The Lord of the Rings

Online is marching into its seventh year, and despite the

recent unfortunate staffing cuts, development is still strongly moving

forward. Currently slated for a spring release is Update 13: The

Breaking of Isengard.

My first thought upon hearing the title of this update:

And I'm not far off the mark. Update 13 focuses on the Ents who turned

dark and violent when their world became intolerable. It also focuses on

the downfall of the Gustavo Fring of Middle-earth - Saruman the

Many-Coloured - as it closes out the longest-running epic book to date.

We sat down for a play-session stream-and-chat with members of Turbine's

development team - Leo Tan, Digital Communications Manager; Rick

"Sapience" Heaton, Community Manager; Jeff Libby and Joe Barry from the

design department; and Aaron Campbell, returning as Executive Producer

from his stint with the DDO team.

Jeff Libby introduced the update with a bit of history: "I did a little

research recently and I realized that we have been in Volume 3 of the epic

story, Allies of the King, for about 4 years at this point, so it is with

great delight that we are wrapping up this volume of the epic story in

this update."







Volume III began in March of 2010 with Book 1: Oath of the Rangers, just 3

months after the launch of the Siege of Mirkwood expansion. We've been in

the same volume for over half of the game's life now.

"This volume started way back in the Trollshaws at Rivendell, with the

gathering of the Grey Company, Aragorn's kinsmen, and their journey south

to rendezvous with him in Rohan. What this means is that we've had a

pretty consistent threat for much of this volume. Saruman, the

formerly-good and now thoroughly-evil wizard, has been our main opponent -

first for the Grey Company, because they're traveling through Enedwaith

and Dunland and getting close to his stronghold at Isengard, and he has

his sights set on Rohan. He's been breeding his armies to attack Rohan,

which has been depicted in several expansion packs including the recent

Helm's Deep. So we have had a consistent threat for most of the volume,

and here at the end we are going to wrap up the threat that he has posed."







The final book of Volume III picks up after the Battle of the Hornburg,

where Gandalf, Theoden and Aragorn are deciding how they ought to deal

with Saruman now that the White Hand army has been wiped out. They travel

to Isengard to confront him, only to find that the matter has already been

handled, in a manner of speaking, by the Ents of Fangorn Forest.







For those keeping track, this is the third major "version" of Isengard

we've seen to date. Our first look at the place was during Saruman's

production phase, when it was a grim and bleak war factory churning out

weapons, war-machines and soldiers at a terrifying pace. The second

version we see is a flashback to when the grounds were still green and

lush, when he was still the White Wizard and things had not yet taken

their dark turn.

This new version is the battle-damaged, post-flood Isengard. The gates

and walls are smashed and broken, the courtyard flooded, the production

fires extinguished and steaming. Through the magic of session play, we see

how all of this came to pass, from the point of view of the Ents who did

it.







This is one of those things that some long-time players have been really

anticipating for a long time. Watching the Ent Moot and feeding the tiny

hobbits their comically-giant bowls of Ent-draught is neat, but the real

fun comes during the assault. Treebeard is like a tree-shaped Jaeger from

Pacific Rim, with two tiny pilots hucking rocks from the highest branches.

Watching the angry Ents at work and seeing the destruction of Isengard is

pretty awesome.

The first Ent sessions are narrated by Merry, telling the story of how he

and Pippin met Treebeard. It's kind of strange - Merry is telling the

story, but you're playing as Treebeard, and the hobbits are named "Small

Creature" when first encountered. So it's kind of a double first-person

point of view.

Jeff Libby notes, "I am unreasonably proud of the script that changes

their names from 'Small Creature' to Merry or Pippin when Treebeard learns

their names."

He also points out an interesting detail that might otherwise escape our

notice. When the hobbits drink the Ent-draught, its powerful but subtle

magic causes them to grow slightly taller. This is true in the game just

as it is within the books: "In our game, I've set it up so that every time

you see them after this moment taken place, they will indeed be slightly

larger." The difference will be slight, and difficult to perceive without

a direct comparison, but he assures us that it is there.

The Ents are also the path to the new endgame content, repeatable dailies

which takes place in the Entwood region of Fangorn. Entwood is the angry

remnants of Fangorn that haven't yet gotten the message that Saruman is

defeated - pissed-off huorns still waking up, insects, roots and

wood-trolls are still responding the the fury of the Ents, but haven't the

presence of mind to go on the march. The Ent Quickbeam seeks help in

spreading the word of their victory in order to return the forest to a

state of quiet.

"There's 4 different components to our end-game," explains Joe Barry.

"Different exploration-based questing and repeatable-based questing.

There's a series of 'quieting' quests, where once a day you will be sent

randomly to one of six different locations within this chunk of Fangorn.

There's different things to do at each location, they randomize daily; you

don't know what you're gonna get until you get there. It's kind of

presented as what's in the world and what's happening at that point."

"The second set is a series of explorables. Through initially meeting

Quickbeam in flooded Isengard, there's a huorn that you're asked to help

out. This huorn has come back to Fangorn with Quickbeam and you get him,

similar to what we did in Annuminas, he'll follow you around the forest,

and at a dozen different locations, he'll have quests as he notices things

that need to be taken care of and dealt with.

"Our third section is three new resource instances - a wood, a scholar

and an ore. These can all be run daily kind of in our typical pattern that

we've set with those. There are locations, too, which are underground, and

one of them is a lumber camp, so they're places the Ents either can't go

or aren't overly eager to go to. There's three quests in each, and you can

do each of the spaces everyday. "

"The fourth component is a new style of quest that we're calling

'incrementals.' What these are is an arc that has 4, 5, 6 different steps

and you can do one step a day. The base idea with these is that Quickbeam

has seeds from fallen Ents that used to be really good friends of his that

were cut down as Saruman encroached upon the forest. He's planted these in

various places around Fangorn and one of them actually at Isengard. He

asks you to do different tasks to help grow the seeds each day, and when

you go and do that task, he needs time to figure out what the nest thing

is. And for Ents, time is not measured as it is for beings that are

smaller. So he needs about 18 hours to ponder and think about what's the

next thing to do."

These new quests integrate with the other daily repeatables in a new,

layered way that is somewhat more immersive than previous dailies. But the

best part of the new incrementals is the end reward.

"The really cool thing that I personally think comes out of these is, the

three seed quests at the end each have a chance to give you a new cosmetic

pet. So we're introducing cosmetic pets with this update. There's three of

them initially, varieties of huorn - two that are Fangorn-looking and one

that is a black huron with a honeycomb. We're kind of dipping our toes in

the water here to see what all does it take to do tech-wise, how do we

want to expand upon it, we want to see what the players' reaction is. But

it's something we're pretty excited about and it adds an interesting new

angle of words, of cosmetics, of social aspects to the game."

In other words, this is the icebreaker for cosmetic pets. At first, these

three huorn pets will be the only cosmetic pets available in the game, and

the only way to get them will be through these three quests, which take 4,

5 or 6 days to complete (i.e. one of the three quests takes 4 days, one

takes 5 days, one takes 6 days). They will not be available through the

store. And they will be rare, because completing these quests only gives

the player a chance to earn one from a random gift box, and random number

generators can be screwy. The player is just as - if not more - likely to

end up with a box of barter coins.

It should be pointed out, though, that these incrementals are repeatable, so you can keep running them until you get the pet huorns.

All of these changes are part of the Helm's Deep expansion, and are free

to players who own it.

There are also some nice changes coming to other areas of the game as

well. Inventory bags can be organized differently - rows of 5 slots can be

dragged out of one bag and added to another, allowing the to have one

gigantic bag and numerous other tiny ones, or various combinations of

sizes. The inventory, which can currently hold up to 120 items, can be

expanded further by purchasing blocks of 5 additional slots from the

store. There's also a new search function, allowing players to find items

by name rather than just by hunting for elusive icons. The new mail system

will be able to support multiple attachments, and will be accessible via

the alert button out in the wild for VIPs. And three lower-level zones -

North Downs, the Trollshaws and the Misty Mountains - are getting the

revamp treatment to make them more streamlined. These updates are free to

all, and the region revamps are part of their respective quest packs.

Update 13: The Breaking of Isengard is scheduled to launch April 14. Also

coming in April is a new producer's letter with some details about the

start of Volume 4 of the epic books, and more information about the new

class.

