Update 10 - Instance Cluster Developer Diary

[Celestrata]

"The second half of the instance cluster takes place within the lands of Erebor, at the town of Dale and at the Lonely Mountain. It tells the story of the Battle of Dale and Siege of Erebor. Sauron sent a large Easterling army north to defeat the Men of Dale and Dwarves of Erebor at the same time he was engaged with Gondor."


Read more in our latest developer diary from Joe "JWBarry" Barry, and post your feedback here!

[Wartober]

Another ‘modernization’ change was to break up the Ost Dunoth raid into 3 wings without raid locks, similar to our previous changes to Helegrod and Fornost.

Please stop doing this. Its ruining these spaces.

[Isharra]

Okay, so the new instances sound amazing. I am especially excited to try the survival style one. I am really looking forward to the variety of group content for end game. Thanks!

[bastiat1]

I'm a fan of JW Barry's work, and I'm excited to play the new raids, but I'm also going to offer up a little real talk.


1. Every raiding kin will do these raids at T2C on level once. BUT, if you don't reward doing the raids on the hardest setting and people discover that the "Loot Yield per Hour" is better by running it on T1 they will run it on T1 until their toons are geared out, and then they will get bored and start playing TOR and WOW and RIFT again.


2. Every raiding kin will do these raids at T2C on level once. BUT, if the drops rates are similar to the current scaled BG, (less than 1% drop chance for epic gear), people will very quickly get bored continuously rerunning the content. With no reasonable reward expectation people they will start playing TOR and WOW and RIFT again.


3. This isn't a progression raid. The three new raids just are not going to be equally difficult. People will very quickly figure it out and people will spam-run one raid and the others will become ghost towns. We've seen this story 100 times now. When this happens, you need to up the Seal reward for the least run raid, and drop the Seal reward for the most run raid. You guys can track this stuff easily. Just set the aggregate Seal yield to be equivalent for all three raids. That yield gets divided into more runs for the easiest encounter thus yielding less. Communicate the reward changes. It's not hard guys. Encourage people to run all the content so the content stays fresher so that people don't get bored and start playing TOR and WOW and RIFT.


4. If you make the epic gear drop rates reasonable on T2C (5-10% per person per chest) and if you create real incentives for doing challenging content (T2C should reward 2.5x more than T2, and T2 should reward about 2.5x more than T1) people will work hard to master the content and they will run your servers into the dirt.


Don't let us down Turbine.

[Brastin]

Please stop doing this. Its ruining these spaces.

I really agree with u on this one. I dont know if they read/listen to the forums and the majority of the community but we asked to keep the great raids like Rift and OD as they are now. Helegrod is already ruined by this and i dont want this to be ruined aswell but it will be if u make it little raids.

If this is your modernization idea then PLEASE keep your hands from The rift!!!!!

[Abbiati]

3. If you make the epic gear drop rates reasonable on T2C (5-10% per person per chest) and if you create real incentives for doing challenging content (T2C should reward 2.5x more than T2, and T2 should reward about 2.5x more than T1) people will work hard to master the content and they will run your servers into the dirt.


Don't let us down Turbine.

Best analysis so far.
Deppending on the instance/skraid, it takes 5-6 more time doing a T2C compared to a T1 but the drop rates are far less than 5 times higher. It just doesnt make sense...

Give players a REAL challenge, and give them REAL improvement on drop rates (not simple 0,1 - 0,15).
Than you will be able to stop the farming.

[avengingbananaslug]

I really agree with u on this one. I dont know if they read/listen to the forums and the majority of the community but we asked to keep the great raids like Rift and OD as they are now. Helegrod is already ruined by this and i dont want this to be ruined aswell but it will be if u make it little raids.

If this is your modernization idea then PLEASE keep your hands from The rift!!!!!

Don't say it's the majority because you don't know that. Personally I was never able to run Helegrod before they broke it up because I am not in a raiding kin and could never find a group willing to do it. After they broke it up, I finally was able to run it and quite enjoyed it. The problem was the horrid loot so people went back to not running it.

So there are some people happy with them allowing people like me to run the areas finally, and just hope they make the rewards worth it.

[Jadzi]

Please stop doing this. Its ruining these spaces.

If you think about it, Ost Dunhoth was basically built this way from the start. You go to one side, run one wing, it leads to a second. Or you can go across the hall to the other side, run one wing then the other. There's no strict order other than the coupling of those wing pairs. And once you complete both you have the Ivar/Gortheron wing. The only linking aspect between the three segments is a single connecting chamber - there's very little actual narrative in between, let alone a linear one, so there's not a story or much of a building layout that's being broken.

That's not to say there aren't narratives within each coupling, mind. Or great moments to be experienced - there certainly are, especially at the climax of the Gortheron fight. But you don't fight your way in, only to have to chase Angmarim bosses into each wing. You aren't encountering fire giants and coming to their rescue. You aren't even working your way slowly through a series of haunted wards and baileys. You literally arrive in a lobby from which you access three different two-wing raids, none of them directly referencing the others.

Besides, having Gortheron his own wing without raid locks might make the Ivar's Champion deed more accessible, no?

[bastiat1]

Plus, having Gortheron his own wing without raid locks might make the Ivar's Champion deed more accessible, no?

Unless they changed more recently in Beta, OD is being split into 3 wings with 2 bosses each. Gortheron+Ivar, Fear+Wound, and Disease+Poison.

[Fredelas]

While I enjoy the stories that support these instances, I can't help but feel they don't fit into the current expansion either in timeline or in setting.

I'm disappointed that the creative folks at Turbine couldn't come up with any meaningful group conflicts in Eastern Rohan. It's not like we're in Lothlorien. The Under-wall and the Ancient Tomb are two underused spaces that immediately come to mind. The Cargul in Snowbourn would have made a worthy group instance adversary. In just 30 seconds, I came up with ideas for several.

"Riders of Rohan" comes to a grinding halt (literally) at level 85. This will likely affect my decision to pre-order the next expansion nine months before its raid content is eventually released.

[Jadzi]

Unless they changed more recently in Beta, OD is being split into 3 wings with 2 bosses each. Gortheron+Ivar, Fear+Wound, and Disease+Poison.

I realize that, and I said as much. Which is why I also said it would make the Ivar's Champion deed easier - you can just walk into the Ivar/Gortheron wing and do the Ivar fight over and over.

[amandakay]

I whole heartedly agree with those who've voiced a sadness at the increasing tendency to break apart traditional epic linear raid spaces. I understand the challenge linguistically with holding a space's level with several zone-in doors, but at least some of us still enjoy the vast enemy spaces. One does not simply knock on Sauron's door, afterall! Helegrod at least had some feel of "wings" pre-scaling, as does Ost Dunhoth, but The Rift (as well as Carn Dum) does not. It has one goal: fight your way through fierce bosses to reach the EPIC THARULOCH! While I've heard "the elf chick's" speech a hundred times AT LEAST, it needs to stay. A flag! A flag to hold the level of the instance even when we zone into a separate area. I do see the benefit of having shorter raid spaces. I have many in game friends who simply don't have 3-6 hours of consecutive play space...but some people do, especially on weekends\days off, and it would be very nice to retain some epic raid spaces for those times and raiders.

[Wartober]

If you think about it, Ost Dunhoth was basically built this way from the start. You go to one side, run one wing, it leads to a second. Or you can go across the hall to the other side, run one wing then the other. There's no strict order other than the coupling of those wing pairs. And once you complete both you have the Ivar/Gortheron wing. The only linking aspect between the three segments is a single connecting chamber - there's very little actual narrative in between, let alone a linear one, so there's not a story or much of a building layout that's being broken.

That's not to say there aren't narratives within each coupling, mind. Or great moments to be experienced - there certainly are, especially at the climax of the Gortheron fight. But you don't fight your way in, only to have to chase Angmarim bosses into each wing. You aren't encountering fire giants and coming to their rescue. You aren't even working your way slowly through a series of haunted wards and baileys. You literally arrive in a lobby from which you access three different two-wing raids, none of them directly referencing the others.

Besides, having Gortheron his own wing without raid locks might make the Ivar's Champion deed more accessible, no?

I object to the whole theory. This is a game that is supposed to tell a story. This breaking up of instances doesn't tell anything. Removing locks really means removing progression, which should have been thought of in terms of story progression. and in the case of the Erebor instances and having them in the future and not tied to landscape in anyway removes them from setting.

When you remove these spaces from their storytelling roots, you have boring anonymous grinds spam run for the reward and nothing else.

Maybe what is left of Turbine is happy with that. I'm not.

[Frisco]

OD was never linear, neither was Helegrod. BG was, and was left that way. Though it could stand to be broken up, with deeds for previous encounters needed for later ones.

We can be as nostalgic as we want, but the reality is that people who still want to run them in order can. Near the end of the Rift, nobody ran the whole thing. "WTB Balrog locks" was common in glff, and once everyone ran Barz and Zurm enough to get every alt in the kin a pair of boots, it was pretty much a chain of people sharing locks past them. One group I ran with did it early Thursday evening, just after reset. Every other kin knew this and would come asking me to share various locks. We would occasionally take breaks mid-Rift to get alts in to save locks for subsequent runs.

If DN and the Rift get scaled as-is, I'll be happy from a nostalgia point of view. But what's more important is to give the proper reward motivation to actually run it, and if part of that motivation is not having to worry about locks anymore and just break it into 3 instances, I'll take that instead. What would be the best of both worlds would be the ability to start instances from within an instance. So when you tried to go through the door after beating, say, Barz and Zurm, the instance finder would come up automatically to enter the Fruz/Zogtark/Narnulabat wing. It would lend to the immersion and let us avoid the old school lock swap.

[igsciurus]

These should be fun, but they kind of disappoint me. I was really hoping that with The Hobbit movies, Turbine would do an entire expansion involving LOTR-day North Mirkwood, Dale, Lonely Mountain, etc. It's true that there's not a lot of source material to build off of (events-wise), but they've done more with even less in some areas. I mean, it's what the entire game (Angmar) was originally built around: what's happening elsewhere in Middle Earth while the fellowship is off doing their thing.

Do you folks think that these instances by nature preclude the possibility of seeing anything like this? Are my hopes finally and completely crushed now?

[Reximus]

I object to the whole theory. This is a game that is supposed to tell a story. This breaking up of instances doesn't tell anything.

So if you can't read the complete works of Tolkien in one sitting its no longer a cohesive story.

Fascinating.

[Wartober]

OD was never linear, neither was Helegrod. BG was, and was left that way. Though it could stand to be broken up, with deeds for previous encounters needed for later ones.

They were all linear. You entered the keep, and stood in a courtyard before taking one of the corridors and then played until you either won or stopped.

You didn't take on a wing, go back to bree, go into a new wing, go back to bree, go into a new wing.

Maybe I just put more emphasis on story than others, but to me this is jarring and broken.

So if you can't read the complete works of Tolkien in one sitting its no longer a cohesive story.

Fascinating.

I'm not interested in your trollish attempt to derail, apologist.

[GingerAj]

I'm so glad OD is being split up, its so nice for us players who don't have alot of time to be able to complete all of a raid not just over a week before it resets but longer!

I'm a bit scared about all the "gimmicks" in the new raids but ...we'll see, I hope their enjoyable, I do like the idea of steam valves in Fires of Smaug

[Frisco]

They were all linear. You entered the keep, and stood in a courtyard before taking one of the corridors and then played until you either won or stopped.

You didn't take on a wing, go back to bree, go into a new wing, go back to bree, go into a new wing.

Maybe I just put more emphasis on story than others, but to me this is jarring and broken.

That's not linear. Linear would be like the Rift, where you beat boss #1 to get to #2, and boss #2 to get to boss #3, etc. Even the Rift wasn't totally linear, since you could do bosses 1 and 2 in either order. But it was more linear than Helegrod or OD, which were really already broken into wings.

Yes, OD and Helegrod had a central courtyard, which was less jarring immersion-wise than going back to wherever you were when you entered the instance. But if it's either that immersion or people actually playing the content, I'll take the playing. BG is already a ghost town, both because it's long and unwieldy and the rewards aren't worth it, even now, and will become less worthwhile to run when the new raids come out. If it were broken into three wings, people might be inclined to run other bosses. But all that's available now if you have 45 minutes or so for a T2C is Durchest the Overfarmed.

What I would like to see is the ability to enter one wing through the instance finder without having to leave the current instance. Not sure this is technically possible, though.

[Delaney]

First of all, I'd like to express my grateful thanks that the new raids are explicitly designed to get away from the "DPS is king" mentality that has been prevalent in content for far too long now. I find it's a lot less fun when all people want to do is use brute force their way through an instance. I enjoy the time spent with friends, especially when we have to work together to get past an obstacle as opposed to simply beating on a mob mindlessly. Some people may only be interested in getting the loot as quickly as possible and establishing bragging rights for speed, but not everyone is like that and we've had that scenario for quite a long while anyway. The idea of a change is wonderful.

While the stories behind the raids sound solid, I do find it oddly out of place for where we otherwise are in the story right now. Other than as a reach for a tie in with The Hobbit movies, I really don't understand this. I hope when we see the next portion of Rohan, the raids will be tied in with that part of the story. *cough* Helm's Deep *cough*

As far as rewards and loot, I'll wait to see what the new changes bring. I am quite fond of shiny gear on my burglar, but it isn't the only reason nor even the main reason I raid. Again, for some it might be, but not everyone. I look to spent time with friends engaged in fun and challenging play. In this respect, I am cautiously optimistic about trying these new raids.

Thanks for the dev diary!

[Loreineth]

I'm not interested in your trollish attempt to derail, apologist.

Don't call him a troll, and then troll yourself by calling him an apologist simply for disagreeing with you, please.

[ErulisseDarkmorn]

Question: is it possible to compromise between linear and broken-up raids? like the whole key thing, where you have to fight past one set to unlock the next, only instead of unlocking it permanently, it relocks once you've beaten the boss and unlocked the next section (in this way sort of like a save point in a traditional rpg-- still linear and you can't go back, but you can do it in pieces if you're short on time. also the unlocks would be reset by starting over.) Or is that just a really bad idea all round?
What about increasing the chances of good loot for doing the parts consecutively?
I mean, I as a player don't have a lot of online time, and I'm not looking forward to ever getting to play raids, unless they're broken up. on the other hand, I really like the idea of a linear plotline and "let's see how far we can get before we die" as opposed to being able to pop in on the end boss.

I'm actually wondering if they're saving all rohan's potential instances/raids for the next expansion, since there seem to be a nice number of possible instance areas for one expansion.

[RJFerret]

First, THANK YOU for something other than mindless DPS races! Just what we asked for, it's appreciated! :-)

The second half of the instance cluster takes place within the lands of Erebor, at the town of Dale and at the Lonely Mountain. It tells the story of the Battle of Dale and Siege of Erebor. Sauron sent a large Easterling army north to defeat the Men of Dale and Dwarves of Erebor at the same time he was engaged with Gondor.

Forgive my impertinence, but who says? Is this Turbine fiction or is there some connection to "The Lord of the Rings" I'm missing? (Obviously I'm aware of The Hobbit covering a different time period.) I know very little lore, so forgive my ignorance please.

In the "places" index of my copy of The Return of the King, there are few references to Dale, mostly in The Fellowship in reference to Bilbo's party, one in The Two Towers where Aragorn pleads ignorance of the Rohirrim's opinion of Sauron, and non in The Return of the King.

There are only two for Erebor, we find a historical one in the prologue recalling The Hobbit, and Aragorn referencing those there with skill enough to rebuilt a gate from The Return of the King.

Nothing about a battle. Is this Silmarillion fare with no connection to "The Lord of the Rings" whatsoever, or is it a complete fiction of Turbine's?

Note, I'm not complementing or criticizing (I like Turbine's fiction), just ignorant, and would like to learn. :-) I do understand how the developers felt there were not suitable opponents for a raid/big instances in Eastern Rohan.

PS: On the subject of the Rift, OMG, how horrible is that space? I will never go back in it's current incarnation. That said, we've done many Helegrod runs over the years and will do more. Separating OD changes nothing about it except no longer having to tell raid members which direction to go when they enter. (Great Barrows was broken up, and folks run all three back to back. Fornost was broken up, and folks run all four back to back. Hele was broken up, and folks run them all back to back.)

[Loreineth]

Forgive my impertinence, but who says? Is this Turbine fiction or is there some connection to "The Lord of the Rings" I'm missing? (Obviously I'm aware of The Hobbit covering a different time period.) I know very little lore, so forgive my ignorance please.

I don't remember the specific comment about the composition of the army sent to Erebor by Sauron, but, Gandalf makes some comments, maybe in Lost Tales, about Dain standing over the body of King Brand when the word comes that Sauron is defeated and stuff like that, and what 'might have' happened (Dragon fire in the North?) if not for a 'chance meeting' (Thorin) in Middle Earth.

I may have missed a couple details, but that's the gist of it. As I said, no details of what army was sent that I remember, but there was definitely a battle at Erebor/Dale in LOTR times.

This is actually from the appendices of LOTR, and there's more elsewhere

Yet things might have gone far otherwise and far worse. When you think of the Battle of Pelennor, do not forget the battles in Dale and the valor of Durin's Folk. Think of what might have been. Dragon-fire and savage swords in Eriador, night in Rivendell. There might be no Queen in Gondor. We might now hope to return from the victory here to ruin and ash. But that has been adverted — because I met Thorin Oakenshield one evening on the edge of spring in Bree. A chance-meeting, as we say in Middle-earth.

[jazzguitarmanic]

Forgive my impertinence, but who says? Is this Turbine fiction or is there some connection to "The Lord of the Rings" I'm missing? ...Nothing about a battle. Is this Silmarillion fare with no connection to "The Lord of the Rings" whatsoever, or is it a complete fiction of Turbine's?

Some pertinent selections from ;

The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King

Appendix B : The Tale of Years

March

14-15 The Battle of the Pelennor Fields and the Siege of Minas Tirith
17 The Battle of Dale. King Brand and King Dain Ironfoot fall. Many Dwarves and Men take refuge in Erebor and are besieged.
27 Bard II and Thorin III drive the enemy from Dale.

At the same time as the great armies besieged Minas Tirith a host of allies of sauron that had long threatened the borders of King Brand crossed the River Carnen, and Brand was driven back to Dale. There had the aid of the Dwarves of Erebor; and there was a great battle at the Mountain's feet. it lasted three days, but in the end both King Brand and King Dain Ironfoot were slain, and the Easterlings had the victory. But they could not take the gate, and many, both Dwarves and Men, took refuge in Erebor, and there withstood a Siege

The Bells of Dale occurs on the 16th or 17th of March

Flight to the Lonely Mountain occurs on the 17th of March

The Fires of Smaug takes place sometime between the 17th and 27th. JW says halfway through the siege, so it's likely the 21-23 of March

The Battle of Erebor occurs on the 27th of March