garthagarwen-fire

Part of the upcoming revamp of Lone Lands will be a reworking of Garth Agarwen. The information provide is from several blog posts made by Orion on his mylotro blog. It was very interesting to read the thought process that he had as he worked through the changes and the work required to remake this instance.

The first, and I think most major, change that will occur with this instance is that it will be split into 4 separate instance: Garth Agarwen – Outer Sanctum, Garth Agarwen – Arboretum, Garth Agarwen – Barrows, Garth Agarwen – Fortress. Outer Sanctum, Arboretum and Barrows will be 3 man instances, while Fortress will remain a full 6 man fellowship instance.

As far as splitting them up, I think it’s a great idea. We’re just working through Garth Argarwen now with my regular group, and it’s a big instance. It’s already taken us 3 nights, and we still haven’t taken down Ivar yet. It took 2 nights to get the Barrows key, and we had  a few tries at Ivar on another night. Splitting the instance up would definitely make it more manageable for our group. From what I’ve heard in comments on the main forums and reading a few sites is that people would tend to agree with me. I know that there are sure to be people who have run through it in one night without issues, but my guess is that those people are in the minority.

I do have an issue with making them 3 man instances however. We will have gone through the area with our group (hopefully!!!!!) by the time these changes make it into the game, however, if we hadn’t, it would make it a little more time consuming to run through the content. Why? Because we would have to run through it at least twice as we have a group of 5. Mind you, there will be a bit of a grind in the area, with the new faction tied to The Eglain, so perhaps it won’t be that bad. So far, however, we’ve been able to do almost all of the content as one group. To loose that ability may make it less desireable for our group to play together, and I would really hate for that to happen.

You see, one of the reasons that Salennia and I play LOTRO is as a social experience. We’ve been friends with Bill and Isanni since high school, and they now live in a different town, with kids of their own, so chances for us to get together as a group are much less frequent than any of us would like. LOTRO is a way for us to get together, talk about our week, enjoy each other’s company, and kill things. Adding my mother-in-law to the mix makes it a group of five. So having content that does not allow for full fellowships takes away a large aspect of the game for us. I know that we will get to this point anyways, with a few instances in Moria being limited to 3 people, but we’re far off from that.

Moving on, each wing will not have it’s own entrance. You will not need to fight through any wing to get to the others. I haven’t been able to find any information (either that or I missed it, please feel free to correct me in the comments!) about whether or not there will be a specific order in which you will need to complete them, but I would assume that at the very least, you will need to finish all of the 3 man instances before you can move onto The Fortress, the 6 man instance.

Orion goes into great detail about how each wing will be rebuilt, including how some of the bosses, such as Grimbark, will have new challenge modes, which will give new/better drops if completed. I like that the developers are adding these challenge modes, as it gives you a reason to repeat the content, and I love instances, so give a another reason to run them and I will!

There are also going to be a few new pieces of tech that will be added, and that where discussed in a little more detail on Orion’s posts than I will go into here: Challenges and Optional Objectives.

“A challenge is something difficult that once completed nets rewards. Those rewards will typically come in the form of some token in addition to whatever the other rewards in the space may be (faction, coin, etc…). They will communicate, clearly, the reasons behind the challenge and the manner in which the challenge is achieved. It is no wonder then that this will replace the clunky and, personally, hated terminology for hard-modes.” (Quoted from Orion’s blog)

“This is where I see the greatest enhancement with this tech. We can put a little incentive into the instances to complete optional objectives and increase the reasons to play them. We can tie new deeds into the game for completing all the objectives and target classes, races, heck even vocations inside of these spaces with a variety of quests!” (Quoted from Orion’s Blog).

Overall, as I mentioned in the podcast, I’m very excited to see so much work going into the older content. While many of you will ask why the developers should take any time away from creating high level content, I believe that although there are many people who are at max level, and have already completed all of the content, there are just as many, if not more, that are not, and still working through much of the content. Turbine working on this older content show that they are committed to this game for the whole community, high end raiders and slow casual levelers alike.

Thanks Turbine, and thank Orion for giving us a glimpse into the world of a designer!

See you in game.