Lord Of The Rings Online: Heather Sinclair - The Making of a First-Class Burglar

Well the title of this article probably sums it right up:

The history of classes in The Lord of the Rings Online is as old as LOTRO itself, ranging from the 7 classes of today to the 26 classes of Middle-earth Online to dozens of other class designs in between that were never released to the public. Some lived only in documentation, many others (over 50!) actually were in game, and this doesn't even count the game from even before Turbine had the license!

I say this to demonstrate how important the team feels classes are that we have put so much time into class design and implementation. Classes define who you are and what you can do in this game, and I'm very happy that we have had the time to get them right.

If you haven't gotten a chance to check out our classes, I urge you to do so now.

Since we began releasing information on the current seven classes in the game, there have been many questions as to why we made certain decisions, and what our thought processes were when designing them. I've attempted to respond where I could in the forums, but some questions can't be explained in a single forum post and deserve a more in-depth answer. Following are answers to some of the questions I've seen asked most frequently.

What were your goals when making the current classes? How did you come up with them?
or "Wait, you mean you actually thought about this stuff?!"

When I rejoined the LOTRO team (after working on our other project) there were seven classes: the Warrior, the Soldier, the Guardian, the Burglar, the Scout, the Bard, and the Sage. While the names and skills have changed, the basic outlines and goals of those seven classes remain the same. We wanted to have a small number of classes so that we could ensure that each had a unique playstyle and a well-rounded skillset, we wanted the classes to remain more melee-focused to better fit with the feel of the books, and finally, we wanted to stick with a number of classes that we knew we would have enough time to thoroughly test and polish.

After that though, it wasn't all so easy. At times it felt like the lore and gameplay could never reach a happy resolution - we would either have fun classes that bore no resemblance to the books, or lore-appropriate classes that lacked balance or synergy. In an attempt to find a solution, I ended up rereading the whole series (for the fourth time!) with an eye for classes and skills. I then realized that the needs of lore-appropriate classes and the needs of gameplay weren't that different. The books provide enough specifics to give our classes form and basic sets of skills, but enough is left to the imagination that we can fill in the empty spaces for gameplay purposes. From that point, it was time to come up with specific goals for development of the classes.

The first goal was that the classes should fit within the spirit of the books. If you could take a page out of the books and put it next to a snapshot of the game for similar encounters, you should see characters in the game doing many of the same things the characters in the books are doing. This does not mean that our classes mirror people in the book: there is no "Aragorn Class" or "Frodo Class." Trying to do so, I feel, would not be doing justice to the books (while being fiendishly difficult to balance - how do you balance an Aragorn Class vs a Pippin Class? Answer: You don't). There was only one Legolas in Middle-earth, only one Samwise, only one Gimli, but there could be hundreds of champions and guardians and hunters and minstrels and lore-masters and burglars and captains, both in the books and in the game, each with their own personality and part of the story.

The second goal was for each class to be desirable in a group: to have its own role, while not being robbed of the ability to solo. Each class has at least one thing that they bring to a group that they can do better than any other. While it is inevitable that some classes will be slightly better than others solo, or slightly more desirable in a group than others (no game has managed that perfect balance), it is not our goal to balance classes by their groupability or lack thereof. Thus, a well-rounded group will likely wish for a variety of classes rather than a small handful of 'uber' ones. This is not to say that we don't think about class stackability; if you happen to find yourself with two captains for example, they will both have something to do.

The third and final goal is simply fun gameplay. Sometimes this means coming up with something totally new and unique, other times it means taking an established gameplay mechanic and improving on it. This does not mean we blindly copy from games, nor does it mean we are being different for the sake of being different. Neither will result in a fun game.

With those goals established, the next step was to figure out what roles in a group we wanted to have, the types of skills we wanted to support, and then how they would all fit together into a coherent, lore-appropriate class. For example, one of the roles we wanted to support was conjunction starter. It's cool enough that we wanted a class to be really good at it. Another role we broadly referred to as "combat utility," which is a catchall for debuffs and some AI manipulation. These two roles fit well together with each other to create a class that was strong in groups, but then it needed a little bit of something to help him solo. Thus, secondary class roles are formed, and we gave this proto-class a secondary class role of DPS (damage-per-second). Now we look to our big list of skills to see which ones fit the primary and secondary roles. An armor debuff fits well, as it serves both combat utility and DPS. Confusion is another fun one, as it acts as aggro management. More and more skills are layered on, and as they layer on we start to think of how this class would fit within Middle-earth. I thought some of how the five hobbits in the books acted - Merry stabbing the Witch King to allow Éowyn an opportunity to kill him, that's kind of like a conjunction. Bilbo noticing the weakness in Smaug's armor, that's like an armor debuff. Bilbo taunting the spiders in Mirkwood, that's confusion! Thus, the Burglar class was born. In many ways, I think the Burglar class is the perfect example of our approach to class design in LOTRO. The Burglar is a very different spin on the typical MMO 'rogue class' gameplay. He's a utility guy rather than a backstabbing, poison-using, DPS machine, yet retains a lot of the familiar elements from rogues in MMOs, stealth for one. He has a strong group role, yet can still solo. He has great ties into the books and lore, as many of his skills are very reminiscent of things that actually happen in the book.

As we worked through the classes the pieces of the puzzle really started to fit together. Surprisingly enough, the reduced presence of "traditional" magic in Middle-earth really was freeing in terms of how we could design our classes. Our health stat was morale, so it was the Minstrel who sings songs of inspiration to heal his fellows rather than a cleric praying to his deity. We wanted a ranged DPS class, but without a fireball slinging wizard, it fell to the Hunter to provide a different spin on that role. We wanted a buff class, but without a mage that could magically augment a player's attributes, it was a leader, the Captain, who would inspire his fellows to greater deeds. Six of our classes have no magical abilities whatsoever, but can accomplish just as much as games that rely on arcane forces or divine intervention to give their classes form. Only one, the lore-master, had any magic at all, and his was required to be subtle magic at that and only a small portion of the class as a whole.

This process gave us our original Class/Role table for designing the classes:

Name	Primary Role	Secondary Role
Champion	DPS, AOE DPS	Tanking
Captain	Buffs (melee-oriented)	Healer, DPS
Guardian	Tank	Conjunction-starting, DPS
Hunter	Ranged DPS	CC, AOE DPS
Burglar	Conjunction-starter, Debuffer (party damage increasing)	DPS, CC
Minstrel	Healer	Buffer (casting-oriented), CC
Lore-master	CC, Debuffer (monster offense decreasing)	Healer, Debuff-remover

After that, it was iteration, iteration, iteration. We are still in a constant process of playtesting in order to make sure that the classes can fill their role in a group, that they can solo effectively, and above all that they are fun to play.

What's in a Name?
or "Burglar is a silly name, I want to be an assassin!"

In LOTRO we take names seriously. Everything from vendors to items to dungeons gets careful attention to the lore-appropriateness of their names. This was something that Tolkien himself was keenly interested in, and so we must tread carefully with all names. Needless to say, class names go through a lot of scrutiny, as it's not only important for class names to be lore-appropriate, but for class names to give an indication of the role and skills of the class. Take for example the Captain's original name, the Soldier. While it was lore-appropriate, it gave little indication as to what the class did, and was far too similar to other classes names - We had a Soldier and a Warrior, and nobody knew which did what! We tossed around a few ideas (Knight? No, we don't have mounted combat (yet). Herald? No, sounds too similar to a minstrel. Banner-bearer? ahahahahaha no) but ultimately settled on Captain, as it was lore-appropriate and described well what the class did (inspiring through leadership). The changing of the name was not so easy, as it brought up other concerns. Captain just sounds like a much better class than say, a Warrior or a Scout, and we feared people would choose it because of the name alone, and then be disappointed that it wasn't a far more powerful class. Because of this, the Warrior got renamed to the much-cooler-sounding Champion, and the Scout became the Hunter.

Some of the names ended up being very different than standard MMO class names. This is intentional. The revised names typically have a much higher 'Tolkien factor,' and allowed us to avoid a lot of the baggage of common class names. The Minstrel class is not named the Bard specifically because the name Bard has a long history - from D&D to Everquest and on - of a song-twisting roguish jack-of-all-trades hybrid, which didn't describe our Minstrel class at all and would set false expectations for the players. Likewise, the Burglar is not a rogue, the Lore-master is not a mage or wizard, and the Champion is not a warrior. They're all different for a good reason.

So uh, Why Classes?
or "I want to be a tanking-healing-nuking-pet-having-dualwielding-elf!"

A lot of people have asked us why we have classes, why we don't use a pure skill-based system. After all, doesn't a skill-based system make more sense? Don't players want to be able to have a perfectly customized character? Won't it provide more variety than a class based system possibly could?

I do understand much of the desire. After all, the fun part of game design is that I do get to design my own class from collections of skills. Why don't we just give the players all the skills in game to pick and choose from?

There are several good answers for this. Classes are a powerful form of character identification. They give you a role within the world and tell how you fit in with other players. While some may not appreciate the value of this, it helps greatly in facilitating group forming and interaction. There is no laundry list of skills to spit out and compare to others, no pick up groups that never seem to have the right distribution of skills. Class balance becomes much more attainable, and players never have to worry about accidentally gimping themselves and being shunned from groups because they don't conform to one of the few 'uber builds of the week'.

That's not the only reason for classes though. Believe it or not, skill-based systems aren't 'free.' Classes do have advantages beyond those listed above. Classes are more than just random collections of skills. We pay special attention to combat pacing and skill synergy, and work hard to make sure each class plays very differently and that their skills fit together in a way that is fun and makes sense, because it really makes combat that much more interesting and tactical than it would be otherwise. It is exceedingly difficult to have skills that combo with each other in interesting ways with unique pacing compared to other characters in a pure skill-based systems.

A champion, for example, is much more than just a guardian with upped damage and reduced defense. He is a different playstyle (active, compared to the reactive playstyle of the guardian) with skills that combo and chain off of each other. He has different stats, different passive effects, and reacts to different combat events. In short, he is more than the sum of his parts and a good example of the cool things classes can bring to a game.

Why don't you have race-specific classes anymore?
or "Where is my Necromancer?"

Classes were originally envisioned as race-specific to highlight the differences between races in Middle-earth. While a laudable goal, the result was less than had been hoped: Dozens of classes meant for confusion among players who had a hard time understanding the functional difference between many of the classes and who were often frustrated that they couldn't play the race they wanted for their chosen class. For developers it meant a lot of extra overhead, a much more difficult job of balancing, and often watered-down classes as we had to spread skills among that many more classes. We opted instead to go with a much smaller number of common classes, with the idea that even within classes that are shared across multiple races, we could differentiate the races in other ways that would be true to Tolkien and add a lot of flavor, but that wouldn't become unmaintainable and unbalanceable for us.

What's with the Race/Class combinations?
or "Why can't I be a Hobbit Champion?"

Choosing race restrictions is deceptively easy. After all, the major difference between Elf classes and Hobbit classes from a game systems side:

Elf	Hobbit
RaceTable_ClassList [ RaceTable_Class [ Minstrel ] RaceTable_Class [ Guardian ] RaceTable_Class [ Hunter ] RaceTable_Class [ Loremaster ] RaceTable_Class [ Champion ] ]	RaceTable_ClassList [ RaceTable_Class [ Minstrel ] RaceTable_Class [ Guardian ] RaceTable_Class [ Hunter ] RaceTable_Class [ Burglar ] ]

Something so simple can turn into something very complex though when you start to weigh in lore, animations, and player expectations. Some races need to be flat out barred from certain classes. Hobbits and lore-masters for one: Tolkien was very clear that Hobbits do not use magic. Others are a bit more open to interpretation. Captains we made Men-only, as it seemed to fit well within the themes of the book; that the race of Man was poised on the edge of a new age, while the other races slowly diminished and eventually disappeared from Middle-earth, our earth, entirely. It also saved us from problems with certain racial tensions (dwarves leading elves and vice versa), while making Men a more attractive and popular race, as would befit the lore.

This is of course, where we run into player expectations. On one hand we have players that had decided what class they wanted to play long before we released the racial restrictions who were disappointed when they found they can't play that combination, but on the other hand there are players who for some reason just can't possibly imagine certain race/class combinations even when they're supported by the lore. It's a hard thing to balance: How much freedom do we give? How strict do we want to interpret the text? How much to we cater to expectations not set by the lore, but instead set by modern high fantasy? How strictly do we want to apply 'realism' that may differ from person to person?

To run down the list by classes and our reasoning:

Class	Allowed Races	Reasoning
Champion	Men, Dwarves, Elves	Champions are focused on large 2h weapons, and Hobbits have trouble wielding these weapons because of their build/proportions.
Captain	Men	Lore reasons (see previous explanation)
Guardian	All	All races need to have a melee class, and while Hobbit Guardians may stretch realism somewhat, we expect them to be an uncommon enough choice to not offend that many player's sensibilities.
Burglar	Men, Hobbits	Stealth is an integral part of the class, and The Hobbit makes enough references to Dwarves being poor at moving silently that we did not allow Dwarf Burglars. Elves are simply above such petty professions.
Hunter	All	All races are described as using bows in the book, and while Dwarves may prefer the underground, they still presumably had to hunt for food and there is support for wandering dwarves with which hunters would fit right in. This class has no mystical connection with nature as is common in other games, giving us further freedom with it.
Minstrel	All	Song is important to all races. This is not a magic-using class, so no need to restrict hobbits.
Lore-master	Elves, Men	Hobbits absolutely cannot use magic. Restricting dwarves was a tougher decision, but in the end we felt that it would be best to save Dwarf magic for a future class as the presentation of Dwarf magic just didn't fit with that of Elves and Men.

So what is in the future?
or "Is this it?"

If you've stuck with me this far (a commendable achievement indeed!) you're probably wondering if this is it for classes. That is most certainly not the case, there's a lot of information we're still working on behind the scenes that will pertain to classes, including our system for character specialization, racial characteristics, and the over 100 skills spread across the classes.

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Heather was raised and schooled in a rural part of California best known for broccoli, tri-tip, and the Michael Jackson trial. At the age of 19 she became hooked on her first massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Three and a half years later, degree in hand, she grabbed at a double opportunity: a chance to make the kind of games she loved playing and a chance to move as far from the land of her youth as possible.

In the land of Massachusetts she broadened her interests to include snow, snowboarding, bad action movies, and the Red Sox. None of this, however, diminishes her passion for playing MMOs: after gaining almost a thousand levels across dozens of characters in over fourteen different online games, she still rarely misses a chance to log in to the game of the moment.