The Implementation:

I suppose I can tell you a little bit of what I know about this event, insider as I am. Fall is my favorite season, but I actually started my design and implementation of the Fall Festival in April. My internal clock gets incredibly confused due to this schedule, but I’m always happy to pretend it’s fall, especially with evil hot and humid summer looming in the near future. We had some wonderful art created especially for this year’s event, and I think this will be a particularly exciting Harvestmath as the result of the great collaborative effort that went into it.

I did a lot of planning with Dan “Fantus” Ouellette. He was in charge of building the space and adding the decorations. I designed a layout that I thought would be awesome, and Dan wisely disregarded that sketch and implemented something much better. Once the shell was built, I was able to work on my content while Dan took a break to work on other dungeons. In the meantime, we waited for art to come in.

Our new Art Director, Todd DeMelle, made some truly wonderful things happen in the realization of this space. He came over from the art pit to sit with our team, and quickly started immersing himself in our design-planning hopes and dreams. I told him that I was making a hobbit-themed haunted house for the Fall Festival, and he managed to funnel my ideas into a number of really focused, inspired, and on-point requests for the art team. The art that came back from that was by far my favorite out of everything I’ve seen in the game up to this point. (And you’ll probably be happy to know that you can get a good portion of it as deco for your house!)

The special effects have once again come from a team effort of Tim “Raskolnikov” Lang’s FX wizardry, and from the FX team’s new inventions for this dungeon (such as dripping strands of goo and clouds of dust, to name a few.) Rask is a little scary when I tell him what I want to do for festivals sometimes. His knowledge of effects delves too greedily and too deep. If you’re of that easily-startled constitution (like myself) in which find yourself screaming like a little girl while strolling around the Haunted Burrow, you can probably thank Rask for whatever it was that made you jump out of your chair.

As the art flooded in , Fantus came back and planted the deco and made the most visually exciting and engaging dungeon space I’ve seen in LOTRO. (I might be a little biased, but so it goes.)

In the meantime, I had been working hard on making the quests, the monsters, and the various things that you actually get to DO while inside. I’m the one reminding Opal Goodbody to remind you when the Festival starts, and I’m the one trying to coerce you into staying at the Festival for as long as you can stand it before it goes away again for another year. I really feel that the art and FX made these quests far more exciting than even I could foresee when I was planning them. I LOVED working on this festival, probably more than any other. If you’re lucky, you might find some incredible treasure while you’re exploring the Haunted Burrow this fall. Most of the burrow’s easily-frightened neighbors didn’t make out very well inside, but a hero of Middle-earth like yourself can certainly handle anything Bilbo throws at you.

Make sure to check it out when the Fall Festival goes live, because it will only remain open for a limited time. I hope to see you there!

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