Rolling around the prefabricated wall to the other half of Turbine’s booth, Executive Producer Aaron Campbell schools iTZKooPA on Rise of Isengard, the upcoming expansion for Lord of the Rings Online. He learns where the epic storyline is progressing, details on the new social hub, the removal of stat caps, aspects of the largest raid in the game’s history and so much more.

Isengard will rise on September 27, 2011.

Over the past week, Turbine has posted over a dozen job opportunities for those in the Boston area. As part of the growing stable of video game companies under the umbrella of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and with two well-received and highly successful F2P products under its belt, it comes as no surprise that the company continues to flourish.

However, two of the recent job postings point towards Turbine spreading its wings and attempting something new. To date, Turbine has been a steadfast PC developer, creating nothing but persistent world PC titles since the original Asheron’s Call in 1999. That will be changing soon.

The company is currently looking for two Software Engineers capable of working “closely with game designers and artists to understand the goals for a console game system.” Furthermore, candidates are asked to have “Shipped at least one console game for the XBox 360 or PlayStation 3” and to have been a part of the entire title’s lifecycle.

Basically, Turbine is looking for a pair of staffers that have been through the highs and lows of console development.

Why? Well, no one is sure at this juncture. We do know that Turbine has been working on a console product with Twisted Pixel for some time. That being said, specifics remain scarce, even after 2+ years of work. It’s safe to assume that hiring of console devs, gameplay specialists at that, mean the project is progressing smoothly.

The job postings do not specify which product the future employees will be working on. Nor does it incline us to believe it’s even a new product, rather than a port of Turbine’s back catalog of titles. Today’s consoles can easily handle DDO or LotRO, five and four year old titles, respectively (assuming Turbine can work out a pay system with Sony/Microsoft, a notoriously difficult proposition). Ports seem unlikely though. Good money is on the Twisted Pixel joint project. It’s all speculation at this point.

We’ll likely never know if the decision to investigate the console viability of its products came at the company’s own prerogative, or the suggestion of WBIE. It’s a question we, as humans, can’t help pondering after acquisitions. Actually, we do know. The original announcement of the console project was made before the acquisition.

See a screen capture of the Job Summary and Responsibilities behind the cut. Continue Reading

On the second (and last?) leg of his tour around the Turbine booth at PAX East, iTZKooPA caught up with LotRO Producer, Aaron Campbell to discuss the progress of the game since it went all Free-to-Play on us not so long ago.

Status report? Still going strong, with Update 2 content on the way and a “reworking” of the Evendim zone to bring it up to snuff. That’s only the tip of the iceberg, though!

Get the rest of the story by checking out our video interview below:

Only a few days after revealing the Guardian profession (a Paladin archetype) for Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet has been inundated with complaints that they’re catering to the Trinity crowd — those that favor classes capable of fulfilling any of MMO gaming’s three key roles. For a game that aims to break genre paradigms, such a concession would understandably be a big no-no.  Game Designer Jon Peters believes this backlash to be the product of a lack of familiarity with GW2′s combat system.

In a blog post seeking to catalog all of that information in one place, Peters quotes fellow employee Isaiah Cartwright: “Our professions aren’t dedicated healers, DPS, or tanks because frankly, we built a combat system that just doesn’t allow it.” It sure isn’t easy attempting to break both the jack-of-all-trades class system and the traditional tank/healer/dps combo, so how exactly does ArenaNet plan to do it?

• Healing Skill Slot — Every class has a Healing Slot where they must place an appropriate skill. Sure, not every profession will have access to the best heals, or even those with special, conditional uses, but ArenaNet plans to make using them the best way to sustain yourself. Added bonus? It should make you more aware of what’s going on in battle.
• Downed, Defeated, and Revival — Any player can revive any of their allies, provided that they can get to their buddies in time. And the “Downed” state insures that just being incapacitated doesn’t mean you’re entirely out of the fight, either.
• Shared Boon System — This is Guild Wars 2′s version of buffs. Though they can be applied in many different ways, those available always boil down to the same seven: Regeneration, Might, Fury, Swiftness, Protection, Vigor, and Aegis (you can probably guess what most of them do by name). World of Warcraft now does something similar, but is set up so that at least one of two or more people bringing the same buff is less useful to the group. Boons, though they don’t stack in effectiveness, do stack in terms of duration, meaning that everyone is able to contribute.
• No Allied Targeting — Guild Wars 2 features a semi-action-based combat system. Though it doesn’t seem as flexible as TERA’s at the moment, it is still highly dependent on positioning and spatial awareness. That’s to say that you won’t be able to directly target your allies, and will have to rely on movement and skill to effectively deliver your helpful spells.
• Diversity — That’s a bit of a loaded word, isn’t it? With Guild Wars 2’s weapon-switching mechanic allows roles to be switched on the fly. Think “Warrior stances,” but for all classes, and with an automatic swap to appropriate equipment. Undoubtedly, there will be some restrictions, but the key is to allow players to adapt to constantly-changing situations.
• Mobility — Movement. Is. Key. Skills and spells work in conjunction with movement instead of against it, and that means you might be playing GW2 more like a first-person shooter than your typical MMORPG. You’ll be able to dodge and find cover while enacting more interesting tactics than “sit in one spot and spam fireball.”

The basic philosophy seems to be, oddly enough, that all classes are Trinity classes. But instead of giving every profession access to every skill, ArenaNet is simply democratizing the more critical aspects of traditional roles — those bits that would otherwise slow down or stop the flow of combat because they are dependent on time or certain archetypes being present. In the same turn, no profession will be able to accomplish such things as healing and buffing in precisely the same way, preserving class diversity. Continue Reading