big-battles
Latest
The Road to Mordor: LotRO's big battles are a big bust
Recently my journey through Helm's Deep came to a close as I finished all of the quests plus advanced the epic story as far as it could go. Overall, I loved the expansion: It had great pacing, beautiful scenery, memorable quests, and an obvious dedication to doing The Two Towers right. But there was one glaring fault that Lord of the Rings Online seemed to save for the last, which I discovered during my foray into the big battle system. Other than visiting them in a couple of press tours, I had been avoiding big battles (even though you can jump in one starting at level 10) because I wanted to experience them organically as part of the storyline. I wasn't necessarily anticipating them, but I wasn't dreading them either. "Mild curiosity" is perhaps the emotion that I identified within my breast, and as it turned out, that was wildly overpreparing for the experience that followed. Big battles are, I'm sorry to say, a big bust in LotRO. Sure, they have their positives and moments, but for a system that Turbine spent over a year to create and shoved aside instances and raids in favor of putting into the expansion, it should have been so much more. So what went wrong?
The Road to Mordor: LotRO's big battles and you
So... does anyone else think it's a little strange the Turbine's more or less gone dark about Lord of the Rings Online: Helm's Deep? The last we heard anything about the next expansion was back in April, after which we've had a chasm of silence. In the past couple of years, the studio was already into high promotion mode regarding its expansions come summertime, which leads me to believe that something is holding Helm's Deep up -- and I don't think it's looking good for a 2013 release. I have a hunch that this "something" is the big battle system, the brand-new feature that will be the cornerstone of Helm's Deep the same way that mounted combat was for Riders of Rohan. Recently, Turbine broke its expansion silence to deliver a series of 20 questions and answers about the big battle system, although oddly enough it kept this confined to the forums. Whether or not LotRO's fifth expansion is coming this year, Helm's Deep's big battles do sound audacious and worth the wait. Let's see if we can't get to the core of what this new system will offer and what the studio is trying to do with it.
Lord of the Rings Online answers 20 questions about Big Battles
As Lord of the Rings Online's storyline moves to Helm's Deep, the designers faced a problem. None of the game's existing models for content really fit the scale of the battle, and it just didn't feel right to have a large-scale war shoehorned in to skirmishes or raids. As a result, the team put together a new sort of content, tentatively named Big Battles, and has answered 20 questions about how this new format will play. Players will be able to participate in the content solo or in several group sizes, with each experience tailored for the specific group size rather than simply scaling health values for enemies. Rather than focusing on specific boss encounters, players are going to be part of a larger tactical environment, working toward a large objective instead of pursuing small ones independently. As this style will be replacing traditional instance progression, veteran Lord of the Rings Online players will want to take a close look at what the system entails and how they can work within it.
