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MMORPG expansions have become rather predictable over the years. Each expansion brings some new raids, some new group content, some new solo content, and a level cap increase. For The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood, however, we will be seeing the introduction of a new scalable instance system, the Skirmish system. Contrary to the status quo established by most major MMOs, the Skirmish system will allow all players -- raiders, casuals, mid-level, high-level -- access to the same content.
Siege of Mirkwood will be introducing twelve new Skirmish instances in addition to a pair of tutorial instances designed to introduce players to the system. Each of these instances is scalable on a number of levels: They each accept one, three, six, or twelve players at a time. [Update: Sapience has clarified that each player has control of one soldier -- no commanding multiple NPC soldiers, RTS fans!] Many of the instances are scalable by level; for instance, one skirmish which features an assault upon and defense of Weathertop will accept players from level 30 to 65. Each instance has nine optional challenges, each of which awards skirmish points -- more on those in a moment. These challenges are randomized, as are the enemies inside the instance (within certain logical limits, of course), so you will not likely have the same experience twice.
Jeffrey Steefel showed me the opening of one of these Skirmishes in which a number of NPCs have been locked within the Prancing Pony, and Sharkey's men are threatening to burn it down. Your job is to defend the Bree-town landmark. The Pony itself has hit points during this Skirmish, and you are awarded Skirmish points -- again, hang on a minute and I'll explain those -- based upon how well you defend the Pony. Let its hit points fall to zero and you fail your primary objective.
Now, Skirmish points: These are your rewards for completing your challenges -- primary and optional -- in each instance. They can be used to customize and advance your soldiers. Soldiers are quite customizable: You can assign them traits, just like a player character, and you can alter their cosmetic appearance. (Beardless dwarves appear to be off-limits, still! Drat!) The Skirmish point system will even be tied into MyLOTRO, where there will be leaderboards on which you can compare yourself to your friends.
At this point, you're probably wondering: If these Skirmishes are all over the game world, how much silver are you going to be spending on travel costs? Well, good news: none. In fact, you can enter a Skirmish from anywhere in the game world, as can your friends from their own locations in the game world. When you're done with the Skirmish -- each of them is designed to last thirty to forty minutes -- you will be transported back to your prior location in the world.
The Skirmish system is not the only change, though. There are a few other select changes Mr. Steefel showed me today. Perhaps my favorite is that mounts are being changed over to skills, not items. This means you will no longer be required to carry a mount in your inventory. In your skills panel, there will be a "mount" tab, which will list your current stable of mounts -- your horse, your other horse, your goat. And, because of mounts becoming skills, a number of issues with mounts will simply cease to exist: You will now be able to pass into instances and new zones while on your mount; you can now interact with NPCs (including vendors) from your mount; and you can now use emotes on your mount. In other mount news, there's a brand new goat -- the Wild Goat -- available in Siege of Mirkwood.
Also on the list of changes, and an answer to the prayers of many LOTRO players, is the addition of shared storage space for accounts. This means that you no longer have to deal with mailing items to your alts; Mr. Steefel kept mum about whether or not this meant a new "bind on account" system, so no word on that yet, but having shared storage at all will be a boon. Currently, shared storage space appears to be limited to 50 items, though Mr. Steefel said this was likely to increase over time in a similar manner to purchasing further storage space for your character's Vault.
Mr. Steefel said there will be something in the range of 100 hours of new content, so even with the smaller level cap increase of five levels, this should be an expansion well worth your money. The story follows the Elves of Lothlorien as they assault and fight back against Sauron's growing presence in Dol Guldur, his Mirkwood fortress where he prepares his armies for war. The primary raid will be in Dol Guldur, and will feature a multi-boss culminating fight featuring both a battle against a Fell Beast (which is quite terrifying to see!) and, finally, the Lieutenant of Dol Guldur, second-in-command among the Nazgul.
While Turbine are not ready to announce a release date yet, Turbine's Director of Communications, Adam Mersky, suggested that we'll see a date and more info in the next few weeks. (źródło:
http://lotrovault.ign.com/View.php?view=CommunityArticles.Detail&id=18)
Jeszcze to znalazłem w sieci:(
http://forums.lotro.com/showpost.php?p=3995771&postcount=191)
Since this seems to have turned into the main thread on the topic I'll address a couple of things that have come up.
The announcement today didn't contain pricing since we're focused on announcing the game features and doing previews at PAX. A subsequent announcement with those details will be out later. But since it's being asked, here's the scoop:
* Siege of Mirkwood will have a base
price of $19.99. As with Moria last year, we're going to have a set of early upgrade offers that are very compelling. We're not quite ready to unveil those details yet, but we'll keep you posted.
* The epic story continues on in Volume 3 as a regular content update early next year.
* Some of the improvements to the game coming with Mirkwood will benefit everyone, but the key features will require the Mirkwood upgrade.
Hopefully this clears things up a bit.
