The Journey Ahead, December 2023

Hello Ring-bearers!

Welcome friends, to another The Journey Ahead with our Game Director on The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth™ Nick Reinhart! Let’s get into it.

Hello, my friends! I’m excited to be returning to you with another Journey Ahead. We’ve had a pretty wild six months. We’ve launched the Mines of Moria raid complete with fearsome Balrog, we’ve released (almost) three legendary characters, a new Glyph system, and our first “what if”/shattered characters - Lord Balin, and Elven brothers Orophin and Rúmil. It’s been jam-packed and we’ve had fun entertaining you! This Journey Ahead will be a bit different and deviate from our usual chaptered format. While this edition is focused more on the immediate update release, I will largely cover some thoughts we have about Glyphs and Thorin Oakenshield. Thank you for the amazing year we have had and I can’t stress enough how happy we are to be going on this Journey with you!

Glyphs

In our opinion, the Glyph system is a critical part of the gameplay for this style of game. (BTW if you didn’t know we were releasing a Glyph system head here first!). Being able to modify your collection and customize your characters provides a level of long term strategic depth that makes these games really exciting. We’ve been working and thinking through this for a long time, so we’re thrilled to be putting Glyphs out into the wild. 

While we’ve given our intent, along with a lot of details previously, about Glyphs, there’s a ton of things we want to watch and pay attention to as you all start to get your hands on the feature during your daily play.

Some of the plethora of questions we have are:

• From a Collection standpoint, how fast are Glyphs being collected and from where? Do you have enough Glyphs to support your teams? Are you continuing to chase new Glyphs to find those perfect ones for each of your units?
  
• How are you using the Glyphs you have found? Is there a general known strategy on which Glyph Sets should be equipped on each Character, or is there more a strategy for full Squads? Did we do a good job of making the Sets matter, or are Secondary Stats driving more of the excitement?
  
• Finally, how well are Glyphs performing when actually using them? Has the PVP Meta shifted? Are certain Glyph Sets dominating Arena? Which sets are performing best in the Raid? Have these Sets changed up which Factions are top of the Raid Meta per Chapter? Is there a Secondary Stat out there that's throwing a wrench into it all?

Overall, our goal is to ensure that Glyphs are exciting to explore and easy for you to adopt. Hopefully the above also gives you some insight on how we as developers evaluate our features at release and on-going. Everytime we do something to the game we are oftentimes most excited to see how things change - and not in a surface level way - rather in the thousands of micro decisions that players make in the day to day live environment.

Thorin Oakenshield

Thorin Oakenshield is being released as our third official Legendary Character of the game. We have been striving to make sure each Faction is released with powerful Characters that work together with strong, thematic gameplay that is just fun to use. Elrond gives that timeless, immortal feeling to the Elves, and Gandalf gives players the ability to choose when to use that epic, sacrificial finisher.

With Thorin, we are expecting the same kind of unique gameplay through the use of his Stubbornness of Dwarves. The feeling of finding that one target and never wavering in your resolve. In addition, we wanted to really nail that feeling of Thorin’s Company, just as they are setting out from the Shire. All of Thorin’s Company has been moved to Bag End in their Collection screens so they can celebrate the start of their journey together. Personally I think Bilbo’s unlock is my favorite, with the Dwarves knocking over his precious plates - you’ll see what I mean in your games soon. I’ll also make a personal recommendation that you look out for Bombur and his kit. He’s a pretty sleepy guy and we’ve gone out of our way to really elevate that. I’d be remiss if I also didn’t give a note about Thorin in that he has one of the most awesome cinematic attacks, King Under the Mountain, in the game (in my opinion!). We hope that we continue to straddle that amazing line that is the literary tradition of the books: a mix of the humor and grim realities that our heroes must face. We can’t wait to see what you do with all of these incredible heroes.

Check out Thorin’s kit reveal article here!

The Holidays

Part of the brevity of this Journey Ahead (and my lateness - sorry!) is the holiday period. Now we aren’t turning off the lights and leaving the one laptop in sleep mode. It is a crazy compacted time for game makers everywhere, not just us, trying to get our releases in for the end of the year so we can make sure they run smoothly and don’t break when you are trying to enjoy the game during your holidays. That said, we will be monitoring but don’t expect any major news from us through the rest of the month (unless something breaks and in which case we will be onsite and handy!). 

All that said, whatever your location and traditions - we hope this December treats you and yours most kindly. I cannot continue to stress how lucky we count ourselves to be able to be a part of your lives and how thankful we are that you play our game. Thank you for being a great community. We will see you in the new year!

Nick Reinhart, Game Director

On behalf of The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth Dev Team

This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible. For more information, please refer to EA’s Online Service Updates at https://www.ea.com/service-updates.

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