Massively recently posted their interview with Turbine concerning Siege of Mirkwood. It’s written in more of a paragraph style as opposed to a Q&A style, which is kind of nice.
The article contains some nice information and I’ve grabbed some bits below:
Skirmishes
These all happen in areas that should be familiar to any LotRO player. Places like Bree, Tuckberry and Weathertop — except that since the War of the Rings is beginning, there’s something new going on. A couple examples given to us were scourge of the Shire-like event happening at Tuckburrow, or an attack at Bree where people have been locked in the Prancing Pony with the invaders outside ready to set it on fire. Plus, every Skirmish has nine randomizable alternate objectives. Basically, Turbine is doing everything they can to make these just as fun on the hundredth time as they are on the first.
Loot drops and Skirmish Points will probably help extend the replay value. Those points can be spent on various rewards ranging from ways to improve your soldier buddy to actually getting meaningful rewards typically gained elsewhere in the game. Jeffrey did point out that these rewards are meant to compliment, not supplant, the ones already in place throughout the other activities in LotRO.
I love that the skirmishes take place in some otherwise “friendly” areas. I really like the addition of randomized components to MMORPGs … It lets you see something new each time.
Horses
Even more importantly, mounts are being made more functional. No longer will they simply move players around the game world quickly. With Siege of Mirkwood you can talk to an NPC on your mount, buy stuff from a vendor, cross land block boundaries, enter large spaces on horse without dismounting, emote on your horse — you can even name your horse. If this isn’t Turbine hinting at their next expansion’s setting then they’ve got a pretty cruel sense of humor.
I’ve been thinking the same thing. Sure, this is something nice to do and people have been requesting this sort of change for a while. Still, it’d be pretty cool if this is opening the way for some great horse use in a future Rohan expansion, right?
The game is also getting shared account storage, which was news to me. The combat changes are also touched upon a bit as well. Jeffrey Steefel says there will be a developer diary on these changes soon.
Sounds good so far. Be sure to check out the original article for the full story.
The shared storage strikes me as only somewhat useful. Other than historian drops that I’m saving until I have a large enough stack to be worth selling, almost everything that’s cluttering my bank is bound.
The mount functionality upgrades are great, but I don’t know that this will push players to go out and grind up replacement mounts on a regular basis like Turbine appears to be hoping. Perhaps they’ll make named Not-So-Legendary Mounts with randomized stats so that you’re always replacing Fluffy when a slightly better one drops? (When you deconstruct a legendary mount, do you get horse/ram steak?)
We can name mounts? FAB!
I really hope that this quote is accurate, but it wouldn’t be the first time that either Massively have misquoted or that Steefel has given incorrect information.