Lord of the Rings Online developer Joe "jwbarry" Barry has penned the third of five diaries about the forthcoming changes to the instances when LOTRO goes free-to-play later this fall. In this article, Barry takes a look at specific instance clusters and discusses the changes, if any, that the dev team has made.

Instances:

• Annúminas Cluster: The Annúminas cluster, with its three Fellowship instances, was the first set of spaces we upgraded. These were well-received instances when they were shipped and were still considered to be in solid shape, so we didn’t anticipate much work being needed to polish them up.
• Haudh Valandil: The first space, Haudh Valandil, was in fairly solid shape. The feedback primarily focused around the overall pacing, frustration at the length of the front end of the space while clearing the bottom versus time spent at the top, and the messaging involved with lighting the torches.
• Ost Elendil: It was a great feeling to have one space very solidly in the ”Done” pile so early.
• Glinghant: The final Annúminas space was Glinghant, and we realized it would need the most work. The first thing we did was to rip out the lever puzzle. It was never well-communicated what was going on, like when you succeeded or when you failed, and the final nail was that it enforced having six people to play the instance.
• Eregion Cluster: The School and Library at Tham Mírdain were the next spaces we looked at. We had created a solid foundation for the system with Annúminas, and we wanted to ensure we had some Small Fellowship content as an offering as well.

Read the full LOTRO Dev Diary: Instances Pt. 3.