PCPP: The Fellowship seems to be a basic adventuring unit for the books. What is your approach to solo versus group content?

JS: We set out, intentionally, to make the game very solo-able, right, I mean the majority of the game is soloable, but grouping is widely supported, What that means is that we looked at it and we created a curve. In the beginning, everything should be soloable, without any difficulty, right? As we get further into the game we want some content to be more challenging to you as a solo player, and some of it to be quite challenging and require you to get together as a group, butt there are people, and we think there will be a lot of them who solo this game and will basically play this game solo. The whole "alone, together" anology that we've all heard a number of times is really true and I think, in beta we've seen an awful lot of people that have been exploring alone and then come together to share certain experiences. The game is kind of built to support that, right? So that I can choose how much I want to solo or not. It is extremely solo friendly.


PCPP: And with characters like Aragon running around you really need solo, right?

JS: Yeah, exactly.

PCPP: He did the solo grind for most of his career...

JS: Yeah, I keep trying to get him to join my fellowship but he just won't do it.

PCPP: I know we cover monster-based PvP pretty well in the magazine, but we didn't have space to talk about keeping track of who plays the meanest monster. You you track that sort of thing?

JS: There is a ranking system for monsters, absolutely. You can earn renown and the more renown you get thee higher your ranking goes. We are going to have leaderboards both in the game and on the web ... we're doing pretty extensive implementation on the web actually. You'll be able to show off plenty and try to become the coolest monster that week. Kinship will also be able to get together and try to take keeps and we'll be tracking that type of stuff. All of that stuff is in there.


PCPP: The final thing I'd like to ask about is crafting. With broken swords to be reforged and the like, what have you got up your sleeve for on this front?

JS: We approach crafting in a similar way to most of our major systems. We talk a lot about Chess. Chess is a game that anybody can play for the most part. I can go out and buy a game of chess and having never played before I can sit down with somebody and we can have a fun time playing the game and we won't play well but we can play because the rules are set up pretty easy. Or I can learn to master it and then spend the rest of my life trying to perfect it. And there are different types of players and we take the same approach to a lot of things, combat, very accessible at first but then a lot of intricacies as you move along if you want to use them, although they are not necessary to proceed through the game. It's the same with crafting, where I can work through proficiencies for any of my professions in a fairly easy way. There's still a lot of work involved but I can get myself to a place where I'm making stuff and I'm selling stuff at auction and I'm having a good time in any one of the ten professions that we have. Or, I can get to the top level of proficiency for that particular profession and then I have available to me masteries. Masteries mean that I now have available to me much higher level capabilities as a crafter that I can use other higher level ingredients, and create rarer items. And those items do different things for me. I might have made a sword that was +2, now that I'm a master I make a sword that's +6, or something like that. Or I'm making a weapon sheath but with mastery I can make ten at a time. Or, I can make a weapon I just can't make if I'm aa master. So there is an opportunity with this game to get in easy and have a great time and never worry about being a master or, if that's your thing, you can spend an awlful lot of time making the coolest weapon or coolest item that you can think of and putting them out for auction or giving them to your friends...


PCPP: How hard is to become a master, or build master items?

JS: The whole thing about crafting is that we don't want to build too much complexity into the mechanism of the gameplay. The gameplay is, where in the world do I need to go to get the stuff that I need? Who do I need to talk to to perhaps buy or collect the ingrediants that I don't feel like going out to collect? And what is the best recipe to get close to the item that I want? Or I want to go out and get dye pots. You can actually acquire dye pots and you can actually start dying things and colouring things that you are crafting.
So mastery and the major complexiy there is the actual third ingredient that you need to find that is rare and hard to get, and the goal is to tie it into, for someone who wants it, the overall experience of the game, so exploration is a part of it. But again, it's split into harvesting, combining and crafting, so yyou don't necessarily have to be interested in all of those things. You lead a group of people, or you can use the auction house and provisioners to fill in the blanks.
The difference between proficiencies and masters is the rarity of the items you are putting in and the specialness of the recipes you are using, more so than it being significantly more difficult than the regular path.


PCPP: Where do you see LoTR Online fitting into the larger scheme of the MMO market?

JS: Every system we have talked about today is designed for multiple types of players, whether they are new to an MMO and just love Lord of the Rings and just want to try us out for the first time, or the hardcore WOW player with six level 60s and is looking for a compelling experience in a triple A MMO experience.