It’s time again for Quest Notes! In today’s installment, you can peek behind the curtain at the development of the Epic quest arc in Volume III Book 4: Rise of Isengard. This section of the story presented some challenges in development that I’d like to talk about, including our incorporation of the all-important “T-Factor,” the utilization of some new quest state technology, and a new style of vector quest being used in Book 4. Finally I’d like to talk about the process by which the Epic story is created and say a few words about the evolution of this Book in particular. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

 

 

 

The overall plan for the Epic Story in LOTRO reads a bit like a “Most Exciting Places to Visit!” travelogue for Middle-earth. Consider Volume I: the Last Homely House in Rivendell; the evil city of Carn Dûm in Angmar; the ruins of Annúminas on Lake Evendim; the ring-forges of Eregion. Volume II has a similar list: the dwarf-kingdom of Moria; the golden city of Caras Galadhon in Lothlórien; Sauron’s fortress of Dol Guldur in Mirkwood.

 

Just wait until we look back at the list of places for Volume III! It begins with Isengard, the home of Saruman the White, revealed now to Gandalf as a traitor and ally of Sauron, but it doesn’t end there. There’s quite a bit more of Volume III to go. Book 4 isn’t the end of the story, but it is a significant continuation of the story with some crucial developments along the way.

 

As we design the Epic Story for LOTRO, the biggest consideration is something we call T-Factor. The more Tolkien something feels, the more T-Factor it’s said to have. All the most iconic characters and places in The Lord of the Rings are considered to be the “Biggest T.” In all things, but especially in the Epic Story, we’re aiming for lots and lots of Big T. We want the content we create to feel like a believable entry in the ongoing story of Middle-earth, and making sure to account for T-Factor is a big part of that.

 

 

 

 

One of the reasons going to Isengard at this point in the story is so enticing is because it gives us a chance to see the villainy of Saruman at a time before his threat is effectively dealt with. Seeing the White Wizard during the rise of his powers is an opportunity we LotR nuts couldn’t pass up.

 

 

The introduction of a new landmass is an exciting time, with a brand new location to explore and all its attendant quests! It attracts a lot of adventurers right to the border, ready to race across when the servers come up on launch day. This is the sort of thing that keeps the server guys up at night, so they encourage us content designers to come up with ways to help spread the player base out a bit during those first few hours. We’ve done this a few different ways in the past with public instances (like the Hollin Gate and Mirkwood Landing) and quests that take place in other locations (such as Volume I Book 15: Daughter of Strife, which launched simultaneously with the opening of Moria.)

 

For Rise of Isengard, we’re offering two paths into Dunland. The branch split happens early on in Book 4, which you pick up from Corunir in Nár’s home of Zudrugund. There are two areas by which the Grey Company will pass into Dunland: the wight-filled canyons of the Bonevales and the green slopes of Trum Dreng.

 

 

 

The path you choose will determine the quests you see as you begin to explore Dunland, and testing has shown that this setup results in about a 50/50 split of players, which makes the server guys happy. Don’t worry, though: if you want to go to the other area after you finish with the area you chose, you’ll still be able to find quests there. We’re not locking away the landscape quests behind the path you choose, so all you completionists out there can also head to the other route and complete the quests there, if you wish.

 

You may have heard rumblings about some new tech we’ve been working on to more dynamically change locations. This new tech is called Phasing, and it’s been used throughout Rise of Isengard to do some neat things; primarily to move quest-givers along with you as you progress. So if you decide to travel through the Bonevales, for instance, quest-givers you had been interacting with in Lhanuch will leave the Dunlending village and appear in the Bonevales, ready for your assistance. It’s similar to the Vanishing tech we used in previous Books to assemble the Grey Company, but it’s more powerful and can be used to do more dramatic things. With Phasing, entire villages can react to your quest state and appear quite differently.

 

 

Early on in the development of an Epic Book for LOTRO we sit down to discuss some of the goals the Book should try and satisfy. Since Book 4 is taking place in new landscape areas, one of the goals we settled on was for the Book to provide a “tour” of the new areas. Therefore, as you advance through the chapters of the Epic Story, you’ll be travelling to new settlements and quest hubs and seeing the sights. In this way, you’ll be introduced to the plight of the people in the new areas and have an opportunity to complete quests for them at the right level, and will be guided through the regions at a good pace.

 

 

 

But how do we ensure that you stay long enough to gain the appropriate levels? It’s trickier than it sounds. Now that all the Epic Books are soloable, we’ve found that players often speed through the chapters until the level of the quests rises out of reach, often leaving other quests on the back-burner. How can we encourage players to stick around at the quest hubs instead of rocketing on with the Epic Story?

 

One possibility was to tie the advancement of the Epic quests in to completion of the quests deed for each area, but that had the effect of making completion of the deed (or some percentage of it) mandatory. Plus, once we do that the Epic story isn’t free anymore: you’d need to buy the quest pack for the region to continue the Epic. So, we didn’t want to do that.

 

The solution we settled on lets you do as much (or as little) of a landscape quest hub as you wish before continuing on with the Epic, but does let you know that you’re essentially in a “Buffet Line” section. We manage this with the following sort of quest directive:

 

“Help the people of Area Name as much as you can, and when you are ready to move on, find NPC Name at Location.”

 

It’s not ideal, and until you’ve seen this sort of directive a couple times it might feel rather vague, but it does satisfy several of our goals: It helps guide you to the quest hubs in each area, it lets you complete as many (or as few) of the quests there as you wish, and it keeps the Epic Story free. Most other solutions were unable to satisfy all three of those objectives, so this is the one we went with. I look forward to hearing your feedback on how it works in practice!

 

The development of each Epic Book begins much the same: we take a look at the overall story we’re telling for LOTRO and decide what subset of that story we’re ready to tackle. For Epic Books coinciding with expansions we generally can choose a much larger swath of the overall story, which makes them particularly exciting to design.

 

 

 

The amount of ground we had to cover, from a story perspective, was substantial: we wanted to show the rise in power and importance of Saruman’s forces in Isengard as well as continuing the Grey Company’s journey south into Dunland. And then there’s the matter of a certain prince of a certain southern kingdom who is about to take a significant role on the stage of Middle-earth…

 

That’s a lot of story! Sketching out the plan revealed that it would, in fact, take several Epic Books to tell all of it. The first draft of the plan was structured over three Books, and it meant that the 59 quests in the Epic for Rise of Isengard would coincide with Books 4, 5, and 6.

 

But I wasn’t completely happy with dividing it up like that. Even after the plan for three Books had been presented to the team, I had some reservations. First of all, these three Books really were telling a single story with a beginning, middle and an end. Things that happened early in “First Draft Book 4” had payoffs in “Original Recipe Book 6,” sharing characters and themes and other elements. Separating them up into three Books felt somewhat arbitrary, a decision made not for the purposes of the story but because the Mines of Moria expansion had multiple Epic Books in it.

 

 

After a good deal of mulling it over, the decision was made to tell the same story as called for by the original plan, but to tell it in a single Epic Book rather than three. The content didn’t change. We’re getting as far in the story as we would have before, but now we’re using a single Epic Book of 30 chapters to get there. It’s still 59 quests, and if you’re familiar with the previous Epic Books we’ve done I think you’ll be able to figure out where the original plan’s Books were divided. But I’m much happier with this structure, and I think when you play it you’ll agree that it works better as a single story than it would as three.

 

 

And that’s it for this edition of Quest Notes! I hope you have a great time experiencing the Rise of Isengard. There’s a Wizard that needs managing, and you’re just the heroes to do it!