Lord of the Rings Online - Developing for the West and the East

 Jeffrey Steefel talks to Jon Wood of MMORPG after his trip to Korea.

One of the challenges that is facing the Turbine team in gearing up for a Korean launch is the speed at which players move through content. For example: while (and remember, we are speaking in broad generalizations here) North American players tend to like quests that are descriptive, but aren't necessarily specific, Korean players would prefer a very specific text description, telling them exactly where they need to go. Fortunately, Turbine has plans to fully localize and culturalize the game, looking to not only bring the game into a different language, but into a different culture as well. As a result (and serving as a pretty good example), a number of the quest texts are being re-constructed to better reflect a more popular Korean play style.

Before we got off the topic of the Korean launch, Steefel pointed out to me another of the differences between developing a game for release in the West and prepping for a release in Korea; customer service. In Korea, game companies have actual physical walk-up windows set up to handle customer service issues. No emails or petitions falling through the cracks here.

So, how does the Korean launch effect western players?

The team at Turbine has their sights set on doing some more work on the Player vs. Monster Player system in the game due to popular demand in Korea where PvP is not only popular, but often taken quite seriously. Turbine has decided to look at both markets to see how they can improve the game for both rather than trying to develop a whole new game for each market.