Building LotRO's Corsairs Of Umbar: Setting Expansion Expectations, Localizing And Community
The Lord of the Rings Online: Corsairs of Umbar has finally launched, bringing the newest region of Middle-earth to players, and what makes it exciting is the fact that it’s a region unexplored really in any other Tolkien-set medium. We don’t see it in any of the movies, nor do we really see it described in detail in any of the main books.
Over this series we’ve explored how expansions are initially conceptualized, how the world itself gets created using the source material, and explored the creation of the new player class and its systems, The Mariner. Yet we’ve really not discussed how these expansions get revealed and brought into the world. Well, strap in, as this final part of the Building An Expansion series explores the conversations around expansion pricing, messaging and how the team localizes the game for fans around the world.
A few years ago, The Lord of the Rings Online team faced issues with the community that has long supported the MMO thanks to the release of a new type of expansion, the mini-expansion. War of Three Peaks was the first of its kind in The Lord of the Rings Online , but the communication from the team wasn’t necessarily the clearest. Many subscribers saw the mini-expansion as just another content update thanks to its scope and wondered why they were being asked to pay for the content above and beyond the subscription price they were already paying. The VIP benefits just didn’t feel like they were there with this attempt.
In the years since, LotRO’s devs have refined the mini-expansion offering, but it wasn’t an easy task, as getting back to a place where subscribers and VIP players felt like their subscription benefits were just that — an actual benefit.
“There was a lot of
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