The New Newbie Experience: Ered Luin

By Lauren “Budgeford” Salk

For this update, the new player experience in Ered Luin has received a massive rejuvenation effort from several key members of our team. This is one of those times in which I’m thankful that we work on a “living” game. We can learn from our past experiences and continuously improve pieces of the game that don’t meet the standards we set as we move forward. We aren’t stuck with the choices we make, for better or worse; instead, we get to see what was successful and what needs improvement, and actually make those changes as needed. The Free-to-Play initiative was a wonderful excuse to go back and shine up the front end of our game as we readied ourselves for an influx of new players in the earliest levels.

I’m an avid LOTRO player and had a capped character before I came to work at Turbine. I have since made many, many alts over the years, and I have developed a sort of love-hate relationship with the beginning of our game. I think everyone at Turbine has played through the new player experience many more times than they’ve wished, making it challenging for all of us to see it with fresh eyes.

I came on late to do some work during the Archet revamp (the Hobbit tutorial and the public new player Archet quests) for the Free-to-Play launch, and then had the opportunity to continue to bring that work over to Ered Luin. I did a full story revamp on the Dwarf and Elf tutorials, replaced all quests in the zone, and Jared “Amlug” Hall-Dugas revamped the raid at the end of the experience (which, in my opinion, is now one of the most exciting dungeons in our game).

The Story

The Ered Luin intro storyline has always confused me, and I never quite knew why. I didn’t understand the importance of various characters in the quests and instances, probably because so many of them seemed like they should be significant. There was Ivar, Marrec, Skorgrím, Tvistur, Elladan, Elrohir, Dwalin, Dori, and Gormr, to name a few. There were Goblins, Dourhands, Elf-ruins, Dwarf-halls, and high mountain paths. There were many different mines, statues, Dwarf-doors, and stairs all throughout the region, none of which really seemed to go anywhere. There were lynx, aurochs, flies, and Goblin-spies roaming the landscape. But it was all leading to the resurrection of a long-dead dwarf by an old and powerful Wight, a “dead” creature. There were many, many pieces, and none of those pieces fit nicely together to make a clear picture of what happened at the end of it all.

The Elves had one backstory, and the Dwarves had another, while several quests tied the two together.

My first order of business was to understand what I was supposed to be cleaning up. I needed to know what the story was really about so I could pull out the important pieces and make them come across more clearly, and hopefully push the less important pieces into the background or out of the way altogether. I am a big fan of simplicity in the stories for this game. Quest text isn’t always the best place to tell a full history of an area or a people. crammed into three paragraphs and forcing the player to stand around while they receive a written tale, instead of playing their own role in the tale. I find the more memorable pieces of our game to be the ones where I was participating, chasing Mazog or making a stand on Weathertop or living life as a chicken for a day. After I figured out the exact story I intended to tell, I re-did all of the text and drama inside the Elf and Dwarf tutorials.


 

When you start a new Elf or Dwarf, you are a character in the story, and an important one. You’ll have to try them out to see them in full, but here’s a taste:

For Elves: You are an Elf from long ago, in a refuge that is under attack by Skorgrím’s forces. You stand in the eye of the storm, but you find that Elves greater than yourself will risk much to protect you. You are the student of Talagan, and he rues the danger that has been brought to your feet.

For Dwarves: You are a Dwarf working in a mine, and Gandalf demands your ear so that he can vent his frustrations about the stubborn tendencies of Thorin. It is the day of Thorin’s departure, and you witness the passing of the keys to Gormr, an innocent descendant of Skorgrím and the new steward of Thorin’s Halls. You also witness the frightful shaking of the Silver Deep Mine, and are the only brave soul on hand to assist Gimli in rescuing the Dwarves within.

The new story continues to weave through the quests in the newbie zone, bringing you at last to Amlug’s revamp of the raid. I didn’t work on it so I can’t say as much about it, but it is EPIC. Even if you already have a Dwarf or Elf character in LOTRO, I highly recommend that you take the 30-60 minutes to roll a new one and play through the intro and Skorgrím’s Tomb. We got some fantastic new art and animations for this instance and it really is a beautiful new piece of the LOTRO story.

 

A New Atmosphere

The next order of business was to address my biggest pet peeve in Ered Luin. Lots of snarky comments were thrown around by the Longbeard Dwarves about the horrible state of Thorin’s Gate because the Dourhands took such terrible care of it all. I’m fine with people ranting about this and that. I do it all the time. But really…the snow was pure white, everywhere. Trees and wildlife flourished. Silvery mountains poured clean springs into the valley below, and the sky couldn’t be a clearer shade of blue. Honestly, the Dourhands looked like they were doing a FINE job of taking care of the place.

How better to reinforce a new story than with visuals in the atmosphere? The Dourhand regime of yesterday wasn’t reinforcing the newer, simpler story at all. So, naturally, I asked for art, and our artists did yet another incredible job.

The world-builder for this zone makeover was Ross “Iceman” Glover. Working with the Iceman is pretty great. About once a week, everyone on the LOTRO team will start yelling “ROSSSSS” at the same time. I don’t know why we do this, and I’m sure our neighboring departments don’t love us for it, but it’s still funny, every single time. This has nothing to do with Ered Luin, by the way.

Iceman used the new assets and the new quest flow to make Thorin’s Gate completely incredible. It’s a different world in there now, and looks like it’s actually been run by a bunch of slovenly, greedy, corrupt Dourhands instead of some ordinary unfriendly-ish Dwarves. One of my favorite Tolkien images is that of once-beautiful Isengard now corrupted by Saruman and the Orcs in his service. We imagined Thorin’s Gate as being in a similar situation, once well tended by Thorin and the Longbeards, but now left to decay by Gormr’s careless rule. The treatment of the land says a great deal about the nature of the Dourhands under Gormr’s influence.


 

Another incredible piece of art we got for the starter area was the new Dourhand appearance set. You will probably notice that the old Dourhands don’t have quite the same “sameness” that they used to have. Our artists made an incredible randomized appearance for them, and now they are probably the most diverse race in our game so far. They have all sorts of animations for little vignettes of drama throughout the zone for the enjoyment of passersby.

Here’s a little before and after:



After…



After…


 

Needless to say, the new atmosphere in new player Thorin’s Gate is very different, very new, and, most importantly, very appropriate to what’s really going on. Personally, I love it. It really drives home the immediacy of the horrible forces that are converging in this place. There is a real sense of danger and decay, but enough of the pristine beauty of the region is left to make you want to fight for it and drive out the evil that has settled here.

Quest Flow

The quest flow of Ered Luin starter area probably got the biggest makeover of all. I did the new Archet new player quests from the Free-To-Play launch, and since those seemed to be generally working out I used a very similar plan for the Ered Luin update. I used the same number of quests, the same flow of rewards, and the same type of tutorial which will hopefully introduce new characters to their classes and to MMO quests. Archet came together pretty quickly when I pulled out all of the old quests and replaced them. More important than the epic story was the flow for both of these zones. We desperately wanted to reduce the frustration of unnecessary running back-and-forth to do quest objectives. The flowcharts made for these areas focused on quest vectoring, and sending the player efficiently from quest givers to quest targets. If there are three quests going out of Frerin’s Court, we want you to be able to go in a circle or a straight line to complete all three and not have to zigzag all over the zone.

The story gets plugged in accordingly after the flow diagrams were made. This was simple in Archet; brigands were about to attack. Phase one was denial, and phase two was defensive planning. Ered Luin, on the other hand, is a lot more complicated. There was the story of Edhelion (the Elf starter) which took place hundreds of years ago, and the story of the Silver Deep Mine, which was sort of a standalone story from the time of Thorin. I didn’t want Dwarves and Elves to have separate story lines, as both pieces of history are important to the epic story of LOTRO. That’s point A. Point B is Skorgrím’s Tomb. People who played through the Dwarf tutorial would probably wonder who Skorgrím even was.

My solution was to streamline the Dwarf and Elf newbie experience. Everyone gets the same quests, possibly with a slightly different flavor depending on the race of the character. NPCs might be friendlier to Dwarves and more insulting to Elves, or vice versa, depending on the NPC’s own race and character. Other than that, however, the quests are all the same. They begin with an important refresher on both the Elf and Dwarf histories, and the quests take you into both Edhelion to relive the tragic events that happened there, and into the Silver Deep Mine to see where the ruins were first discovered by the Dwarves. Then, when everyone was on the same page, it was time to start foreshadowing the upcoming events.

All quest mobs in the area were replaced with more relevant monster types. Instead of lynx, there are sick bears, affected by the same mysterious illness as some Dwarves of Dwalin’s party. Barrow-hounds now roam the landscape, never far from haunted lands. And you’ll discover yet more monsters roaming the mines and the mountain-caves as you collect hints of what the Dourhands are planning.

I think that covers the major points of consideration while this change was going on. I was very happy that I got a chance to work on this task, as I am always in favor of making the game more interesting and accessible to both new and veteran players. I hope the changes are the improvement they were intended to be!


http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/915-developer-diary-the-new-newbie-experience-ered-luin