ZAM Editor-in-Chief Chris "Pwyff" Tom grabbed his hiking stick for a Turbine tour that took him from the Fords of Isen to Saruman's Tower of Orthanc. Read on for a taste of Update 5's coming content!

The other impressive new tech to come is basically Turbine's own version of movie extras. Movie extras are basically hundreds of extra bodies that are hired to mill around in the background of a film production to populate a scene. In Turbine's case, they've created "lightweight NPCs," or MMORPG extras that operate on really light AI programming so that dozens of them can fit into a battle scene without affecting game performance. It's a great way for Turbine to tone up the overall scope of the battle, and it hints at some of the greater things that can still be done. 

From here, we moved on to Saruman's Tower of Orthanc, where I got the chance to run through a portion of the new three-person instance, Dargnakh Unleashed. One of the big problems about developing content around the Tower of Orthanc was that a lot of the content would have to be placed in and around the tower (naturally), which creates a design challenge in trying to push forward with unique, varied content. In this case, Dargnakh Unleashed focuses less on crawling through dark corridors and more on herding a giant troll through the tower grounds, wreaking havoc and generally being destructively annoying.

You heard me.

The focus of the instance, Dargnakh, is an enormous troll that Saruman's forces have captured. At the beginning of the instance, however, Dargnakh escapes, so players get the opportunity to prod him along to capitalize on his wall-smashing prowess. We spent much of our time firing ballista bolts at Dargnakh to further enrage him, or exploding barrels near him, or even throwing slops of meat at the walls to get Dargnakh moving. The instance itself is a great example of innovative thinking, where game mechanics are designed around a unique element - in this case, a rampaging troll. I was saddened to discover that I'd have to put Dargnakh down at the end of the instance, given the destructive bond we'd formed throughout the tour.

After messing around with Dargnakh, it was surprising to discover how much time had passed, so there were no opportunities to check out the more epic fights to come. Just realize that this is Saruman's tower and, rest assured, you'll end up clashing with Saruman in Update 5. One thing I did get the chance to talk about before I left was LotRO's Rise of Isengard expansion and the new instance finder tool to be introduced in Update 5. Currently, the instance finder is in its early implementation stages, and the team hopes that players will be able to offer a lot of feedback so that the tool can be further refined as time goes on. For now, players can't select what specific instance they'd like to be put into, and Turbine is still working on an instance replacement feature, so that if a player drops from the group, a new player can be warped into that same spot.

Regarding their Rise of Isengard expansion, Adam admits that Isengard was a bit of an experiment - a balancing act - as the team needed to ensure that they delivered the right amount of content for free-to-play players without alienating their paying customers. Turbine's dedication to delivering free content, however, has not gone unrewarded, as Adam notes that Rise of Isengard was their most successful expansion pack ever and 2011 was LotRO's most successful year. Given the unique new content that the team is putting out for Prince of Rohan, I can't wait to see how Turbine plans to make 2012 an even better year.

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom, Editor-in-Chief.