William Murphy recently took a tour of the upcoming expansion to Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online, Siege of Mirkwood. Today, he shares his experiences.

When Lord of the Rings Online launched back in 2007 the thought on mine and just about every other player's mind was "I can't wait to see how this game grows!" Two years later, we've followed the Fellowship through Rivendell and into the Mines of Moria and out the other side into Lothlorien. Now as Frodo and the others head further south, the burden of distraction and subterfuge lies on the hands of the elves of Lothlorien and the other heroes of Middle-earth. In Siege of Mirkwood players will work closely with the elves to draw the eye of Sauron and the wrath of the Ringwraiths to the tower of Dol Goldur and keep it there while the Fellowship slips into the south. This is the point in Turbine's retelling of the classic story where the war starts to heat up. Things are about to get hairy in Middle-earth.

Read Siege of Mirkwood Preview.

Sounds like quite the addition to the game, I just might have to resub for a few months and snag Mirkwood myself.

Good read, thanks for posting.

I was hoping you would touch on some of the combat system changes. but yes, Looks like turbine is evolving the MMO space again, taking cues from their other title.

Great read.  I'm really excited about the new expansion and all the stuff that it brings.  The auto-complete mail, the new mount system, and the skirmish system are just a few of the things I am anticipating and that's just a few of the things.  You also really can't beat the price if you get the 3-6-9-12 month sub at $9.99/month. (it's free)

Sweet lookin stuff once again. It has brought me and the wife back with a 3 month sub to get it free on both accounts.

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Skirmishes are Turbine's way of creating enjoyable, repeatable, randomized, and story-driven encounters for all different sizes of groups to enjoy. The entire system has been created from the ground up with several different notions in mind. They need to be relatively quick pieces of content to enjoy, they need to scale for all play-styles and party-sizes, and they need to be dynamic enough and rewarding enough to encourage multiple play-throughs. And as I quickly learned, all three criteria were handily met by the developers

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While I sat hear and read this I almost fell out of my chair.  While Turbine might think its fun. I got a feeling after about a month of more of the same hampster repeatable wheel of death will get old again and have folks clammoring for something else. Only time will tell.  If you like repeatables then it will be great for you, however if you get board repeating stuff yea, leason not learned.

Originally posted by erictlewis

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Skirmishes are Turbine's way of creating enjoyable, repeatable, randomized, and story-driven encounters for all different sizes of groups to enjoy. The entire system has been created from the ground up with several different notions in mind. They need to be relatively quick pieces of content to enjoy, they need to scale for all play-styles and party-sizes, and they need to be dynamic enough and rewarding enough to encourage multiple play-throughs. And as I quickly learned, all three criteria were handily met by the developers

****************

While I sat hear and read this I almost fell out of my chair.  While Turbine might think its fun. I got a feeling after about a month of more of the same hampster repeatable wheel of death will get old again and have folks clammoring for something else. Only time will tell.  If you like repeatables then it will be great for you, however if you get board repeating stuff yea, leason not learned.

 

 

 

Have you read what skirmishes are, and how they are scaling, and randomized? I mean, i understand, all things get old. But they are not just static raid dungeons. The have difficulty modes, scale to group make up, random, and join-able from anywhere and multiple solutions + Solders.

Originally posted by erictlewis

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Skirmishes are Turbine's way of creating enjoyable, repeatable, randomized, and story-driven encounters for all different sizes of groups to enjoy. The entire system has been created from the ground up with several different notions in mind. They need to be relatively quick pieces of content to enjoy, they need to scale for all play-styles and party-sizes, and they need to be dynamic enough and rewarding enough to encourage multiple play-throughs. And as I quickly learned, all three criteria were handily met by the developers

****************

While I sat hear and read this I almost fell out of my chair.  While Turbine might think its fun. I got a feeling after about a month of more of the same hampster repeatable wheel of death will get old again and have folks clammoring for something else. Only time will tell.  If you like repeatables then it will be great for you, however if you get board repeating stuff yea, leason not learned.

 

 

 

I think they are a bit more dynamic than you might think. It's a bit different then say, doing library of steel over and over again.

You an also change the challenge by changing the difficulty and party size. I can't for sure say how well this feature will play out but it might be interesting to do a larger party size while solo and yet cut the difficulity a bit.

Originally posted by erictlewis

*****************

Skirmishes are Turbine's way of creating enjoyable, repeatable, randomized, and story-driven encounters for all different sizes of groups to enjoy. The entire system has been created from the ground up with several different notions in mind. They need to be relatively quick pieces of content to enjoy, they need to scale for all play-styles and party-sizes, and they need to be dynamic enough and rewarding enough to encourage multiple play-throughs. And as I quickly learned, all three criteria were handily met by the developers

****************

While I sat hear and read this I almost fell out of my chair.  While Turbine might think its fun. I got a feeling after about a month of more of the same hampster repeatable wheel of death will get old again and have folks clammoring for something else. Only time will tell.  If you like repeatables then it will be great for you, however if you get board repeating stuff yea, leason not learned.

 

 

 

I hear ya bro. Turbine will literally have to pay me to make me return...from what I'm reading theres nothing that even slighty interests me...lol Then again, I've grown to love pvp since leaving LOTRO. Middle Earth feels way too safe to me now unfortionately.

More goblin / orc slay'n anyone? :-)

LOTRO is already an incredible game, its flaws have always been the combat system and a grindy sort of solo experience. For those that do all the group content with friends this was never a problem but if you are a lone ranger type, the content can become tedious.  I see all these changes as giving much wider variety and enjoyment to the loners out there but also not affecting the group based players.

The skirmish system looks freakin awesome with endless random dungeons to explore, hell yea! from solo to raid size, freakin awesome.

The combat update has been needed for a long time and is going to elevate this game to the top of the genre.

Everything is looking good for LOTRO, they just need to add more MPVP areas! I hope that is next on their to do list.

Per usual, beautiful looking environments; Turbine never disappoints in this area, IMO.

Will be curious to hear the feedback once it's launched, though. 

Wish I could have gotten more into that game. By all rights, it's a MMO I should have been hooked on - beautiful, open environments, great graphics design, interesting lore (even if it's not their own), lots of PvE gameplay, smooth framerates, good performance, etc.

The game just never "grabbed" me. I got to, I think, level 40 or so and that's where I've remained through the last several times I've tried playing. I can't get excited about playing it for some reason. I picked up Mines of Moria and never even got to the point of being able to step foot in it. Don't know what it is. The whole game just has this very "blah", unexciting feel to it for me for some reason... -shrug-

The community left much to be desired in my experience, though if I could have found a decent kin, that shouldn't have been a problem, either. Could never seem to find a kin, though, that wasn't entirely cliqueish and whose members weren't only concerned about their own progress, with no interest in helping anyone else outside that clique...so that was a downer. Friend of mine half-jokingly (but very accurately in my experience) dubbed LoTRO "The Anti-Social MMO".

Mirkwood does look great, though.

Me Likey!

looking forward to this . lord of the rings online in my opinion does pve better than most fantasy based mmos out there . i would like to see them expand more on the pvp side of the game for those of us that enjoy that element .

Skirmishes is by far the most important innovasion in MMOs 2009! Really looking forward trying thoose.

Originally posted by Papadam

Skirmishes is by far the most important innovasion in MMOs 2009! Really looking forward trying thoose.

Thats not innovative at all. But they look fun and may get me to play again.

Originally posted by Frostbite05

Originally posted by Papadam

Skirmishes is by far the most important innovasion in MMOs 2009! Really looking forward trying thoose.

 

Thats not innovative at all. But they look fun and may get me to play again.

Right, Lost Dungeons of Norrath comes to mind, I think that came out in 2001. But if anything it is an element that has not been used very often in MMOs and this sounds like it will be done very well.

Originally posted by ghettobooste

Originally posted by Frostbite05

Originally posted by Papadam

Skirmishes is by far the most important innovasion in MMOs 2009! Really looking forward trying thoose.

 

Thats not innovative at all. But they look fun and may get me to play again.

 

Right, Lost Dungeons of Norrath comes to mind, I think that came out in 2001. But if anything it is an element that has not been used very often in MMOs and this sounds like it will be done very well.

Skirmishes are more of a direct evolution of DDO content. Keep in mind, Skirmishes are not "Dungeons" Most are in the over world. LDN had set variations, Skirmishes are extremely random, from objectives, to mob layout to creature skills.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by ghettobooste

Originally posted by Frostbite05

Originally posted by Papadam

Skirmishes is by far the most important innovasion in MMOs 2009! Really looking forward trying thoose.

 

Thats not innovative at all. But they look fun and may get me to play again.

 

Right, Lost Dungeons of Norrath comes to mind, I think that came out in 2001. But if anything it is an element that has not been used very often in MMOs and this sounds like it will be done very well.

Skirmishes are more of a direct evolution of DDO content. Keep in mind, Skirmishes are not "Dungeons" Most are in the over world. LDN had set variations, Skirmishes are extremely random, from objectives, to mob layout to creature skills.

It seems that way.  Probably the biggest weakness in DDO content was that it was static.  It made grouping frustrating, because if someone had already done it, they'd zerg you through the instance and spoil the surprises.

With skirmishes, I'll be able to solo first and enjoy the experience.  Then group up to get more skirmish marks, and there will be some variance each time.  Gotta love it.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by ghettobooste

Originally posted by Frostbite05

Originally posted by Papadam

Skirmishes is by far the most important innovasion in MMOs 2009! Really looking forward trying thoose.

 

Thats not innovative at all. But they look fun and may get me to play again.

 

Right, Lost Dungeons of Norrath comes to mind, I think that came out in 2001. But if anything it is an element that has not been used very often in MMOs and this sounds like it will be done very well.

Skirmishes are more of a direct evolution of DDO content. Keep in mind, Skirmishes are not "Dungeons" Most are in the over world. LDN had set variations, Skirmishes are extremely random, from objectives, to mob layout to creature skills.

Skirmishes (and scalable content in general) are the future of this game, IMO. At some point, I suspect they will allow players to have multiple NPCs, and that should allow for some truly epic battles that will better capture the war in Middle Earth. PvP needs some love, however, and Skirmishes would be a good way to implement battleground-style PvP. Can't wait for December 1st!

Originally posted by Frostbite05

Originally posted by Papadam

Skirmishes is by far the most important innovasion in MMOs 2009! Really looking forward trying thoose.

 

Thats not innovative at all. But they look fun and may get me to play again.

Hmm Ive never heard about dungeons that scale from solo to raid size, from low level to end game, can be joined from anywhere in the world, have random encounters, gives you a custimizable "pet" which you progress. Simillar things may have been done but if this is not innovative then there is no such thing.