Adam: Lets start with LOTRO, we launched Shadows of Angmar back in 07'. Launched Moria last year, since we have launched, we have won game of the year in both 2007 and 2008, a pretty big feat for us. We have alot of challenges with other MMO's that come out and we still won best expansion, best overall MMO, and a game of the year award.

So the franchise is really strong and doing really well all over the world. We are currently in over 50 countries all over the world and we are working on launching into China as we speak. So everything is going great. Today, we launched our new expansion for the fall, The Seige of Mirkwood. So now we are moving further east of Moria and we are inside the Misty Mountains. This is where the War of the Ring really starts to percolate in the books.

Mirkwood is going to deliver 5 new levels, pushing the level cap to 65 and everything that comes with that, skills, legendary items will now go up to 60. So everything is bigger now right? An expansion!

We are introducing a new system called skirmishes, basically they are randomized repeatable instances that you can go into over and over again. All to get really cool loot and participate in these really awesome battles from Lord of the Rings. You can also customize your own army of soldiers to take in with you!

So you know, Mirkwood is a dark, eery, gloomy forest. Sauron's original fortress, a major raid will be there. A couple 3 man and 6 man instances. So it's a pretty good sized expansion.

Now whats unique about this expansion versus Mines of Moria is that it's digital, it's not going retail. This means it's different for us, we reach alot less people, but this is all high level content so it is typically for existing subscribers as it is.

The NO News: Are you going to be selling it just from your site or are you going to look at sites like Steam as well?

Adam: Right now it looks like just from our site and the reason we do that, and we are doing this now with DDO, is that we are using the Turbine Download Manager. So this thing is now finally coming out of its beta status. The idea with Steam, or Direct2Drive, or FilePlanet is that you have to download the entire client before you start playing. What we've done in the past year and a half or so is to chop up the client. So your a new player, and you download DDO for free, your playing in 15-20 minutes instead of waiting the whatever hours you have to wait to patch.

Because all we have downloaded is the character generator and the newbie zone. So while you are playing that, the rest is background downloading. So you don't need Moria if you are just going to make your new Hobbit right?

The NO News: (laughs) Right.

Adam: And ditto goes for this. Everything Turbine is trying to do, since we launched LOTRO, to try to take us to another level, is to focus on accessibility across all of our games. So . . . how you get the product. All of us hardcore gamers are basically trained to be abused.

If you, right now, went and found a copy of Shadows of Angmar on the retail shelves, you are looking at 24 hours before you can start playing right? Cause it has to do all of the patches and all of the book updates right? Well we need to fix that because everyone now with the console generation is used to put the disc in, start playing and we can do that.

So we have started doing that, how you get the client, where you play. We are working on a console MMO right now, so we want to bring all the best parts of MMO's and allow you to play them, where you want to play them. Now that doesn't mean you have to play together in the same world but just that there is a huge market that just doesn't play them on the PC. And so we're giong after that, we haven't announced what we're doing but we have working demos now and we'll probably announce something early next year.

So, then the other thing is pricing. One of the biggest barriers in MMO's is the subscription.

The NO News: (laughs) We were just going to ask that!

Adam: So with DDO, which is launching on Wednesday 9/9, is completely free. You download the client for free, you play for free. There is an in-game store which sells three types of things. Content, cosmetics, and convienence. Content, the reason we took DDO to free to play was the game was already designed as a world where we could port stuff off. So we will release adventure packs and its very DnD. You know when you were a kid you bought your Handbook, and then you bought more content when you were ready for it, think the same thing. What do you need the high-level dungeon for if you're not ready to play it yet and you don't want to pay a monthly fee for it. So you just buy it when your ready.

So content packs, adventure packs as we call them, will be available for anywhere from a couple dollars up to maybe $15 depending on the size. Then you can buy potions, and xp boosts, and rez kegs, and hair dye, and cool armor, but you can't buy like, +4 swords of whatever. You have to keep balance.

The NO News: So loot is still loot?

Adam: Loot is still loot, the best loot you still get from questing. You get life for free, once you hit level 4 you need to find a leveling sigil, not so hard to find at level 4. That grants you access to the next 4 levels. They get harder to find as you go up but you can find them. You can also earn Turbine Points, which is our currency through our favor system. So by grinding favor in DDO you can earn Turbine Points for the store.

So truly if you really want to you can pay not a dime and get a fully playable MMO. All of the features you would normally need to sacrfice in a free to play game you don't have to. Most people look at it 2 ways, the free to play games and the subscription games. You can still subscribe to DDO, then you get all of the content we make for free as part of your subscription and you get 500 points on your account a month to use in the store. You can of course always pay for more if you want to. This opens up possibilites for people with not only cash constraints but time constraints as well.

Lets say the 3 of us are college buddies, we played dnd in college and played games like this 30 hours a week. Now we are out of college and I have 2 kids, a wife, and a mortgage and you guys have other things going on. Suddenly the wife goes out of town and I have a babysitter, I have a 6 hour night ahead of me ready to go. I don't mind spending 5-10 bucks to get what I need to have fun that night, because I might not get a chance to play again for 6 weels.

So this covers a whole new demographic of gamers, the 30 something gamers who just can't play these hardcore MMO's because it doesn't justify the value to them. Now we have the guys who pay the 15 dollars and get the best value they can, or if you just want to log on a Saturday afternoon and play, you can do that too.

So . . . now we have a store, and the golden rule in retail is get them in the store. If your an hour into your quest, and you don't get experience in DDO until you finish the quest. So your an hour and a half into some epic quest with your buddies and your about to die, you can hit the store and buy some potions just to finish the quest. And there will still be hardcore players who won't do that, and hardcore guilds who won't allow use of the store.

So we are real excited. Again LOTRO Seige of Mirkwood digital expansion, we haven't announced a date or the price around it. In about 2-3 weeks we will come out with some cool promotional stuff to get people really excited. Again, it's not quite the size of Moria but it is a nice sized expansion.

The NO News: Is this going to be a part of the lifetime membership?

Adam: Thats not live right now but we are talking about bringing it back, we have alot fo people that want it. Officially, I will say I don't have an answer to that . . . Unofficially, I would say I would look for it soon. I don't know when but there is a high demand for it.

The NO News: Alright well that is all of the questions that we have, thank you!