Interviews// Jeffrey Steefel, Exec Producer, Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar (Online)

SPOnG: Briefly, yes, it’s whet my appetite…

Jeffrey Steefel: Well, that’s exactly it. It’s just to tickle that “Aah there’s Elron…there’s a Nazgul” muscle. Then it’s just a matter of making the game accessible to people in the easiest way possible – helping them through the game, helping them understand how to play and not forcing them to do all the complicated and hardcore things that are in the game unless they want to. In other words you can progress through the game and explore the world and have all kinds of fun without necessarily being a ‘hardcore achiever’. So, there really has been a lot of focus on that, both in terms of the user interface (UI) and in terms of the game itself.


SPOnG: Yeah, well for me – your typical MMO noob - from the brief play-test I just had – the initial tutorial really grabbed my attention. I was a hobbit! It was incredibly real. I just wanted to explore and familiarise myself with the controls and the surroundings. But then [for purposes of seeing much further into the game] I was thrown into a level 45 instance or something… that really threw me!

Jeffrey Steefel: Right, but I have to stress that this is an experience that no player will have, because by the time they get to level 40, they will have spent so much time learning how to play the game, and they will have made a conscious choice… they will have to really want to be an achiever to get to that level. It’s perfectly fine to play our game and never get to level 40 or 45. So, yeah, I can imagine that was quite disorienting for you! [laughs]


SPOnG: Okay, a question about the world and the map – in LOTRO: Shadows of Angmar you’ve taken one region of Middle Earth… I suppose then the idea is to build updates at some point in the future focusing on other regions?

Jeffrey Steefel: Oh yes.


SPOnG: But my point also is that Middle Earth is a finite map…

Jeffrey Steefel: Yes, it’s finite but it’s also huge. I mean, it will take us years to cover the entire map. And then, beyond that there are areas of Middle Earth that haven’t yet been explored at all; that Tolkien talked about in the detailed appendices to the books - about the fourth age - and there are in-between the places that haven’t yet been explored! Then there’s potential for perhaps going across the seas, which is also something he talks about. So, one of the problems we really don’t have is enough material.


SPOnG: Well, he certainly described the areas in some detail in Lord of the Rings.

Jeffrey Steefel: Yep.


SPOnG: There’s an emphasis also here more so on fighting and combat than magic and casting spells – is this fair to say?

Jeffrey Steefel: Yeah, and I think in general in RPGs, percentage-wise, magic is always just a subset of the whole approach. I think the difference here is that the magic use is restricted to the Lore-Master class and to some traits and skills that other classes may acquire along the way.

Magic is a little bit more precious in Middle Earth than it is in some of the other MMO worlds. That said, if you are playing a Lore-Master, then it feels like being a magic user in another RPG – you’re throwing fireballs and you’re casting spells and you’re able to do things that a normal person wouldn’t be able to do. It’s just treated with a little bit more respect in terms of how you get it and when you can use it.


SPOnG: The game’s map system - future ideas for developing this have been likened to Google Maps by some…

Jeffrey Steefel: Aaah yes, separate issue, so the maps in the game are fairly much like what you would expect to find in an MMO – there’s a little bit more complexity we’ve added to them, in terms of filters, being able to put special points of interest on so you can find your way. Our intentions are to expand the whole social experience of Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar onto the web – which is something that we are working actively on, and part of that is giving you access to interactive maps, giving you access to a full compendium of Tolkien-knowledge that’s tied into those maps.


SPOnG: So like a Tolkien Wiki-pedia?

Jeffrey Steefel: Yeah, exactly, and we already have that, it’s already built into the game and players are going to be able to input their own entries, it’s very cool actually. So, imagine that you are roaming around the world and you click a button and it opens up this interactive encyclopaedia that basically says, “You are in The Shire. The Shire is x, y, z…”, and there’s hyperlinks inside that to tell you all about characters you’re meeting, what’s happening in the locality and so on and so forth. From this we can get blogs, player profiles… all this kind of stuff.


SPOnG: So you could effectively have a kind of MySpace-type social network made up of people’s different characters?

Jeffrey Steefel: That’s exactly it. If you think about it, this is the big thing now. ‘Web 2.0’ or whatever they want to call it. You know, normal people are now getting comfortable – this is not just kids anymore – it’s normal people grouping and sharing and doing all this kind of stuff through the internet. And if you think about it the MMO is the ultimate expression of that. So, how do we bring these two things together?

Also, in relation to a question you asked earlier, how do we reach out to potential players beyond the traditional ‘gaming’ groups – well, once you hook this up into the web experience, then you have potential subscribers being reached out to through these networks… it’s a great viral way of expanding your audience…