Yule Festival of 2009

Developer Diary: Yule Festival of 2009

The Glorious Beer-fight

The glorious beer is drawing quite a crowd to the Inn in Thorin’s Hall this year, and why should it not? It is boasting to be the finest brew in all of Middle-earth this season…but before you get excited and run over there with an empty flask (or five,) I should warn you that there is a sliiiiight problem. There is nowhere near enough of this delectable drink to go around. The beer is in perilously short supply at the Ale Hall, and this has made many festival patrons rather furious.

Luckily, they may vent their frustration as they scramble to pick up this rare treat before their fellows. Rare beer is not something to be taken lightly, after all. Yule may be a time for peace and good cheer, but there are some things worth fighting for.

This shameless content was first conceived by Raskolnikov, my shameless co-worker, who said “By gosh, it sure would be fun to make a festival event in which players can hit each other with the . If you make it, I’ll make the bat for you. And the effects. And the hotspots. I’ll make it safe, I swear. No one will get hurt….” He bet his job on this, by the way. A spot on the Systems team might be opening up soon at Turbine.

There’s this bat, you see. We devs feel powerful when we use it, but it’s supposed to be a secret. Why a secret? Because it’s mean to use the bat on fellow players. Unleashing the power of the bat would be a terrible thing indeed; it would be like giving The One Ring as a reward for completing the Epic storyline. But Rask promised that if I unleashed the beast, he would do his best to contain it.

I mulled on it for a few minutes and realized that this would not be all that difficult to implement, so we brought our cause before some people with far, far better judgment than ours. After many inter-departmental exchanges of hopes, fears, eye-rolling, nightmares, unicorn wishes, and doubts as to the logistics of an event like this, we are pleased to present you with the Glorious Beer-fight. I hope you enjoy your concussions and broken legs. May your sprained ankle bear you to glory!

The New Horse Races

They’re back! The horse-races have been re-vamped to accommodate the new mount system, and we are keeping our fingers crossed that these will be around for a long time. I know you’ve probably noticed the long absence of the Festival Run quests since some unexpected bugs we encountered during the Spring Festival. That was when we cried uncle on that particular setup, and decided that we needed to think about these quests in a different way altogether.

The biggest problem with the old quests was unfortunately ingrained in the nature of the gameplay – our multi-player setup did not have the capacity to give proper feedback to the individual gamer’s experience. I know I experienced this a number of times, and you may have too: it looked like you were winning, and you were positive you were strides ahead of the other three players against whom you were racing, but the broadcast called out a different winner, and you failed the Festival Run. Then you probably felt rage, and hated us, and cursed our name. This happened because the client-to-server-to-client feedback had just enough of a lag to enable you to see a different race than what was actually happening in real time. Because of this, we collectively decided not to turn them on again until we could give the player a legitimate racing experience. As fun as they were, we strongly felt that these races were essentially broken, and there was no way to fix them.

Our solution has been to reintroduce them as a solo experience. This is a far more reliable system that has proven its worth in the level 35 quest to obtain the riding trait. My greatest challenge, however, was to balance the inherent frustration of an obstacle course with FUN. It is still a festival, after all, and we want you to have fun.

The tricky racetracks have been jazzed up by the World Team with a number of more elegant obstructions, hurdles, and barriers to better channel the flow of the race. Players who successfully navigate the course will enjoy speed boosts to help them along the way, while an unfortunate misstep will trip up your horse or pony with some sticky mud. But even accident-prone players will have a shot at the finish line, if luck is on their side. With a combination of luck, skill, and inevitable practice, we hope to see many people enjoying the special Yule steeds as a reward for their hard work.

Revisiting Pre-existing Content

Festivals have consistently been a strange piece of content to manage over the last year. They were worked on by several pairs of hands before I took on the task of babysitting this corner of our game, and adding new content without paying attention to the old somehow felt very irresponsible to me.

I’ve put as much effort into making each festival experience as cohesive as possible as I have into implementing new events. Not only do I want every season’s celebration to feel balanced in the amount of content and rewards it offers, but I hope to make every area balanced as well. Making new content for each season is the easy part, and the fun part, as well…but trying to make sure Duillond, the Party Tree, Thorin’s Inn, and the Horsefields all offer an equal amount of diverse and fun gameplay has been the greatest challenge, and one that is still underway.

I’m looking forward to seeing our festivals grow ever larger. We’re well on our way; new highlights are coming in with every book update, and this will continue to build and grow the range of these special recurring events. But equal attention is given to ensuring that vendors are present in the right places, that quests are localized to the party grounds, and that liberal party decor helps to enhance the atmosphere in which quests and rewards are being offered. For example, party musicians are now present at each stage to liven up the dance lessons as you perform steps one, two and three.

You’ll find that Yule quest-givers have moved to where you’re sure to spot them, and that the items they’ll have you collect will not require you to trek so great a distance as you expect. Instead of in the town of Bree, the Yule quests are right at the party grounds on the Horsefields. The quest-givers of Thorin’s Hall have also retired to the more festive inn, for they wish to see if the beer-fight draws as much of a crowd as many dwarf-patrons have anticipated.

I hope this year’s Yule Festival is a fun one for you! We look forward to seeing you there.