Turbine's Bob “Maurath” Hess has penned the latest Update 2 dev blog on the official Lord of the Rings Online site. This time, devs deal with the newly minted word "solofication", or in other words, giving the players the ability to solo most, if not all, of the epic storyline.
There were several overall design goals when undertaking the task:
- To make the entire Volume 2 Epic completable by a solo player.
- To allow solo players to experience several instance spaces and encounters that are truly unique and interesting.
- To smooth some of the gameplay aspects of the Volume 2 Epic, with a particular eye to some particularly difficult content to complete, and travel times.
These specific design goals were addressed using a variety of different methods, which will be further explained in their own sections:
- Re-leveling Quests
- Simplification of quest objectives with the addition of quest objectives that are more numerous and easier to locate.
- Redesigning several instance spaces for solo and duo play while allowing players to experience aspects of the original instance design
Read more here.
