Orion posted a really great devel­oper diary that details the upcom­ing changes for the Lone Lands, which I am really excited about. Over­all, I’ve been happy with the changes to Archet, Bree-land, Ered Luin and the cor­re­spond­ing Epic Quests. Things flow more smoothly and the aspects of those areas that felt a lit­tle murky have really come into their own. The revamps of those areas have cer­tainly improved things, but the updates to the Lone Lands sound sig­nif­i­cantly more inter­est­ing to me.

Also dis­cussed is infa­mous Garth Agar­wen instance. Per­son­ally, I wan­dered into that area once and never ven­tured in again. I always feel a lit­tle lost in it and the strength of the ene­mies didn’t feel worth the pay off. Garth Agar­wen was the first instance Tur­bine designed from the game and it could cer­tainly ben­e­fit from what Tur­bine has learned since then. An entire page is ded­i­cated to the changes in Garth Agar­wen and I rec­om­mend read­ing it. The area is being split up into clus­ters and the entire thing just sounds like it will flow bet­ter and be more fun. I always felt like I was just “dropped” into that area, sur­rounded by a ridicu­lous amount of mobs who seemed to have no real goal beyond stand­ing in my way. It sounds like things will be sig­nif­i­cantly improved there.

The arti­cle presents some really great ideas for the Lone Lands, but they’re also great ideas for the game in gen­eral. I hope to see some of this cap­i­tal­ized upon through­out the rest of the game. I really sug­gest read­ing the full devel­oper diary, but a few things caught my atten­tion beyond the adjust­ments to the Epic Story, the abil­ity to solo more of the Epic Quest line (or con­tinue on as a group as in the past, if you wish) and the addi­tion of the Eglain faction:

Chal­lenges

With Mines of Moria™ we intro­duced the con­cept of hard mode, a more dif­fi­cult ver­sion of the instance that pro­vided play­ers with greater rewards. As we refined the sys­tem it became appar­ent that Hard Mode was not only a silly name, but also a rather obtuse sys­tem that did noth­ing to assist play­ers in under­stand­ing what the objec­tives were. In order to adjust this, we have cre­ated Chal­lenges.

Chal­lenges are daily quests that are bestowed to all play­ers who have not already com­pleted them for that day, and meet all other quest cri­te­ria – pre­req­ui­sites or level restric­tions. These quests will appear in the quest tracker and dis­play the suc­cess and fail­ure cases for the play­ers. Upon open­ing the quest jour­nal, play­ers can read the back­ground on the quest and see fur­ther instruc­tions on the chal­lenge before them[Rewards for Chal­lenges may vary slightly from instance to instance but, typ­i­cally, they will be the fol­low­ing: coin, fac­tion, and a barter token of some type. In the case of Garth Agar­wen, the barter token is used to pur­chase rewards from the Eglain at the entrance to the Garth Agar­wen area.

I’ve not played too many Hard Mode vari­a­tions on quests, but I’ll be hon­est: I think they’re weird. I didn’t feel that they fit the spirit of the game, but I also felt they were con­fus­ing. I like the abil­ity to choose a harder vari­a­tion of a quest; Dun­geons and Drag­ons Online han­dled this well, whereas I’m not so sure that LotRO did. In any event, chal­lenges make a lot more sense and the name is much more fitting.

Optional Objec­tives

In addi­tion to the new Chal­lenge sys­tem, we have added another piece of tech to allow for Optional Objec­tives to appear for play­ers inside any given instance space. Like Chal­lenges, these appear in the stan­dard instances and tar­get mon­sters or other tar­gets within the instance. Also like Chal­lenges, these quests can be com­pleted daily and reward play­ers with coin and/or fac­tion for their com­ple­tion. There can be mul­ti­ple optional objec­tives per instance. The first of these quests, appear­ing in the Garth Agar­wen Clus­ter, pro­vide up to four dif­fer­ent objec­tives within the instance. Optional Objec­tives may be dif­fer­ent for each player..

Optional Objec­tives are meant to fol­low the main path of the instance with min­i­mal extra effort so that groups can work together to achieve each other’s goals. Fur­ther, since the optional objec­tives can each be com­pleted once daily, play­ers will have rea­sons for enter­ing the same instance mul­ti­ple times per day.

I absolutely adore this idea. This con­cept is one of my favorite things about untold amounts of sin­gle player RPGs. Dun­geons and Drag­ons Online has cap­i­tal­ized on this idea as well, offer­ing addi­tional minor objec­tives in addi­tion to the main goals of each indi­vid­ual instance. It spices things up and makes the world feel a bit more alive. I’m extremely happy about this one.

There’s more to it, so be sure to read it all. Have I said that enough yet?

Next on Orion and Turbine’s revamp list? The North Downs. Sweet!