The Lord of the Rings Online Interview

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Eurogamer: In a more broad sense, what other areas of Lord of the Rings Online still need work?

Jeffrey Steefel: There's parts of all of it that we can help. Through the course of the work that Alan's doing now there's going to be a significant amount of attention paid to Low Lands and the North Downs - areas we've always been interested in getting our hands on again. The intent is really just to move you through the game and the story and the experience in a way that feels always compelling.

Alan Maki: The important thing to also mention is that we're not trying to railroad you through the game; there's still a lot of exploration, there are still many areas for you to go and experience. It's just that if you choose a track to follow and you want to stay on that track, you can, and you should have a complete experience from 1 to 50. And that's really what the overall goal with what I'm doing is. The areas that will eventually see significant changes are Trollshaws and, as Jeffrey mentioned, Low Lands and North Downs. I will be focusing on them after the next Book is put out.

Another area we're going to be focusing on is our epic story, as there are some parts with massive gaps in them. The first one, very clearly, is between stories one and two, where you have a 10- to 12-level gap. We're going to be tightening that up and make that story flow better for you, so if you want to just follow the epic story, you can.

Jeffrey Steefel: Another big direction you've already seen us take - and one that's happening in the genre itself - is changing the game from being about the biggest group of people achieving the most complex things. For some people that's absolutely still the truth and we're still providing that kind of content. But for a large amount of people it's starting to be about, "You know what? I like being with other people, but only when I want to and when I can find them. And a small group is a pretty cool thing, because I can relate to a small group, it's a lot easier in the venue." So you've been seeing us do a lot more three-man and six-man instances, and that will continue, that kind of more encapsulated content.

She's having a New Player Experience.

Alan Maki: I definitely should say that we are still focused on our endgame. One of our experiments in Mines of Moria was our three-man content, and that has proven to be some of our most successful content, and it seems like it's a good track to continue on.

Jeffrey Steefel: It's also - and this is something we'll probably talk about more in the next month or so - shown us back to the whole technology thing and shown us some things we need to work on. This kind of [three-man/smaller-scale] content, which is clearly something players want (and we like playing it ourselves), attacks the technology in ways we hadn't before. That's been a bit of learning for us and we're doing a lot of work with the content development teams and the core engineers on it.

Eurogamer: How far away is the next Book update?

Adam Mersky: Soon! Ha ha. We've got a pretty good rhythm so you can expect something "early summer".

Eurogamer: Is Monster Play ever going to become more than a distraction?

Alan Maki: I learned a long time ago that you never say never. You say things like, "The likelihood of that is very slim." Having been one of the people that started off of Monster Play, I can say it wasn't necessarily meant to be a distraction, it was meant to be something that you could also do. So, er, I guess you could call that a distraction!

Jeffrey Steefel: Tomayto; Tomarto.

Alan Maki: It turned out to be something that was a lot more popular than we expected initially, and it's something we've obviously continued to dedicate resources to even now, because there are a large amount of people that really, really enjoy it.

And so is he. But a bit smaller.

Eurogamer: You touched on Rohan earlier. We've noticed that ridersofrohan.com redirects to lordoftheringsonline.com. Is Riders of Rohan the next Lord of the Rings Online expansion?

Adam Mersky: I wouldn't say it's the next Lord of the Rings Online expansion. There are lots of properties our licensors secure so that they have the option to use them if they decide to go there. But at this stage it's nothing more than that. We're not going to comment on exactly when or where our next expansion is going to be or take us.

Eurogamer: Is Turbine working on a console MMO?

Adam Mersky: Yeah, we're actually deep in development with what we're working on and we're making lots of progress. Before the year is out we'll probably be talking about it and hopefully showing people something.

Eurogamer: Is it a Lord of the Rings MMO or a different IP?

Adam Mersky: We're not really saying what we're going to be releasing, but we are working on one - it's more than just talk. We've taken the 15 years of heritage we have on our technology and we've been able to get it working on the next-gen platforms. What will sit on top of that in terms of IP? We'll talk about when the time is right.

Eurogamer: And thinking far in the future, do you see a finish line for Lord of the Rings? If so, is there another licence you fancy a crack at?

Jeffrey Steefel: The end of the line for Lord of the Rings is not even in our consciousness. We don't even think that way. The other question is are we interested in bringing other IP to the genre and online? Absolutely. Are we constantly looking to see what other opportunities are out there? Absolutely. We've built the kind of capability here at Turbine that doesn't really exist anywhere else, so we want to employ that for other things. It's just a matter of: what's the right thing? When is the right time? And how do we do that without damaging anything that we're currently doing? And we value that tremendously.

Are we going to tell you which ones we're most interested in? No! Haha.