Recently, Jon Wood had the opportunity to speak with Lord of the Rings Online Executive Producer, Jeffrey Steefle about the upcoming release of Book 11 on October 24th.

October 24th is the date that will mark the release of the third major free expansion to Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. Book 11 will add quite a bit to the Middle-Earth MMO, including 100+ new quests, new raid content, changes to a pair of the standard classes and a brand new housing system. Jeffrey Steefle, the Executive Producer of the game, took the time to talk with us and fill us in on the upcoming update.

Housing

We started the conversation by talking about Housing. Housing is one of those systems that isn’t necessary to the function of an MMO, but that adds a nice feeling of ownership in the game and gives the feeling that the game is more of a world. It’s also the feature that stands out most in the minds of current players looking forward to this update.

In LotRO, each race will have their own housing area, though you do have a choice, and your race doesn’t actually affect your housing. For example, an enterprising elf could prefer the laid-back nature of The Shire to their own homeland. Not a problem. Members of all races are welcome in any of the four homestead areas.

Housing areas are split up into neighborhoods. Each neighborhood is a “public instance” that contains a total of 30 houses. Four of those houses are kinship houses, and the remaining 26 are divided between standard and deluxe homes. Once all of these homes are full, you must move on to the next instanced neighborhood. Being the crack reporter that I am, I asked Steefle what would happen if I had a house in a neighborhood, but before my friend could buy his, the instance filled up (assuming we wanted to live in the same neighborhood). It turns out that there are a couple of options:

Read the whole article here.

Turbine is the best company out there adding free content updates.

Nobody can deny the work Turbine is doing. They are setting the bar, then raising it every two months.

Good luck to AoC and WarHammer,  you've guys got a lot of good things going for you, but LOTRO is one act i wouldn't want to follow.

Originally posted by Quingu

 

Turbine is the best company out there adding free content updates.

If only people would have realized that when Asheron's Call 2 was around.  Then we'd still have that great game with it's frequent updates as well.  I hated to see it go. 

Best EQ-clone that exists today. The graphics is lovely + free updates ftw.
It's a shame that I don't like level-based games.

Why don't we hear more about this game?  HOUSING?!  That was one of the best things on UO, and it was even fun on StupidQuest 2 (EQ2).  My only wish is to impliment it in WoW, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.  Awesome.  LOTRO seems like a very well put together game.  I wish more developers were like Turbine and Cryptic, giving free updates away. . .updates that make a difference.  you LOTRO fan are lucky.   Let me know how the housing ends up in the end.

Book 11 live as of now!

Servers up.

Originally posted by nevenias

Nobody can deny the work Turbine is doing. They are setting the bar, then raising it every two months.

 

 

Good luck to AoC and WarHammer,  you've guys got a lot of good things going for you, but LOTRO is one act i wouldn't want to follow.

Not going to trash Turbine, but I wouldn't call the game hard to follow.

Well now that remains to be seen.

But nobody has had the launch they have. Nobody has done the huge free updates like they do.

There has been others that do regular updates sure, but housing? landmass? ect.

Originally posted by nevenias

Well now that remains to be seen.

 

 

But nobody has had the launch they have. Nobody has done the huge free updates like they do.

 

There has been others that do regular updates sure, but housing? landmass? ect.

what do you mean by "nobody has had the launch they have"?

Launch as in.

-bugs

-performance

-stability

Nobody has had such a clean launch as lotro. There were bugs sure, there always is. But nothing game breaking.

The performance on any machine rivals only Wow imo.

The stability of the servers is unmatched. There launch had zero server issues. Down time was non-existent.

That launch was second to none.

I think the "secret" to Turbines success with this game is that they don't bite off more than they can chew in one bite. They have found out that it is better to put in feratures and make changes a few at a time and ensure that those features are all good bvefore adding more. I like housing, it really is nice but I while am looking forward to more furnishings and features in the houses they layed a great foundation to build on. That's the way the entire game is, it just keeps getting better and better as time goes on.

Originally posted by URMAKER

Originally posted by nevenias

Well now that remains to be seen.

 

 

But nobody has had the launch they have. Nobody has done the huge free updates like they do.

 

There has been others that do regular updates sure, but housing? landmass? ect.

what do you mean by "nobody has had the launch they have"?

mean LOTRO had the smoothest lunch ever on MMO history.

Bug free, no server crashes, no lag, etc.

Free and frequent content updates for press don't mean much if they are poorly implemented and rushed.

It would be far better for them to take their time and do updates right, than to keep rolling out unpolished, unfinished, buggy code.    It seems they are more interested in looking good to the public in general.  'Wow, they update every two months!', than keeping a good product running.

They keep breaking things that hurt the players, and fix them two or three updates later because they have too much on their plate adding fluff to keep up with gameplay issues.

Before the last few updates, I had nothing but good to say about Turbine, but the last ones have been very sloppy and poorly done.  They've changed from the pre-live attitude of do it right before you launch to let's throw out code like it's beta.   They don't care about gameplay, but about 'looking' good to the public who doesn't see the downside to these updates.  Check out the lotr forums about all the bugs, bad gameplay changes, poorly designed housing to get the real info.

It's very sad because this was being done right, and now it's going downhill.  I'm a lifer, so I want it to return to more focus on quality.  Right now it feels worthless to play.   Unfortunately, as long as they get more 'press' from quantity of updates they push things out before they're ready and reduce the quality of what they had.

The reason the game is so successfull is its a dungeons and dragon mod.Dont get me wrong i play and love the game but the real reason its successful is it its a mod of d&d and theyve fixed most of it and modded it into d&d and as far as im concerned its how i wish a lot the games were so its less bugs.The housing in lotro is decent my only complaints are that you cant create a house or pack it up and place it whereever and also i wish u could drop and drag items more easily and the biggest gripe is the chest issue is really lousy i like in swg how u can just drop anything in your house and store it that was really nice overall though the houses are awesome despite these issues.

Originally posted by NGESUCKS

The reason the game is so successfull is its a dungeons and dragon mod.Dont get me wrong i play and love the game but the real reason its successful is it its a mod of d&d and theyve fixed most of it and modded it into d&d and as far as im concerned its how i wish a lot the games were so its less bugs.The housing in lotro is decent my only complaints are that you cant create a house or pack it up and place it whereever and also i wish u could drop and drag items more easily and the biggest gripe is the chest issue is really lousy i like in swg how u can just drop anything in your house and store it that was really nice overall though the houses are awesome despite these issues.

it's a mix btw DDO and AC2.