Ask Turbine's Jeff Anderson About LOTRO

Last month, Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar went live in what was arguably the most well-received launch for a Massively Multiplayer game since World of Warcraft. The game soared to the top of the retail charts, and has been a breath of fresh air for gamers looking to get a taste of something just a little bit different and a little bit hobbity. Today, you have the chance to ask Turbine's CEO Jeff Anderson questions about the process of creating the game, the Tolkien license, and new content we'll see in Middle Earth in the coming weeks and months. One question per comment, please. We'll take the best of the lot and put them to Mr. Anderson in a phone interview later this week. We'll post his responses as soon as we can, so make sure to get your question in today if you want it to show up in his response.

Virtual Economies

Can you talk a little bit about the challenges involved in setting up a virtual economy? Did you employ any professional economists to help design in the design or was it all off-the-cuff?

Re:Virtual Economies (follow up).

Do you have any plans to deal with Gold Farming?

Re:Virtual Economies (follow up).

Do you have any plans to deal with Gold Farming?

I would doubt it, after all its a racial characteristic of Dwarves and Dragons.

Re:Virtual Economies

The idea of crafting systems in MMORPGs seem to be very popular with the player base, with many individuals quite content to pursue crafting to the exclusion of most other things. Two problems seem to intractable, though: low-level items flood the server and are therefore worthless; and one cannot advance a character's level as a crafter. In WoW, for example, many crafting recipes/skills are restricted by level, necessitating players to grind mobs for the appropriate levels.

How does LotRO plan to handle these problem as the player-base expands? Is it possible that players will be allowed to gain experience from crafting rather than by mob-grinding or quests? Will it be feasible for an individual to gain renown on a server as a master craftsman (which should be extremely difficult to attain) if they only want to spend their time in Bree rather than strangling Orcs?

Gaming Addiction

Behavioral addiction in general, and gaming addiction specifically, are increasingly on society's radar. Now, being addicted to an online game is obviously different from being addicted to heroin- but it can still be extremely serious and destructive for geeks with addictive personalities. Do you think being attentive to gaming addiction is a responsibility of MMORPG developers? What steps has Turbine taken or considered?

End Game

Do you have a plan to deal with the destruction of the one ring, as in does the game end then? Any consideration of opening up the entire game map at that point for a massive PvP war?

Re:End Game

To expand on the OP's question, one of LOTRO's (which I play and I'm enjoying very much) biggest talking points is it's creative license. What's are some of the challenges, benefits, and surprises when working on a set story licenses? A license that has been around the bend many times from fan art, to multi-million dollar movies, to endless cartoon adaptations. Are there any challenges in creating something 'new' when there's so much already out there?

WoW influence

What kind of influence did the overwhelming success of World of Warcraft have on the development of LOTRO?

Re:WoW influence

As an avid WoW player I always keep one eye open (no pun intended) to see what the next "big thing" is going to be. Why should I consider switching to your game and what advantages do you claim over WoW?

Farming?

Many RPG's and MMORPG's to some degree encourage farming (playing the game in a way that isn't entertaining but to increase your virtual wealth). This monotonous activity leads to bots and other forms of automating the game.

Have you done anything to decrease (or possibly eliminate) the need to farm, and if not what is your stance towards automated play?

Linux Port

So, when is the Linux port coming out? (Yes, I've read the FAQ)

Mod UP

Doh, just when I ran out of mod points...

Get this question up to +5 and watch Zonk ignore it like he's does every time there's a game dev interview.

We understand the size of the target market. We understand that it may not be economically viable. But does it hurt to ask for a port? I'd drop wine/WoW for a native LOTR online port.

Why linux, Why no Mac Client.

I'm one of 30 people I know shelling money out to Blizzard for WoW. I went to beta LOTROL and found no OS X client. I could boot into Vista on one of my machines.....but I'll just keep playing WoW.

Polish

I own the game, and played it for a while. But the other day I cancelled, and went back to WoW. The main issue was simply a lack of polish in the UI. Things like the UI itself being too small on my display (a UI scaling option is sorely missed), having to change tools constantly (Explorers have two gathering professions, basically forcing me to leave a bag open all the time to swap between a mining pick and an axe), the chat text box losing focus constantly, and so on.

None of these individually are game breaking issues, but them and a host of other UI annoyances all pile up to make it a much less enjoyable experience then playing with WoW's incredibly smooth UI (which is even more so once you start using mods).

I'm curious if the developers are going to take some time to go back and improve the UI?

Re:Polish

A rational follow on to the previous post is whether LOTR is going to encourage the independently developed add-on/plug-ins that WoW has done.

What would the professor think?

Tolkien was, to say the least, picky about his work. He specifically expressed it should never be dramatized and also made it clear that no one should dare edit the writings besides his son, Christopher.

As an avid fan who knows this, how can you justify, to me, putting the professor's world into a game genre. Why should I play it knowing Tolkien would most likely disapprove?

Re:What would the professor think?

My source for his quotes is "The Letters of JRR Tolkien", edited by Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien.

The quote you reference was a part of his complaint that the BBC messed up their LoTR broadcast (letter 175). He was never against dramatisation on principle. Tolkien is quite consistent on this point: dramatisation of the LoTR was always something he had in mind, not least because of the financial possibilities, as he was quite broke. Christopher's ambivalence was well-known, but he didn't write the books, so who cares what he thinks.

Mr. Anderson

We'll take the best of the lot and put them to Mr. Anderson in a phone interview later this week.

Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a phone call when you are unable to speak?

Leveraging fans

As a fan and former Vanguard member on AC2, I noticed Turbine's greatest strength was a rather fast and sane response to player feedback (despite many claims to the contrary). I recall many AC and AC2 fans and 3rd party developers ended up on your dev teams. I witnessed all of this first-hand when you were developing the hero-class endgame mechanics. And despite the system's friendliness, balance, and incorporation of player feedback, most players were unhappy (they thought the system was too simplistic, a la WoW, or had other esoteric gripes).

Do you have any plans to try and continute to leverage your community, or do you find vocal MMOG players just too darn irrational and hard to please? Blizzard seems to regularly ignore players, and does quite well from what I hear.

And thanks for making games that don't suck. Asheron's Call was, to me, the finest example of storytelling with thousands of players done yet. Logging in to find my Monarch was Bael'zharon ranks as the coolest moment of my 20-odd years of gaming.

Lessons Learned

In light of the eventual closure of Asheron's Call 2, what were the biggest lessons you and the rest of Turbine have learned?

End-game content

What happens in the game when a user finishes the very large amount of quests in the game? I know about the player-vs-monster-player area, and it is rather fun. Is there any other end-game content other then the monster player area?

Leap of faith...

Your team no doubt learned from all of the succeses and failures within World of Warcraft and did their best to retain what aspects had player appeal and shy away from those that illicited public outcry. Stepping away from those choices, what would you say was the most daring leap of faith the team made in the game mechanics, balance, graphics, or any other facet that jumps out at you? Is there anything in the game that really made you say, "Dang, we're hanging our butts out there on this one, but we believe in this feature/mechanic and are gonna run with it."

User created content?

Will users be able to create content? If so what free tools (http://www.blender.org/ [blender.org] or http://www.artofillusion.org/ [artofillusion.org] ?) and formats will be supported? Will we be able to export animations or create normal mapped items?

LetterRip

What is the end-game?

Where World of Warcraft has largely failed in my mind is in the end-game. Here the content is, aside from reputation quests, entirely Raid driven and controlled by harsh unforgiving bosses and large time sinks. Blizzard's PVP system isn't really anything to get excited about as it is totally un-interesting outside of arenas.

Essentially, there is no other story line in World of Warcraft other than to kill Illidan and spend a lot of time farming farming farming for reputation. I so miss the innovations that Ultima Online had with housing or seafaring ten years ago.

What does LOTR bring to the table in the end-game that makes it different from other MMOs?

In-Game Music System

As a former subscriber to Asheron's Call 2, I was disappointed to see that game go for a particular social aspect that goes unrecognized and unimplemented in other MMOGs - the music system. As a beta tester, you can imagine my delight at finding out that Turbine had added a similar system to LoTRO. I am now a paying subscriber based upon this one feature that I feel adds depth to the world and serves as a great community building tool. Could you expound upon the music system and its implementation as well as future plans for the system?

Re:Ent

Can I play as an Ent?

Yeah, though when playing as an Ent it takes several years to complete the in-game tutorial.

(and you still don't get any women).

The Lifetime Option

Personally I love the lifetime option, and it was a major selling point for me (it is much easier for me to justify a one-time splurge of $200 instead of adding another monthly outlay). What convinced the business-side that that was a good idea?

Licensing

What is the scope of the current licensing, as in which books are covered by the current agreement?

Do you envision being able to add future expansions/sequels/engine-using-content-environmen ts that allow for first age content, perhaps co-terminus with the Children of Hurin book just out? Or any other era? The flight of the Noldor from the west would also make a good high-power story arc.

Most games have an escalation of power as they get older, but with the LOTR mythos, the power diminishes over time. However, adding elements as alluded to above would fit the increased power design pattern, plus fit into the overall mythos with more elegance.

How will you avoid the traps?

I played EverQuest for 4 years, and have played WoW for just under a year. They've both had their problems, but in both I see a pattern: as the game progresses, and they transition from release to long-term expansion cycles, content progression becomes so deep and so complex that new or casual players must spend 4-6 months to join their friends who have been playing for months or years. Worse, the new or casual player represents a drag on the resources of any player that wants to help them level. There's no effective way to (relatively) quickly make a new player useful (say, in the period of time it would take to learn to use their abilities).

I worry about this, and wonder: do you have a way of solving this problem in the longer term for LOTRO, or are you (like EQ and WoW before you) pushing off those choices until you're already in the expansion release cycle?

Dear MMORPG industry

Dear MMORPG industry,

When will you stop making games designed to waste huge gobs of time?

I don't put up with random 10 minute periods of doing nothing in other games, why should I with yours? Any game that makes me sit/travel/do nothing for 10 minutes running I immediately uninstall. I'd like a modern adventure game, but for some reason they refuse to jump to the next level on this issue.

-Z

Is Turbine-employee participation dealt with?

During the beta test of LOTRO, it was revealed that at least one, or more, Turbine employees were a part of the dominant guild, Extra Crispy (EC). They censored dissent and criticism towards the game, and demonstrated strong favouratism for some players.

Is Turbine going to enforce rules for Turbine employee participation to avoid issues like censorship and favouratism, and to avoid other potential scandals?

The Censor Filter

I would like to know why the word "Bible" is censored from public, private, trade, ooc, and all other chats. (it's replaced with '#!&#@') and other Religious books are not. Like Quran, Qur'an, Koran, Torah et al. I would like to follow up with: Who decided that people would be offended by the use of the word "Bible"? FYI, I discovered this while telling my son (who also plays), where I keep the passwords and pin codes. I was dissapointed so tried all the other chats and words and to my astonishment, "Bible" is censored (along with a bunch of 4 letter word).

Re:I wonder

You can only mine fish if you're Gollum