News Manager Keith Cross recently had the opportunity to talk to Lord of the Rings Online Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel about the last year of Lord of the Rings Online and where Turbine's focus will be in 2008.
It’s that time of year again. A time when the New Year still has that new year smell. When every fortune-teller and futurist comes out of the woodwork to give their predictions about what our next run around the sun will bring. In that spirit, we thought it would be a good idea to dust off the old crystal ball and peer into the future of Lord of the Rings Online. Unfortunately, we overspent on poultices and herbal remedies in 2007 and we’ve been forced to cut crystal balls and other soothsaying devices from our dark arts budget. Luckily, there was plenty of room in our telecommunications budget, so I just picked up the phone and spoke to Lord of the Rings Online Executive Producer Jeffrey Steffel to see what he had to say.
But before we can look forward, we need to look back on the year that was and what it meant for Lord of the Rings Online. LotRO had a notably smooth and relatively bug free launch in late April 2007. The launch set the bar for AAA MMOs and confirmed that a smooth launch is a necessary ingredient if you want to call your game AAA. Since launch, Turbine has been busy adding content and features in the form of free expansions, called books. Three books have been released thus far, opening new areas to explore, bringing quests with new foes to defeat, and adding new features like monster play, player housing, and more.
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Read the whole article here.
