to do that, so that helps. And we're letting our game evolve, but not fundamentally changing what makes the game what it is.

VideoGamer.com: It seems you release content updates more frequently than any other MMO developer. Is that deliberate?

JS: Yeah. It's a Turbine thing. It's in our DNA. We're providing serial entertainment, right? We don't have a problem charging people every month, so we shouldn't have a problem providing new things to do as often as possible, to keep that value there. We just celebrated ten years of Acheron's Call. Over 120 updates for that game since it launched. That's definitely part of it, is feeling as much as possible there's always something new to look forward to.

And we had a successful launch. If you don't get a good start it's tough. That's the hardest thing of all. That's where there was a lot of learning from having done it before and screwed up and all that, and then keeping your attention on it. In fact, not thinking that, oh we've launched the game, so we succeeded. No, we've launched the game so now we've started, and we have to keep getting better. When we start to slip a little, which we do - we had some issues early on in 2009 and the entire company converged like a magnet and was like, this can't happen. What do we do to change this? It took us a little while but now we feel we're back to where the game was in terms of quality. It was more important than, this feature's no good, or whatever it is. It was like, we're not providing a service people are used to.

The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood is due to launch on December 3 2009.

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