The Lord of the Rings Online Developer Diary

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Written by BuckGB on August 1st, 2006

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Raids give us the ability to create more difficult encounters, more challenging puzzles, and more exciting gameplay moments. We split ourselves into small teams of individuals and work at planning all of the aspects of a raid together to create a well-crafted, hand-sculpted experience.

This starts with creating an area which is uniquely beautiful, whether it is on the open landscape or in a dungeon. We want players to come out of these raids with fun memories galore.

Once we come up with a biome (the environment, lighting, atmosphere, and so on), we then work on populating the space with monsters, décor, and surprises. The décor falls to the Worldbuilders, and monsters are the task of the content designers.

Our main goals for raid design are to space out encounters properly, have a good mix of tough encounters and unique moments, and make sure that monsters make sense and act in a way that players can figure out strategically. We want you to be able to learn from your party's defeats and not make the same tactical mistake twice. Raids should be hard but not impossible. After all, we do want you to get to the end... eventually!

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