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:
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Read the whole article here.
