Lord of the Rings Online

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There's no disputing that World of Warcraft is currently the king of the MMO genre, but Lord of the Rings Online has managed hold its own, attracting a solid user base in a year since its launch.

With the expansion pack Mines of Moria now firmly in the pipeline, we sat down with the executive producer to find out what's next.

Turbine has a reputation for having a non-volatile community. How have you nurtured this?

Jeffrey Steefel: A lot of companies are moving into the online space from packaged goods, where the goal is to get the person to buy the box. And you want the person to have a good enough experience that they buy the next box that will come out in a few years.

Whereas with us, at least 50 percent of the value of subscription is the community itself. The community is the most valuable asset we have and the hugest opportunity we have. The challenge is to really know what they players think, because it's very easy for a small number of people to create the perception of what the players think. The infamous vocal minority.

How do you deal with opinions that are just angry?

Steefel: We still listen to the angry vocal minority, because sometimes underneath all that hate is something that's an issue. But if a bunch of people are saying, "This is terrible, this is broken," then we'll go to our data and if see that a large group of people who start that content don't finish it. If they don't, I know I've got a problem.

How are you going about attracting new players to the game?

Steefel: A lot of that is about awareness. We discovered that when we launched LotRO, not many people in the general populace knew about Lord of the Rings Online. In fact, most people didn't even know it existed. We need to look outside the little bubble that is 'the traditional core gaming market' and figure out who those people are and how to reach them. We've been building virtual communities for fifteen years. So trying to associate those two ideas is very powerful. We're spending a fair amount of time to do that.

Are you moving towards a more casual market then?

Steefel: I think that to get to the broader audience, it's really imperative for us and the industry to start making it so you can get into our game within thirty minutes, or ten minutes, or eventually one day instantly.

Was this something you took onboard when designing the first sequences in the game before launch, or are you going to retrospectively change the beginning due to this?

Steefel: No matter how accessible the game is, getting into it is a bitch. All these games - and you look at the games that are coming out now, you're talking 20-30gb installs before you get to the gameplay. That's overwhelming for someone.

The other problem is that the nature of the game itself. These are very complicated games. How do you turn the overall game of the MMO into the lots of smaller and more accessible paths that people can play, so you don't have to be the killer who wants to get to level 60 as fast as possible?

How do you justify charging for an expansion pack when players have been getting content up until now for free?

It's interesting, cause at the end of the day so much is going online, but retail is still very important. It's still a place where people learn about games, it's a place where if you're not on the shelf, at least from time to time, somehow there's implication you're not viable.

It's also important to give us the opportunity to refresh the product that someone is bringing home. And installing on their computer, so they're not patching 100gb just to play our game.

Will Mines or Moria be digitally available also?

Steefel: It's up to Codemasters, but we know going forward as a business we're going to delivering product to players in every possible way that we can - in the store, online or by carrier pigeon.

There was a lot of criticism about the way Blizzard handled raising the level cap in WoW. What did you learn from that and how you are applying that to LotrO?

Steefel: It's one of the biggest challenges that a developer faces as you're expanding the game. You know you want to enhance the advancement curve, which means you need to create things that are more powerful, but you don't want to create a situation where you negate or nullify everything a player has been doing they've been doing up until that point.

Things are going to change - it's inescapable, in order to move forward. The big difference is we're going to engage the players through the whole process. In a lot of the free updates we made tweaks to classes, and there certainly were people who were upset at some of the changes, but overall our experience was that people were happy with the way that process was handled.

One of the challenges with the IP must be that you're tied to a narrative that takes a while to get going. Was there any worry that the opening areas wouldn't contain enough conflict for people used to World of Warcraft?

Steefel: It definitely was a concern. The benefit though was that instead of getting on the rollercoaster of 'fight fight fight!' it made us focus on the stuff that really mattered to Lord of the Rings. Being in the world is a really big part of the game and the story.

That said, we knew we were launching an RPG. In fact, there was a pretty big transition in developing this game. When we were a developer looking for a publisher, the game was a little bit more sandbox.

There wasn't a meta-game and wasn't that kind of advancement. It was about being in a social place known as Middle-Earth and farming and stuff like that. Which some players are still mad at us for not doing. All twenty-seven of them.

So we shouldn't expect Lord of the Rings to go Second Life anytime soon then?

Steefel: No. That said, housing is the beginning of something neighbourhoods that could be more robust and give you lots of things you can do to make it feel your own. But there's always going to be constraints, especially as we're in a branded IP. I don't care how many times you want to make a flying car... it doesn't fit the world.

What are your thoughts on MMOs on consoles?

Steefel: I think we're right on the edge of a huge explosion in terms of console. A big problem is how much storage is on these things. When you think about the size of the games we make, how do I update someone's game all the time if they've only got a 20gb hard drive and half of it is full of game demos and patches from other games?

The next thing is MMOs have been fairly complicated games. They're really well suited for the PC because you can manage a lot of information with a mouse and keyboard. They're also very social and so the keyboard is a big part of it.

So the next big challenge is how to create that with the user interface of a console, and how do I do communication? Do I absolutely require everyone to have a Microsoft communications pack? Do I force everybody do use voice? Do I force everybody to have a wireless keyboard?

So those are the problems. But the opportunities is that first of all the market is huge. But secondly, it's a better social setting. Whether or not people will be playing co-op in these MMOs, just being in the same room as someone when you're playing is huge. I think Sony and Microsoft are still trying to figure out how their business model works with subscription involved.

So you think there is a way to play these games without sitting on your sofa with a wireless keyboard?

Steefel: There has to be. Sitting on your sofa with a keyboard just doesn't work - I've tried it. Voice chat still makes a large amount of people uncomfortable too, because the anonymity of text chat is really important to people.

There's lots of questions and not all the answers right now. I think we can overcome it like we have overcome everything else and it's a question of really good design, and the consumer mindset changing over time. But it will happen. It's what everybody in the industry is trying to figure out right now.

I think it also comes down to how the manufacturers are going to help us out. They'd better.

Is that a threat to the big three?

Steefel: Well, I think you know they are. I think you know that there are hundreds of people in rooms somewhere trying to figure out what we need to do to create this communication in a way that's going to be standardised. Because that's the only way it's going to take off for them.

Chris Hicks