This Spring Festival marks the anniversary of my first event! The Hedge Maze last year was my first major piece of content as a designer on LOTRO, and it’s making its first return this spring, along with a few new quests and games as well. I’m very lucky that I get to focus primarily on Festival gameplay – it’s one of the more challenging and entertaining corners of our game.

I wish I could say it gets easier to build this crazy content as I get more experience under my belt, but instead it only gets easier for me to brace myself for all the challenges that inevitably arise during production. Festivals are surprisingly brutal to make! Simple concepts become deceptively complicated as we develop the events, and we find that we have to constantly design around all sorts of obstacles. (More on that soon.)

My role is to come up with the concept for each event and to make the content itself. I implement quests, NPCs, drama, and much of the gameplay. I work very closely with Tim “Raskolnikov” Lang, who comes up with all sorts of genius rewards, effects, skills, and monster behaviors. The engineers also have a lot of input; their invaluable role is to tell me when we’re staggering into crazy-town with our “awesome” ideas. They say, “Sure, you can have your ponies and unicorns…if you want to crash the servers, mess up character data, and freeze clients. In other words, why don’t you see if you can raise a goldfish without killing it? Then we can discuss getting a dog.”




Stomp-A-Shrew
Disclaimer: No shrews were harmed in the making of this game. Stomp-A-Shrew is a challenge loved equally by humanoid and shrewish participants alike. All shrews are present of their own accord, and are free to leave the game at any time. The stomping boots given to the Garden’s defenders have been carefully crafted by the Elves of Duillond to ensure that shrews are only knocked out of the running, and are not actually squished at any point during the course of the game.



The Elves of Duillond are extremely frustrated right now. This was their season, their own celebration. They were supposed to draw crowds away from all the other events of Middle-earth’s festival and to their new garden, the loveliest sight in all the Elf-lands. They did indeed draw crowds – crowds of pesky shrews! They have been attacking all the beautiful young plants and creating a very hostile growing environment. The Elves are at a loss, and have admitted that they need help in order to get their garden up and running.

Simple solution: Beat up shrews, right? Easy! We have shrews all over the game. Heck, they even have their own settlement just outside of Michel Delving. This game is a very simple concept…but as I said, I’ve learned not to be surprised when simple concepts are anything but straightforward by the end of production. After this game was implemented (and began to be tested by our Quality Assurance team and not just in dev by myself and Tim,) we learned that combat in our game is not intended to support all levels at once. Level 30 players are meant to attack level 30ish mobs. The shrews were originally set to level 65 so that they would attack everyone in the garden, but when QA started testing with low-level characters, they found that they missed about 75% of the time.

Rask tried everything he could think of to make it so that a level 1 player could beat up a level 65 shrew, but alas, the code delves too greedily and too deep. Our combat system would not be persuaded to abandon its folly for the sake of festivals, in which players of all levels are meant to do things together. (We had a similar problem with the Beer Fight as well, with high-level characters hitting low-level ones and the skill system not wanting to recognize it due to players conning grey.) Then we had the problem of making the shrews level 1, but then they wouldn’t actually attack higher level players at all. That’s an example of one of the numerous problems we tend to run into with festivals, and gameplay must generally be redesigned several times over the course of production in order to find balance among the various issues that pop up.

In the end, though, we try to present a fun, quirky, and engaging competitive mini-game to go with the standard MMO content. Stomping shrews may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but this is why I work hard to grow the festivals every time an update rolls around. I am very excited that this is my first chance to expand upon an event to which I’ve already dedicated an entire Book cycle a year ago.

The Ale Association
In my opinion, the Inn League has gone unchallenged for far too long. The popularity of ales and beers in Middle-earth can be very demanding for one small faction of enthusiasts, don’t you think? Fortunately, a very surly Dwarf from Thorin’s Hall has tasked himself with spreading the love, if you will.

Jónar is a brooding Dwarf who stands in a secluded corner of the Inn at Thorin’s Hall during festival times, quietly growing angrier and angrier with every passing day that the Hobbits’ Inn League gains popularity. Some say he is part Dourhand. Others will say that he once knocked a family of Hobbits down in the road as he drove his waggon through the Shire, landing the poor halflings right in the mud, and he did not stop to help them. He only kept on driving as if nothing had happened. That’s what they say, at least.

He has no love at all for Hobbits, but a great appreciation for beer. Rather, he appreciates that Dwarves are the finest brewers of all the races of Middle-earth, and wishes to see his own faction gain popularity over the Inn League. So he has created the Ale Association! And he is currently the only member, though he expects that to change soon, with the help of passers-by in Thorin’s Hall.




"But you are cruel to mock me so!"

Jónar offers a number of simple quests to help get the Ale Association off the ground. Are there any Ale Association-based events, you ask? No…not yet. Not yet. The Association is currently much more focused on poking holes in the Inn League, actually. How can it gain popularity when everyone is constantly raving about the Hobbits’ beer festivities? How can it compete against the excellent recipes hidden throughout the Shire, recipes guarded with the fervor of a Dwarf defending his jewels? How can it gain footing when kegs of excellent beer are quenching thirst in every Hobbit-town? How can it take off when dwarves themselves are joining the Inn League left and right? How can it possibly compete when the wicked Hobbits of the Inn League have the resources to encroach upon Frerin’s own court with their malicious efforts at recruitment?

In these early days of the Ale Association, Jónar’s demands are fairly simple. The competition must be stopped at any and all costs!

There’s more to see in the Spring Festival this year than ever. Between the shrews, the Hedge Maze, the Feast of the Greenfields, and all the other games, you should have plenty to keep you occupied for the next month. Raskolnikov has come up with some fantastic rewards to make it all worth your while (I highly recommend the cookies,) and there are some excellent cosmetic and housing items as well. Happy spring...we hope you enjoy it!