Here is a quick recount of my first trip to the new area of LoTRO, Evendim. By design, you receive a quest to talk to a hobbit in the northern area of the shire. Having completed most of the quests in the Lone Lands, as well as making my way through half of the North Downs, the ol’ quest log was starting to look a bit empty, with only a few high level quests, some group ones, and a level 27 quest (my guardian is level 30 at this point) to talk to said hobbit. A few horse rides later, I notice that this area of the shire, which had previously been explored early in my character’s life, has changed slightly, with a pass having opened up leading into the new area of Evendim. Once there, I pick up a few quests, and ‘get after it’. The first thing that you notice about these quests is that while they are similar to the quests you have been completing since you started, they have a twist or two to make them a little more interesting. For example, one of the first quests we received was to kill a few locust swarms and queens in some farm fields. Normal kill quest stuff, right? The twist here is that locust swarms have a peculiar tendency to ‘agro’ you, but instead of attacking, just buzz and follow you around. This allows the developer to place a good amount of the things in a relatively small area, as well as giving them a large agro range. Normally this is not a problem, but as soon as you start fighting a queen, the swarms also become hostile. If you are not paying attention, you go from fighting one queen to having five or more mobs all over you, leading to a quick death. It’s a very small change, but makes a simple kill quest a little more memorable instead of the same old grind.

I think a common ‘trap’ developers fall into when adding new content is the balance between playing it safe, and reinventing the wheel. Keep it too similar, and you will hear complaints about ‘the same old stuff with fresh paint’. On the other hand, if you go too far away from the core design ideas of your game, you end up implementing features your current fan base might not be interested in. If Blizzard was to add a ‘fighting game’ component with the next patch, no matter how well done, its not what it’s player base expects. You don’t drop $15 a month to play a fighting game, you pay for character development and interesting areas to explore. And since we are talking about MMOs, it’s EXPECTED that you get this content on a regular basis. When this expectation is not met, that’s when you see subscription numbers start to drop. WoW was pitched as a MMO for the casual fan, with lots of solo content. It delivered, and you see record subscription numbers. Then you release The Burning Crusade, which focuses on raiding, and it’s no surprise that after the initial surge, subscription numbers are beginning to fall.

Evendim was Turbine’s first content patch, released shortly after LoTRO went live. I suspect they were able to get Evendim out as quickly as they did due in part to having such a solid launch. Servers stayed up, no major ‘quick fix’ patches needed to come out, and overall the game was very polished from day one. So instead of playing catch-up, Turbine was able to focus on improvements and future content. I think this bodes well for the future of LoTRO, and if Evendim is the standard used, players are in for a good time.

Note: I am aware that most of the complaints about LoTRO come from players who are level 45+ and have little content to tackle. I have little doubt that Turbine is aware of this, and has something good planned. While I don’t give them a completely free pass for not really having high level content in the game now, I’m willing to overlook it due to how well crafted 1-45 is now, and the future content that is sure to come.