The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar

Turbine's vision of Middle-Earth.

Interview by Robert Purchese Associate Editor

Updated on June 4, 2007

Eurogamer What about raiding as a mechanic? Do you think it's inevitable these days for an MMO to include it as a way of prolonging its player versus environment content? Is it the only way to keep people playing?

Jeffrey Steefel

I think there's lots of ways. You always have to have challenges, and we talk about the concept of "elder-game" all the time in the MMO business, and what it's going to be. All it means is that I really want to keep having fun. Whatever level I'm at and no matter how much stuff I've acquired, I want to go in and I want to have fun. So our focus is on making sure we're thinking about every person in the game and giving them cool stuff to do, and raids are always going to be a part of that.

But we're also evolving our monster-play areas over time, so that people will have more challenging things to do with the skills they've acquired. And while there will be more raids going forward in the not too distant future, Evendim has a number of high-level instances that are actually quite complex and could be called raids in their own right - but they can be accomplished with less than 24 people.

Eurogamer You mentioned your monster-play feature there, which is the player versus player part of Lord of The Rings Online. This lets you create a monster once your main character progresses past level 10. You can then use your monster to fight other players in designated areas. Why did you decide to make the monsters automatically at the level limit, which is 50?

Jeffrey Steefel

It is a little confusing, and it helps to throw out the concept of levels when you're in the monster-play area. The monster is at level 50, but that just means there's a relative balance between them and the player characters in the end wars - so that you're not going to have a bunch of newbies with no powers going in like lambs to the slaughter. And it also gives new players the opportunity to participate in PvP, which is kind of unusual.

On the other side, when you reach level 40, you can bring any of your mains into that same [monster-play] area and be the opposing side.

Eurogamer Can you grow and customise your monster like your main character? How will this work if you're already at level 50?

Jeffrey Steefel

When you create your monster you select which one you want to be from several, and you can grow it over time using a special advancement path.

That's what I mean when I say it's easier to forget about experience level. You're starting at a base level that puts you on par with players that are going to be coming in there, but the advancement is really in ranks. At launch there's 15 ranks that a monster can advance through, and you come in as rank one.

As you progress and accomplish things in the monster-play area you acquire Destiny Points, which are kind of like experience points. So, as you collect more your ranking will go up. But that's from all kind of things, like questing and killing. Destiny Points are also currency. You can buy skills with them, you can by traits with them, you can even buy equipment if you're the right kind of monster: there's not much for spiders, I'm afraid [laughs]. You can also buy things like war paint, or eventually actually upgrade to a cooler version of your monster.

At the same time you accrue Infamy for killing other players. It's like your rating, in a similar way to chess; the more people you kill, the higher your rating goes up. We use Infamy for our leaderboards.

But it's also a relevant rating. It determines how much I would receive if I killed you, for instance. If you were a very highly rated player and I wasn't, but I killed you, then I would get lots and lots of Infamy. On the other hand, if I whack someone that's rated way below me, then I'm not going to get much for it.

Eurogamer If you use your main character for player versus player combat once they get over level 40, will they also go up in ranks?

Jeffrey Steefel

Yes. There's a tab from from your in-game menu labelled "The War" that tracks a bunch of statistics like your player versus player rank, Infamy rating, how many Destiny Points you have, that sort of thing.

Destiny Points are also cool because I can spend them on my main character, so I can grind out a whole load of them in monster-play to use on perks and buffs.

Eurogamer How do you see the monster-play system developing? Do you plan to let people take permanent control of their monsters somewhere down the line and open the good versus bad battle up in other areas?

Jeffrey Steefel

The Ettenmoors is a complete region and everything in it is player versus player orientated. We've already got some castles that you can siege and take control of, as well as some resources like a lumber yard and a mine. You take control of a castle by killing the commander. So you have to go in and fight through all the player-characters as well as the non-player characters in there. If you're able to kill the commander the whole keep slips. The appearance changes, banners change, and all the guards change to your side.

What's interesting is you never know who's going to own these keeps, and players have already come up with names for both sides. They decided to call the good guys "The Freeps" - the free people - and the monsters "The Creeps". So we have shouts of: "The Creeps hold the castle!"

In a way you do already have permanent control of your monster character, but I think it's unlikely we'd integrate them into the rest of the world as we don't want people player-killed in The Shire, for instance, it just doesn't fit.

But we do want a lot more of these monster-play areas so that it feels more like certain parts of the world are more dangerous than others. The Misty Mountains and Helm's Deep might be wonderful areas for it.

We also have the Kinship ideas we're working on. When these actually happen they'll take the shape of very large campaigns where lots of you will take on a mob of monsters and get significant rewards.