Lord of the Rings Online: Book 12 Preview, Part Two

Stradden

Late last week, managing Editor Jon Wood was given a preview of the upcoming Book 12: The Ashen Waste by the dev team from Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online. Today, he talks about new additions in Housing, the new Delving of Frór and more!

When I first entered the Lord of the Rings test server to take part in this guided preview, the first thing that the developers wanted to show me was The Delving of Frór, a new non-instanced dungeon that takes place right there in the middle of the Ettenmoors. For those who might not be familiar enough with the game to recognize that name, it’s the setting for Monster Play in Lord of the Rings Online.

Under three towers, players will find a dungeon space that allows them to leave the surface of the dangerous PvMP lands and head into adventure underground. The delving itself is artfully (and darkly) created and presents some pretty major challenges to players who travel into its depths. The dungeon itself was designed to be a large group instance, with two fellowships working together.

Even on its own, from what I could tell, the zone really does hold up as a dungeon on its own. Still though, there’s a catch that makes this particular area an interesting one beyond the possibility of entering another dungeon. The catch is that this is indeed a PvMP zone, and in order to access the Delving, your side must control three towers. Once this happens, the passage becomes available to you and you may descend. The fun still doesn’t stop there though. In a PvMP zone, there is always a risk that the enemies will gain control of any points that your side currently enjoys. If that happens while your fellowship is in the Delving, the opposing side gains access to the entrance and can follow you down.

Read it all here.

mindw0rk

Housing, barbershops, new skills - thats all great. But Turbine should realize that LoTRO horribly lacks end game content, and every Book needs more of it. You can add non important features, but high level zones/instances/quests are must to keep people interested

shava

I hope Turbine is adding high level content (book 12 seems to have dungeons in the ettenmoors, and um book 12, right?) but a lot of us are under lvl 40, and really appreciate the enrichening of the lower levels and RP potential of the game.

 

Shava

kitsunegirl

have they made it so you can wear your shield on your back yet? Or is it still surgically bonded to your arm? I liked gaurdian, but I couldnt stand the stupid shield on my arm all the time... same with Minstrel, by far my favourite class.

JonathJCen

While people have complaints about the "end game" content, most of this is conjectural. LoTR aims more for the RPing group, the group that has been highly overlooked in modern MMO's in favor for Raiding and more and more equipment based grinding. If you take into consideration the goals of furnishing your new homes with the most interesting things you can find, along with becoming more of a community member, a sort of lore spinner and more of a character in the world and less of someone trying to grind, you've got great options for end game already. People forget that a great appeal to an MMO is the fact that it IS an MMO, and the last three letters often associated with it are RPG. Take a few breaths, if you're a minstrel play some music and get together with friends and design some sorts of community quests, like scavenger hunts, or duels, etc.

I'd love to see an MMO that would implement more tools for the higher end players to design live quests, allowing them to hunt down other players who want to play the "bad guy" and act as the sort of end boss of a quest. Or perhaps a lore quest where the players have to piece together evidence of an older culture or event. Players who are creative enough to think of ways of implementing it CAN do most of this already. However as the MMO populations have grown, so have the lack of creative players, and people willing to think beyond the grind and the everyday rat race. Let the game be more than just another rat race, let it take on a life and let yourself contribute to its life. This is about escaping reality, not causing more headaches and reminding everyone of the age of constant self-glorification at the expense of everyone and everything else. I’m not saying that this game has a perfect end-game design, by far, but the answers are not in constantly adding more levels and more repetitive quests, it’s in giving players more of a role in the world, more active competitions (like live events) and less numerically generated quests.

mindw0rk

Not everyone, like you, see end game in sitting at "Pony" inn and chatting there for weeks. And nobody said about grinding. Turbine should make players busy with something interesting, be it quests, raids, hobbies, exploration things or developing character in many ways. Telling them "Here is you 3 new haircuts and few house trophies we made in 4 monthes. Now go somewhere, RP and be happy" wont work. Thats why people complain.

MMORPG should have things to keep players busy and etertained, not to push them in finding the ways to entertain themselves. No even RP possibilities in LoTRO are very limited (lack of emotes, hobbies, customizations, mini games, etc).

kitsunegirl

Lack of emotes...? Theres like 4 pages of them... I cant even remember them all theres so many.

 

You forgot the delving of fror. I think that sounds like fun, a pve dungeon where you have to watch your back because the enemy could swoop down on you at any moment.

Lotro is a lot more advanced in certain areas than other games that have huge playerbases... names I wont mention. Sure it lags alot, and they keep adding stupid features you cant turn off, or couldnt turn off until a lot of  people complained about it... *looks pointedly at the Dread effect*

 And now they got battle emote spam from Loremaster pets that you cant turn off... Nothing spells fun like a chat box full of  "Your raven pet deals x amount of damage to the goblin"