Skirmishes Dev Diary, Part 2 Released

 Today Turbine released another Developer Diary discussing the Skirmish System that’s coming with Siege of Mirkwood.

Here are the main points:

• All skirmishes will take place in instances.
• All skirmishes will take place in pre-existing locations.
• The goal is to make the player feel that the war is becoming more prevalent in the world.
• Skirmishes will usually have a “control point” which is a location strategically important to that particular encounter. (Such as the Prancing Pony in Bree).
  • Players might find themselves Defending the location
  • Or in other cases trying to capture the location
  • The Control Point is identified by a banner flying over them
    • A Red banner means the point is controlled by the enemy
    • A Green banner means the point is controlled by the Free Peoples
• Skirmishes may be repeated.
• The time to complete a skirmish has been designed to be 20 to 40 minutes.
• Some skirmishes will be a part of the Epic book (and can still be replayed)

I have to say that a lot of this information was assumed or already knowledge to those who have been following the system.  Despite that fact though, I personally still got excited reading this information.  I think that the Skirmish System is going to make a great addition to the game on one condition:  that the rewards are properly balanced.

Even though this is a new system that will most likely be a ton of fun for all that take part of it, there still needs to be a reason to continue on with participating in skirmishes once the novelty wears off.  One of the complaints that I see in PVMP is that the rewards don’t always feel like they match the effort that’s required.  And although I know the rewards for Skirmishes haven’t been fully released, that’s where my attention is currently focused when I think about the success of this system.  Although we do know that we have a soldier which we can customize and buff through completing skirmishes and that we will game experience, how fun is it to actually just get some experience and to customize something that can’t be used in your normal gameplay?  Personally, I’m hoping for something I can show off to the public!

Not that I think that these will be the only rewards we’ll see from skirmishes; in fact I’d be highly surprised if these two things were the only rewards.  My point is that I’m still waiting to see what treats Turbine has cooked up for me to devour once the system is released.  Until then, I’m over here enjoying the fact that soon I’m going to be kicking some bandit tail in Bree in the near future, but still keeping an eye on what shinies may be in my future.