I <3 Skirmishes

I need to gush for a bit because I finally got into Lord of the Rings Online last night and experience the biggest new feature in the Siege of Mirkwood expansion: Skirmishes!

I wasn't completely sure of what to think about Skirmishes when they were announced. They sounded interesting enough, but the developers kept hyping them and using tons of marketing speech which lead me to believe that they would turn out to be one of two extremes, utterly awesome or completely pointless. I'm happy to report that these completely surpassed the "Utterly Awesome" side of the spectrum.

The idea of what they are and how they work has been dissected everywhere, but here's the 101 (on the EU forums, thanks to Spinks for the link) for those not familiar. Aside from the mechanics there are three things that really make Skirmishes great: Scalability, Accessibility, and Rewards.

The Scalability of Skirmishes is absolutely key here. Skirmishes can be customized to practically whatever you want them to be. If I log on and only have 20 minutes to play, I can pop into Siege of Gondamon solo and get something done. But, if 3 of my buddies are on and we don't have enough for a full 6-man dungeon and too many for a 3-man, we can jump in and go to town on a few Skirmishes. Maybe we want easy mode for some quick lolz, so we set it to 2 levels below us on Tier 1. Maybe we want a real challenge so we set it to Tier 2, or a couple levels above us, or both. Maybe 6 more friends log in and want to join us, so we just scale the next Skirmish to the group size and make-up, and off we go! Making these quick encounters practically infinitely Scalable to your tastes is a pure stroke of genius!

They are also extremely Accessible. While this ties into Scalability a lot (group size, skill, gear, etc.), the key here is the level and companion system. If I'm a level 38 Burglar that just isn't so hard core about the game, I can jump into a Skirmish a few levels below me so that I can still experience it and get rewards, or if I'm a 47 Guardian that is a dedicated Min/Maxer I can set the instance to be a bit harder to get more rewards. After level 30 (I believe), any level character can jump into skirmishes and get something out of them. Your companion plays into this heavily as well. If I'm a healer and want to solo a Skirmish, I can spec out a tank soldier to hold the enemies attention while I heal away, and vice versa if I'm a tank. This system allows me to play the game how I want to play, not in some arbitrarily determined way just so I can get through the content. Also at later levels you can train multiple Soldiers (not sure if you can summon more than one at time though), but the point of this is to have a soldier for any group make up. Have a group with three tanks? Not a problem, perhaps 1 pulls out a healer and two pull out DPS focused Soldiers to compliment. This system allows the Skirmishes to be Accessible to everyone and helps cater to your particular play style.

Finally the rewards are a nice touch as well. What most people are focusing on right now are the upgrades to our Soldiers including Skills and Abilities, but there are also Personal upgrades as well that can add more damage to your attacks while in Skirmishes, or increase your Morale, or just about any other buff you can think of. Outside of that, there are gear upgrades too, which are very useful but don't necessarily beat out gear obtained through other means in the game (dungeons or fellowship quest rewards, crafting). You can also get key crafting materials from the Skirmish vendors, so instead of hunting down specific named mobs and camping them hoping to get a Ruby Shard, you can just save up Skirmish Points and out right buy one so you can make that awesome Pants pattern you've been waiting to craft. Each Skirmish gives you Skirmish Marks dependent upon the Scale and difficulty of the Skirmish, as well as how many objectives you complete, so if you'd rather grind Skirmishes to get that specific Crit Item or even Moral Potion you can, or you can take the other traditional methods of hunting them in the game world or buying on the Auction.

As you can see, I'm pretty well enamored with Skirmishes. I think this is a definite Evolutionary step in MMO development and I fully suspect other games to rip this concept off completely. There may be some balance tweaking to come down the road, but as of right now I think they make the perfect addition to current game play methods in the game and do not replace other sources of content. I could conceivably level in Skirmishes alone, but just not as quick as quest grinding and it would certainly be repetitive. Also, gold is such a rare drop in Skirmishes (most mobs don't drop loot in them) and crafting mats are non-existent, so there are still plenty reasons to venture into the regular game world. They are also great because they allow Turbine to tell stories otherwise untellable in game, and any chance to add more flavor and context to an already lore rich title is a good thing in my book.