LotRO: Volume II, Book 7: Leaves of Lórien Preview
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Finally, Campbell showed me the midpoint of the Book 7 epic quest, which has players returning to Moria at the request of an old dwarven friend to deal with the corruption coming from the depths that has been plaguing Dwarves and Elves alike. Deep within the Foundation of Stone, we fought a Caerog - another member of the Rog family, just made out of stone instead of smoke and fire, though Campbell didn't want to show me too much, saying that he preferred for the big surprises - including an encounter with an "old archnemesis" - to stay surprises. The epic quest will be tuned for solo play or small groups as players explore the relationships between Elves and Dwarves.
It isn't just the epic quest that Turbine aimed to make less frustrating - they went back and retooled some of the beginner content as well, Campbell said. The new approach flows more quickly and smoothly, and has more direction to it - reflecting not only what they've learned since the game launched, but how the MMO genre has evolved since then. For instance, if you're level 3 and a monster stuns you, that's no fun, because you're just learning the game - so they removed that sort of thing from the lower levels, regrouped quests so that there was a natural progression from one hub to the next instead of running back and forth between Point A and Point B, and in general aimed for it to be much less of a hassle for new players.
