The Lord of the Rings Online: A Systems Design Internship

Over the summer of 2009, I had the chance to work alongside the extremely talented developers at Turbine, Inc. in Westwood, MA as a systems design intern on The Lord of the Rings Online.  While my tasks were varied, I mainly helped the developers in their revamp of some of the game’s lower-level content, specifically I was tasked with assessing new and existing quests in the Lone-lands, determining which ones were lacking in terms of risk/reward, and ultimately creating and implementing new items to not only properly reward players but also balance the rewards around the subtleties of the various character classes.

Over the course of this project, I altered or expanded on the rewards of roughly thirty quests, creating around fifty new items to enhance the player experience.  How I approached the quests varied on both context and relative difficulty.  The quest, An Honourless People, was one that I changed based on context.  The quest entails returning a pendant of a slain lover to its owner in the town of Ost Guruth.  The owner, being a blacksmith, offers up a shield as a reward.  Being that the quest item was a random drop from half-orcs in the nearby ruins, and was a quest-starter rather than an explicit objective of a quest, I figured that the surprise of returning the pendant would incline the owner to aid the finder in any way possible.  However, from a reward standpoint, a shield did not provide an explicit benefit to all classes.  Given the relative ease of completing the quest, I decided to add potions to the quest, so that everyone could benefit and it would still appear as if the blacksmith gave everything he could to help you in his time of mourning.

For another example, the quest Dead Water comes to mind.  As part of the revamp of the Lone-lands, quests in Agamaur (a north-eastern region of the Lone-lands) were being reduced in difficulty in order to streamline the player experience.  Keeping this in mind, I created new rewards for the quest because at the time, only one reward for the quest existed, The Tusker’s Flanks – a medium armor shoulder-piece. I created a pair of heavy armor boots and light armor leggings to not only expand on the rewards, but also to make completing this quest appealing to classes that did not specifically wear medium armor.

The examples featured above are only two of many design choices I had to make during my internship at Turbine, Inc., and while I can’t speak for my changes specifically, the revamp as a whole has largely been well received by the players as seen on both LotRO’s forums here and here and on gaming blogs.  (Please note that I only primarily worked on bugs and the re-itemization project, and any other changes were implemented by the developer team.)

A full summary of the changes to the Lone-lands can be found here.

“The Lone Lands are much more enjoyable now.” – HylianHero9, LotRO Forums

“I’ve been very pleased with the revamp of the Lone Lands. Very much streamlined.” - SirWillow, LotRO Forums

“The exp is great, the quests are bountiful…HUGE upgrade!”-Ballaorf, LotRO Forums