A New Atmosphere

The next order of business was to address my biggest pet peeve in Ered Luin. Lots of snarky comments were thrown around by the Longbeard Dwarves about the horrible state of Thorin’s Gate because the Dourhands took such terrible care of it all. I’m fine with people ranting about this and that. I do it all the time. But really…the snow was pure white, everywhere. Trees and wildlife flourished. Silvery mountains poured clean springs into the valley below, and the sky couldn’t be a clearer shade of blue. Honestly, the Dourhands looked like they were doing a FINE job of taking care of the place.

How better to reinforce a new story than with visuals in the atmosphere? The Dourhand regime of yesterday wasn’t reinforcing the newer, simpler story at all. So, naturally, I asked for art, and our artists did yet another incredible job.

The world-builder for this zone makeover was Ross “Iceman” Glover. Working with the Iceman is pretty great. About once a week, everyone on the LOTRO team will start yelling “ROSSSSS” at the same time. I don’t know why we do this, and I’m sure our neighboring departments don’t love us for it, but it’s still funny, every single time. This has nothing to do with Ered Luin, by the way.

Iceman used the new assets and the new quest flow to make Thorin’s Gate completely incredible. It’s a different world in there now, and looks like it’s actually been run by a bunch of slovenly, greedy, corrupt Dourhands instead of some ordinary unfriendly-ish Dwarves. One of my favorite Tolkien images is that of once-beautiful Isengard now corrupted by Saruman and the Orcs in his service. We imagined Thorin’s Gate as being in a similar situation, once well tended by Thorin and the Longbeards, but now left to decay by Gormr’s careless rule. The treatment of the land says a great deal about the nature of the Dourhands under Gormr’s influence.

Another incredible piece of art we got for the starter area was the new Dourhand appearance set. You will probably notice that the old Dourhands don’t have quite the same “sameness” that they used to have. Our artists made an incredible randomized appearance for them, and now they are probably the most diverse race in our game so far. They have all sorts of animations for little vignettes of drama throughout the zone for the enjoyment of passersby.

Here’s a little before and after:

After…

After.

Needless to say, the new atmosphere in new player Thorin’s Gate is very different, very new, and, most importantly, very appropriate to what’s really going on. Personally, I love it. It really drives home the immediacy of the horrible forces that are converging in this place. There is a real sense of danger and decay, but enough of the pristine beauty of the region is left to make you want to fight for it and drive out the evil that has settled here.

Quest Flow

The quest flow of Ered Luin starter area probably got the biggest makeover of all. I did the new Archet new player quests from the Free-To-Play launch, and since those seemed to be generally working out I used a very similar plan for the Ered Luin update. I used the same number of quests, the same flow of rewards, and the same type of tutorial which will hopefully introduce new characters to their classes and to MMO quests. Archet came together pretty quickly when I pulled out all of the old quests and replaced them. More important than the epic story was the flow for both of these zones. We desperately wanted to reduce the frustration of unnecessary running back-and-forth to do quest objectives. The flowcharts made for these areas focused on quest vectoring, and sending the player efficiently from quest givers to quest targets. If there are three quests going out of Frerin’s Court, we want you to be able to go in a circle or a straight line to complete all three and not have to zigzag all over the zone.

The story gets plugged in accordingly after the flow diagrams were made. This was simple in Archet; brigands were about to attack. Phase one was denial, and phase two was defensive planning. Ered Luin, on the other hand, is a lot more complicated. There was the story of Edhelion (the Elf starter) which took place hundreds of years ago, and the story of the Silver Deep Mine, which was sort of a standalone story from the time of Thorin. I didn’t want Dwarves and Elves to have separate story lines, as both pieces of history are important to the epic story of LOTRO. That’s point A. Point B is Skorgrím’s Tomb. People who played through the Dwarf tutorial would probably wonder who Skorgrím even was.

My solution was to streamline the Dwarf and Elf newbie experience. Everyone gets the same quests, possibly with a slightly different flavor depending on the race of the character. NPCs might be friendlier to Dwarves and more insulting to Elves, or vice versa, depending on the NPC’s own race and character. Other than that, however, the quests are all the same. They begin with an important refresher on both the Elf and Dwarf histories, and the quests take you into both Edhelion to relive the tragic events that happened there, and into the Silver Deep Mine to see where the ruins were first discovered by the Dwarves. Then, when everyone was on the same page, it was time to start foreshadowing the upcoming events.

All quest mobs in the area were replaced with more relevant monster types. Instead of lynx, there are sick bears, affected by the same mysterious illness as some Dwarves of Dwalin’s party. Barrow-hounds now roam the landscape, never far from haunted lands. And you’ll discover yet more monsters roaming the mines and the mountain-caves as you collect hints of what the Dourhands are planning.

I think that covers the major points of consideration while this change was going on. I was very happy that I got a chance to work on this task, as I am always in favor of making the game more interesting and accessible to both new and veteran players. I hope the changes are the improvement they were intended to be!