The Lord of the Rings Online: Siege of Mirkwood Preview
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During my tour I was able to experience two of the dungeons, the three and twelve player versions. The three player encounter was an arena style battle with several waves of trash capped off by a boss fight, with each boss becoming progressively harder. While the pedestrian version of this encounter was nothing mind blowing, the bosses did have interesting abilities and look to offer a good test. What really piqued my interest here was challenge mode; by clicking a brazier in the arena you can up the difficulty considerably by removing the trash and only fighting the bosses. at the same time. Teams will want to have a high level of coordination and skill to knock this one out. The twelve player raid instance was a classic keep style fight with the players attempting to get to the top of keep to vanquish the main boss. There were several boss encounters on the way up, with the most interesting encounter being a gauntlet run that really keeps you on your toes. The game's built in dread mechanic is on full display here and you will need to keep a brisk pace to limit the number of adds and keep the dread low.
The Mirkwood quests, level cap increase and Dol Guldur all make for an exciting addition to the game and are worth the price of admission alone, but the skirmish system is what pushes this over the top and makes it a quality release. Players of level 30 and above can now organize a party, complete with NPC additions that you can load out to help you, from anywhere in the world and enter the fray of these goal oriented scenarios. Similar systems already exist in other games and the folks at Turbine have done their homework, taking the best of those ideas and blending them into a cohesive element that fits within the context of the LotRO world.
