“I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air…”
It is long, long since we met by stock or by stone. There have been times where the faith must have been hard to keep, even for the most devoted. This last stretch was painful for everyone, the longer the silence the more difficult. I am grateful you stuck around, that you believed we were not lost, even though it may have appeared we were wandering. You have my apologies and, for your patience, my thanks (while I am not in the habit of speaking for others, I am confident in assuring you that this is a very common sentiment around here).
“But now the world is changing once again. A new hour comes…”
This franchise has been kicking around for quite some time, but this game, the one that I am here to talk to you about, is brand new. That’s a theme you will hear a lot over the next few months. Turbine, from top to bottom, worked very hard to land this license and we’re taking what is now our sole responsibility very seriously.
We have been given a great opportunity in the form of more time and more creative freedom, and thus a responsibility to re-evaluate everything from a new perspective. Things we never had time to do will be reconsidered, things we felt had room for improvement will improve, and things that no longer fit can get on a ship and sail into the West.lotro gold.
My aim today is to give you some insight into what the months past have been like around here, how we approached regaining a fresh start and a fresh perspective on this game (and maybe a detail or two will slip out along the way). So, forget everything you thought you knew, clear your minds, take a deep breath… ready?
The game begins with a meteor cast down at Eriador by the fiery wrath of Jeff, the Hobbit God of Biscuits…
What, no good? Just seeing if you were paying attention. So, are you really ready this time? I am about to release actual information related to the game. Buckle your seat belts (I am actually making myself nervous).
Here goes…
Alignment? GONE!!!
OK, now that we have that out there, let’s talk about why Alignment had to go, what went into the decision, and how we’ll be approaching the evaluation of every other feature in our game.
First, understand that the Alignment system (Good vs. Evil, Purity vs. Corruption, Virtue/Vice) as we have discussed it in the past is something I personally was heavily invested in - this was not a decision made lightly at all, but the story of its demise serves as a keen example of what we have been doing around here. For those of you new to the site, or just to refresh your memory, the Alignment system was designed to let all characters start out as “neutral” characters whose actions would determine their progress down a Pure or Corrupt path (coloring content experiences, class advancement and the like, not terribly unlike Knights of the Old Republic).
The virtues (pun intended) of the Alignment system were many – it was a very “Tolkien” theme, it was a compelling gameplay mechanic and it was fairly unique in the MMOG space. I can tell you however that a good game designer can make a case for nearly any system in a vacuum. The ultimate question for this and all other features new and old is how they do or do not add to what our ultimate goals are for the game.
So what are our ultimate goals for this game? Chief among them is delivering on the full potential of the license – we worked hard to get it, it is extremely powerful with a broad reach, so we mean to use it. I could easily write an entire dev diary on the different ways the license could be leveraged for this game, but suffice to say that nailing the themes, characters, settings and events of the books is our all-encompassing goal, the one that touches everything.
We want a world that people can freely explore, and see the things they signed up to see. We want to be able to tell stories whose main character is you, stories with themes of lineage, redemption and overcoming monumental odds. We want to foster social situations where you and your Fellows succeed or fail as one. We are putting all of our energies into delivering a uniquely Tolkien-inspired experience. Ultimately, your character will matter (even if, like Frodo, he does not aim to).
Alignment was an extremely interesting feature for the game, but it was a stretch to satisfy a lot of the goals above. It did not take long to decide that we could deliver a far more compelling experience if everyone was fighting for the same cause (and don’t read too much into that; it does not mean everyone will have the same game experience). Both from a production bandwidth and story motivation points of view, Alignment required some huge compromises (more content, stories that must work for several very different motivations, more one-off events… these all added up to ultimately water-down the overall experience, and that was just not acceptable).
Does this mean you will not struggle against the temptations of power or the corrupting influences of dark magic? Of course not. In fact, it is a question that shines a light very clearly on one of the main flaws in the Alignment system. One of the primary influences for creating the system was Boromir. We wanted to be able to put characters in situations where they could be tempted, even make mistakes, and be redeemed. It turns out this is a theme we can model much more effectively without the Alignment system, as we have taken away the incentive to play a “corrupted” character (as opposed to playing a fundamentally heroic character that has an interesting character arc involving temptation).
So, Alignment is history. It’s been a busy time; classes have been revisited, combat has evolved, our approach to storytelling overhauled. There are still tons of things about the game as yet unsaid, but this should give you an idea of where we are coming from. Everything we consider for the game, every feature we design will be held up to this same kind of scrutiny – combat, crafting, advancement, elder play, etc. Does this feature further the feeling that your character has an exciting role to play in the battle for a Middle-earth you care about? Every idea in the game, old or new, will live, die or evolve based on this question.
-Teos
4/1/05: Teos had more to say about alignment on our forums.
“Khafar mentioned the highly polarizing affect this system would have had in practical application — he makes his point very well and it came up here at the office frequently, I’ll just add that part of this effect is also a min/max issue. Once your character benefits from being corrupt or pure (virtuous is probably the wrong word, but that’s another thread really), that becomes what dictates your decisions as a player: will this make me more pure or more corrupt? The interesting, situational subtlety that we can provide in context really allows us to deliver that much more.
Electprogeny’s post also deserves some attention. The above paragraph applies, but there is a bit more to it… The funny thing about the Alignment system, when it came right down to it, was that in practice it is antithetical to interesting, story-driven character development. It was part of an advancement system — a very interesting advancement system — that would have utterly shackled you from playing your character the way you wanted to in a given situation.
An example: You decide to roll up a Hobbit Rogue who has a great heart but is not above liberating some coin from the more fortunate. You do a quest to save a princess and while you are in there, you happen upon a footlocker and decide to flip it open and help yourself. For the game to try to reinforce this behavior with a system, you effectively just gimped your own advancement (save the damsel and get purity , steal her gold and get corruption ).
Alignment is great in pen and paper because of the presence of a human GM who can interpret your actions. In a game such as ours, it really enforced one-dimensional characters and that just isn’t what anyone really wants. By making this change, we can really give you opportunities to immerse yourself in the world much more fully.
In the example above, the content method of managing alignment might look something like this: at the end of the quest to save the princess, she rewards you with a vial she kept hidden away in her locker& unless you stole from her, in which case she will mention that she wanted to reward you more, but the panel in her footlocker appears to have been damaged. This is much more appealing to me – the physical rewards are roughly equal (on one hand, money is always useful, on the other hand that potion may have been rare), but I am offered choices with meaning and ramifications along the way, and neither choice carries an implicit advancement penalty. Now, this is a fairly small example, but think of anything “interesting” you want to do with your character and I would argue it is more achievable through content than through a system.
This is my pledge to you: I promise that we are not taking these things lightly. Anything can be done badly, but we care at least as much as all of you about the integrity of the license and the fun of the game. There is no question about that. The applicable point here is that we did not remove Alignment to save ourselves work (believe me, approaching this in content is much more work than relying on a system to do it). We did it to create the environment in which we felt we could deliver you the best possible play experience.”
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