The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood Preview
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What we found particularly cool was that each player can bring their own fully customizable soldier into a Skirmish. You can choose their role, which are fairly obvious analogs to classes and select their appearance just as if you were making a new character for yourself. They even have skills and ranks that you can improve as you use them in battle. Jeffrey was keen to point out that you don't have control of your soldier in battle, because Turbine felt it was just too much stuff to be doing at once. Instead, each battle you equip them with traits based on how you want them to act. We think it's a good decision, especially for the pet class players.
What this feature ultimately does is make a 12-man raid feel more like a 24-man in practice, since everyone can have one of these soldiers running around. It's obvious that this has been done to give the game a very epic feel, as many of the battles were in fact quite gigantic in size. Turbine is calling this a foundation for their Epic Battle System, which was something Jeffrey Steefel was keen to add a note on by mentioning that this system would be great for a battle where players controlled "both sides" of the action.
