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Ask Turbine's Jeff Anderson About LOTRO
Last month, Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar went live in what was arguably the most well-received launch for a Massively Multiplayer game since World of Warcraft. The game soared to the top of the retail charts, and has been a breath of fresh air for gamers looking to get a taste of something just a little bit different and a little bit hobbity. Today, you have the chance to ask Turbine's CEO Jeff Anderson questions about the process of creating the game, the Tolkien license, and new content we'll see in Middle Earth in the coming weeks and months. One question per comment, please. We'll take the best of the lot and put them to Mr. Anderson in a phone interview later this week. We'll post his responses as soon as we can, so make sure to get your question in today if you want it to show up in his response.
I own the game, and played it for a while. But the other day I cancelled, and went back to WoW. The main issue was simply a lack of polish in the UI. Things like the UI itself being too small on my display (a UI scaling option is sorely missed), having to change tools constantly (Explorers have two gathering professions, basically forcing me to leave a bag open all the time to swap between a mining pick and an axe), the chat text box losing focus constantly, and so on.
None of these individually are game breaking issues, but them and a host of other UI annoyances all pile up to make it a much less enjoyable experience then playing with WoW's incredibly smooth UI (which is even more so once you start using mods).
I'm curious if the developers are going to take some time to go back and improve the UI?
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Doh, just when I ran out of mod points...
Get this question up to +5 and watch Zonk ignore it like he's does every time there's a game dev interview.
We understand the size of the target market. We understand that it may not be economically viable. But does it hurt to ask for a port? I'd drop wine/WoW for a native LOTR online port.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
I played EverQuest for 4 years, and have played WoW for just under a year. They've both had their problems, but in both I see a pattern: as the game progresses, and they transition from release to long-term expansion cycles, content progression becomes so deep and so complex that new or casual players must spend 4-6 months to join their friends who have been playing for months or years. Worse, the new or casual player represents a drag on the resources of any player that wants to help them level. There's no effective way to (relatively) quickly make a new player useful (say, in the period of time it would take to learn to use their abilities).
I worry about this, and wonder: do you have a way of solving this problem in the longer term for LOTRO, or are you (like EQ and WoW before you) pushing off those choices until you're already in the expansion release cycle?