I Love Tolkien and Middle Earth - New Epic Battle

[Hartten]

One of the best features I think LOTRO came up with in the past was the Epic Battle, especially Pelargir and Minas Tirith. The ability of high level players to play content with their newly created family and friends characters is great. Just being able to post in LFF 2/6 pel run any class, any race any level is what makes the potential of this huge game great to me. To make Epic battles relevant again currently just add Enhancement Runes as a drop for any player over 50.

Here is my idea for a 24 player Epic Battle Skirmish type instance.

Orcs are fleeing the battle at Helms Deep, trying to get east and north, to the brown lands. This should be a timed event. The instance uses the Westfold region.

Orcs win if they can get enough troops to escape and/or they are disputing two key control points when the timer shuts down.

The Players win by preventing this. Hopefully you are able to combine the ability to call forth a soldier and the skill traits of epic battles in this landscape style instance. Some new additional epic battle Officer commands came be "Rally Forth", a commander and his soldiers will now follow you. Then you can issue the "Stand Ground" command to anchor this group of soldiers to a new location. Also since this Epic Battle is in the Rohan landscape Mounted Combat should also be possible.

Since Epic battles are scaled to level 100 and the Roving Threats in that area of Westfold are level 95, in my opinion there should not have to be much tinkering with stats.

Orcs spawn at point 59.1S by 85.7 W, pretty much at your player respawn point for that region, and at 58.3 and 84.3 an island in the middle of the river. Multiple pathing routes will need to be placed to get the bands of orcs to the following escape points, 66.3 S by 78.5 W also 59.8 S by 76.4 W, and 60.5 S by 76.7 W and finally 61.5 S by 77.2 W. Of coarse more spawn points can be used so players do not camp the spawn points

The players begin the instance at 60.0 S by 77.0 W near the repawn point just outside Edoras and across the river. There should be a NPC Scout standing slightly beyond. As long as the Players do not pass this scout the instance will not trigger. Besides keeping the orcs from fleeing the players also have secondary objectives that can be used to increase loot reward. they could be like the following:

Preventing the forest near Grimsdale from being burned down. Some Orcs will have torches if they enter the forest it will start to burn. Players will need to use their Engineering skills to extinguish the fire.
Controlling the crossroads at 59.4 S by 80.4 W. Barricades can be found at Grimsdale and moved to this location to help.
Controlling the river ford in hills south of Grimsdale at 65.2 S by 83.2 W. As above with barricades.

There should be groups of Epic battle troops at the entrance to Grimsdale and the camp in the hills to the west that will need to be given orders. Plus there could be Commander and their troopers inside Grimsdale and this camp that can be issued the 'Rally Forth' order and thus moved to another location.

So to recap you get together with 24 of your friends or randoms players of all levels and for perhaps 1 or 2 hours try to clean up the swarm of orcs trying to escape Helms Deep. Sounds like fun.

[Hartten]

With the recent threads for new content I thought I would bump this idea back up to the forefront.

[auximenes]

I think they shouldn't have spent so much time and resources making the Big Battle system from scratch and just worked with the existing Skirmish system. Since they did create the new system then it's even worse that they have abandoned it. A new Big Battle would be welcomed.

[Hartten]

A bump so new eyes can read.