Lord Of The Rings Online: Dev Diary: Wild Lands

Worldbuilder Matt Elliot gives us a little sneak peek into how world building is handled in LotRO.

Most MMOs are rife with numerous content and game systems that help bring their particular world together, making it feel more immersive and alive. Some of these systems may not be noticeable on the surface at first, but after a bit of digging and exploring, a player can discover a fortune in gameplay. The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ is no different. Our goal is to not only provide an epic story spanning across the lands of Eriador, but also support that story - and our world as a whole - with fun and interesting World Content Systems.

Welcome to World Content Systems 101
World Content Systems encompass all the little bits and pieces of gameplay and non-quest content available in the game. These systems include Ambient Creatures, Treasure Chests, Rare Monsters, and Crafting Resource Nodes. Each system is designed to help make Eriador feel more complete and alive. After all, what fun is running from one place to another without something to see and do on the way there?

Look at the cute little squirrel!
The Ambient Creatures system has a large impact on immersion in the world, despite being the smallest of these systems and the easiest to design and implement. What would a forest be without random deer, fox and (grey...) squirrels meandering through it? While other beasts may also be present, the inclusion of passive creatures helps make an aggressive world appear less so and provides for better immersion in a seemingly living world.

Ambient Creatures are not limited solely to the fields, marshes, and forests. Farms are crowded with chicken roosts, pig pens, and cow pastures. You might even spy the local tabby cat sunning itself upon the cobblestones of Bree!

Enough about squirrels - where's my loot?
Across Eriador, brigands have established camps, marauding packs of wolves have claimed gullies for their own, and the Dead stalk their barrows. Each defends their home fiercely, but that is not all they're defending! The vast majority of our creature camps will have some form of "treasure chest" ready and waiting for a fellowship to discover (or for a sly burglar to burgle while its guards look the other way). These treasure chests come in many shapes and forms (wooden supply crates, lost packs, and rusting metal coffers are but a few examples), and yield money and items to varying degrees (depending on the challenge level of the camp). Some have the potential to yield rare items and equipment, as well.

Big Pointy Teeth!
Adding another layer of interest to the landscape and creature camp experiences is our Rare Monster system. Across the region of Eriador, adventurers will encounter opponents more powerful than the average bear (or brigand, or wight, etc.) and more rewarding as well. Unlike common opponents, our rare encounters have the potential to drop items unique to that creature upon its defeat. As for difficulty, we've broken down our rare creatures into three categories: Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3.

Tier 1 rare monsters are slightly more difficult than the common creatures surrounding them. Typically, this means they have more health and armor, but those attributes can also be interchanged with a higher damage output as well. By itself, a Tier 1 rare monster can be defeated by a solo player of similar level with moderate difficulty.

Tier 2 rare monsters are much more difficult than the common creatures surrounding them. Overall, this type of creature has higher health, armor, and damage output. It may even have some skills that the local monsters don't. A small-to-medium sized fellowship of similar level to the Tier 2 rare monster should be able to defeat it with difficulty.

Tier 3 rare monsters are the most difficult to defeat of all our creatures. Typically, creatures of this tier are used for instanced boss encounters, but rarely you might find yourself face-to-face with a fearsome Gaunt-lord in the red swamps of the Lone-lands, or some Nameless Horror within the wastes of eastern Angmar. A Tier 3 rare monster will require at least a full, organized fellowship to defeat - though some of these rare monsters may prove more than even these players can handle.

In his dev diary "Friends Don't Let Friends Tank Balrogs", Allan Maki mentioned that instances wouldn't be the only way to obtain "instance" quality loot. One of the ways in which instance loot will be made available is through the rare creature system. If a rare creature on the landscape falls within the same level range as the bosses in an instance, it may have a chance to drop the same loot as the bosses within that instance (with some exceptions).

It's off to work we go!
For a while now, one of the most debated systems on our message boards (aside from PvP) has been the crafting system in LOTRO. Before you can even begin to craft, you'll need something to craft with; this is where the Crafting Resource Nodes come into play. Scattered across Eriador are several types of collectable resources, primarily deposits of minerals (such as tin and iron) and tree branches (such as yew and ash). As adventurers progress through the land, from low-level regions (such as the Shire, Bree-land, and the Ered Luin) to more dangerous locations (like the Trollshaws or the Lonelands), they will encounter higher quality resources to mine and collect. Some of these higher level resources may also, though rarely, find their way into lower-level locations. Some, such as coveted Mithril flakes, can only be found within the deepest delvings of the world and cannot be collected without great personal risk.

Players will need to have specific harvesting skills in order to collect resources from mineral deposits and fallen branches. These skills will increase with use and as a player progresses through the regions, higher skills will be required to successfully collect from resource nodes in those areas.

More information about the crafting system on a whole, and how it interacts with the Crafting Resource Node system, will be coming along later down the line; and you can read about our approach to developing the crafting system in Nik Davidson's dev diary, "Useful and Comely Things."

Looking Down the Road
As we continue on our way through Beta, and eventually Gold release, the Worldbuilding, Content Design, and System Design teams will continue to brainstorm more world content systems similar to the ones I described above, to help fill out the world and make it feel more complete and immersive. On the Worldbuilding team, we draw a lot of our inspiration from Asheron's Call 1 (a number of us having played or worked on AC1), so don't be too surprised to see some of its more treasured and successful landscape dynamics appear in LOTRO!

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Matt Elliott is a life-long New Englander, hailing from northern New Hampshire. Inspired by the likes of Thief: The Dark Project and Final Fantasy 7, he achieved a degree in animation and digital design and returned to New England to do freelance web-site and character design. A portfolio submission and a whirlwind interview later, Matt began his career in the gaming industry as a production artist on a game called Middle-earth Online (though rumor has it that that project is now called The Lord of the Rings Online).

Since then, he has led the art teams of Asheron's Call: Dark Majesty and Asheron's Call: Throne of Destiny. Matt returned to the project that started him here at Turbine, now known as LOTRO, as a Worldbuilder. Since his return, he has contributed most significantly to the development of the Shire, Ered Luin, and the numerous world content systems (some of which will be discussed in this article).