With a new expansion comes many new gameplay elements and all-new content. It also affords developers an opportunity to improve older areas of the game that may not have played out to their liking. The Ettenmoors -- Lord of the Rings Online's PVP gameplay -- will be no different, as it sees a facelift in the game's first expansion, Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria.
We find out about it in this 4-page Developer Diary, direct from Turbine. Some snippets are provided below, but to check it out in full, head over to the diary.
Main Bases
Glân Vraig and Gramsfoot are meant to be safe havens for players and monster players. As time has progressed, it has become apparent that one lane of egress from the bases is not sufficient to give players and monster players an avenue to enter the fray. To alleviate camping of the exits, we have added another access point from each of these locations leading directly to the main keeps of Ost Ringdyr and Dâr-gazag. The pathways run along the mountainous borders of the Ettenmoors and feature an open face to the interior of the Ettenmoors. This means that players and monster players using these pathways can slide down into the Ettenmoors proper at any point along the paths. Additionally, the paths are blocked in the same manner as the main gate of Glân Vraig and Gramsfoot at their conclusion and a small set of elite archers watches over these new locations.
The goal of creating these pathways was two-fold. First, we wanted to provide players and monster players with an additional way out of their home base to alleviate the frustration of a push back to the gates of either location. Second, we wanted to provide a more direct and faster pathway to the main keep of each side of the battle in the Ettenmoors. Now players and monster players are able to leave the base by either means to mount a counter effort against their foes who may be camping the bases.
Elf-camp and Orc-camp
Both camps now are ringed with stockade fences that make the areas safer for their factions. There is one entry point into each camp and multiple ways to leave. The camps have each seen an increase in the number of archers who defend each location. At each location, players will be able to find a flag that represents the forces there. (Again, there will be another dev diary that will speak about flags and artifacts.) The addition of these walls should do well to address the issues that we have seen with certain quest objectives in the Ettenmoors.
Hot Points Go Away. . .
The original implementation of hot points was meant to provide slight bonuses to monster players when they controlled the location. They were also meant to force players to fight at smaller locations and fight in smaller groups. They were not the success I had hoped that they would be; beset by bugs and other issues, hot points were more hassle than they were worth, and the upside-downside of the hot point locations was too little to be of any consequence. As a result the hot points have been removed...
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