A few interviews with Turbine’s Jeffrey Steefel have made their way online.
The first is a short one conducted by Massively. It deals with his general feelings on how the expansion’s development has been going. To me, the biggest point of interest is that they’re already working on Volume 2, Book 7 with plans for it to hit sometime in the first quarter of next year.
The second is up at IncGamers, a site I’m not actually too familiar with. This interview deals with the new additions to the game, with questions about entering Moria, the new classes and the Legendary Items system. Steefel is asked about new Raid content, where he talks briefly about their new “Raids” that use a smaller number of players and don’t take 6 hours plus. He does mention, however, that they are working on two new large raids that will be available shortly after the expansion’s launch.
The third is actually part two of the last one. IncGamers and Steefel discuss Eregion, changes since the beta, launch dates, the lifecycle of LotRO, the development team, working with the Tolkien estate and more. It briefly gets into LotRO’s success, wherein Steefel claims the game is within the top few MMORPGs out there (which seems hard to prove from our end because Turbine isn’t very forthcoming with the numbers).
Their console work is also discussed, although no real details are given. It pretty much comes down to the typical “we’ll talk about it more when we’re ready”.
Anyway, it’s nice to hear a bit about their plans for the future of the game.. LotRO being a successful title certainly makes me happy as I don’t want it ending any time soon.
