I just got back from Digital Life in New York, and my preview of book 11 with Jeff Anderson, President & CEO of Turbine, and Adam Mersky, the Director of PR. I got to spend so much time with them, and got so much good information, I am going to break the Preview up into two parts. The first part will cover housing, the game in general, & a new character from the books!
We also have a bonus feature that shows the first ever in-game videos of the creature Gollum. Check them out here.
Answers by Jeff Anderson, President & CEO of Turbine, and Adam Mersky, Director of PR
Article by Matt Lowery
WarCry: With Book 11 coming can you tell us what if any graphical enhancements we will see with Book 11?
Turbine: We are proud to say that with Book 11, Lord of The Rings Online will become the first MMO to support DX10! We have been working very hard on this, and can’t wait to see the players’ reaction to it. It is really quite amazing, the effects look incredible. For example, if you are standing under a tree right now, you see a standard shadow cast over you. With DX10 you will see the shadow of each leaf as it crosses over you. It is very impressive.
WarCry: With Book 11 you are adding a lot of content that most games would release as a paid expansion, and yet you are giving it out for free. Are there any plans for a paid expansion?
Turbine: The short answer is yes, we will have a paid expansion. It’s something that we are not quite ready to talk about yet, but some time after Book 11 we will let you know about it. Basically we wanted to complete the first story arc before we looked at a paid expansion. With Book 11, I think we have done that. We are adding player housing, new monsters, a new character from the books, a new 12 man raid, and over 100 new missions to the game. All of that is just in this one Book. We really felt that player housing should be in before an expansion, players want it, and it is something we wanted to give them. That with the new content we think really fleshes out the first story arc, so we can then start talking about the next one. I can say that the paid expansion will introduce new lands, and if you follow the lore, you can probably figure out where we are going.
WarCry: Speaking of player housing, can you give us an idea of how it will work?
Turbine: Sure, so each race will have their own Instanced area for player housing. You can live in any of these you wish, so if an Elf wants a home in Bree that’s fine. You are allowed one house per account. You can decorate your house however you like, everything from statues in the front yard, to wall and floor colors and textures, furniture, all can be changed.
So let’s say that you want one room for a hobbit, with a hobbit door, and another with a more elven feel. You can do that easily. You can see here that we have the same room, we changed the floor and walls from a more human look to a more elven look. So you can change the textures, colors, all of it can be changed.
You will have a control box in your house to adjust these things. These are just place holders, so ignore the look of the control box right now, but with this, you can adjust anything here. When in decorator mode, you also see the blue boxes; this shows you where you can place things in your house.
It does cost money to keep your house running. However if you ever failed to pay for your house, you wouldn’t lose everything in your chest, it is kept in escrow, so once you pay, you can get your stuff back. You can set permissions for who you want to allow in your house, who has admin rights to the house. You can even set it up to allow someone else to decorate the house if you want. So now you can tell your friend who found that great shield for you, to just swing by your house and drop it off, instead of mailing it to you. You can pay someone to decorate your house if you don’t want to do it yourself. Crafters can craft stuff to decorate your house with. It’s really quite exciting what all you can do.
WarCry: Ok, so this new character from the books that is getting introduced….
Turbine: Hmmm I wonder…. You wouldn’t be interested in seeing him would you?
WarCry: You mean in game? Actually see him running around in game?
Turbine: Ya, you want to?
WarCry: Umm…. Yes please!
Turbine: Ok, well we felt we couldn’t end the first story arc without at least a little teaser of Gollum.
That’s it for part 1; keep checking back for part 2, where we discuss the 12 man raid I got to see…. It is amazing! Ill give you a hint…
Remember, check out the Gollum videos here.
“His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings.”
