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The two greatest RPG licenses, lost to us! (for now) [D+D, LOTR]
Sturmrabe
Member Posts: 927
This may come off anti-Turbine but they were just unfortunately [for us] the ones to get the two greatest RPG licenses and have botched one and are proceeding to show no sign of doing otherwise to the other.
DDO is great you may say, but the quintessential RPG deserved more than a niche market!
A little background on what makes me not have faith in Turbines abilities:
AC2 was my first MMO ever, (I tossed a coin between that and DaoC, what a rip-off! Cruel fate!), so I didn't even apprecite how bat it was until later. The reason I quit that is because it LITERALLY gave me headaches to play the combat was so bad, the pyramid scheme guild structure was upsetting, no shops was ridiculously implemented, and three races was far too few for that type of game, especially when two of them were ugly and torpid. Ill give them props for having the first respect, but that was not nearly good enough.
I've played a lot of MMO's since then, and grant you AC was a solid MMO, but I'd still have to say that Shadowbane is still my favorite so far, not because I'm "OMG I'M SO LEET" PvP addict jerk wad that gets beat up IRL and takes it out in games, but because of City Building... and ever since, unless I have dynamic influence on permanent environmental features, then I just feel like its a shallow game experience.
TRY VANGUARD! you say? I did, and EQ+player housing just doesn't cut it for me... in fact I heard of that game LONG before I head of Age of Conan, and was thrilled to think about the city building in the game, but then after playing and finding out its whack-a-mole combat tacked on to the same old EQ standards with a couple of dumb things (like diplomacy) thrown in, catering to teh ubar raid guilds, and leaving you out in the cold if you arent in one... yeah, no. But thats another story.
They lost a lot LOT of money on AC2... a LOT, but not nearly as much as they have with DDO because WotC are some serious... tightwads... corporate whores... whatever, and they made Turbine pay out the butt for the license, and they paid as much or more for the LOTR license...
What kills me is D+D is what almost all RPG's are based off of in small or large part -and EQ was basically DDO without the license, and love it or hate it, its what made this genre what it is- and they STILL screwed it up!
LOTR is what you could say D+D was based off of...
To see the two juiciest plums, the sweetest cherries, the most READY MADE FOR A MMORPG licenses get butchered by these ham fisted shills just makes me sad... very very sad.
DDO proved to me that even with the juiciest of plums Turbine can screw up a MMO, and there could be no sweeter plums than D+D and LOTR when it comes to RPG's, its just sad Turbine got those licenses... maybe in the next next next generation of MMO's after Turbine is long out of business we'll get some good D+D and LOTR games.
Hopefully when these servers are finally shut down for the last time after what will be a long lingering death (with a core following like LOTR and D+D lifelong fans, and considering how long they let AC2 linger on deaths door, thats probably going to be a LONG time) and after these licenses are freed up for purchase by other, hopefully newer and willing to innovate development teams, maybe we can get an MMO worthy of them, being the progenitors of this whole genre means they deserve better than what theyve gotten and a lot more respect.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
Comments
I really hate them for what they did to D&D licence
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
/run from anti-Turbine mob with pitchforks
NGE Refugee.
Now relax my friend.. no need to go OTT with this..
In DDO's defence, the poor game IS trying to cope with being compeared to againest it's singleplayer cousins (ie Baldur's Gate/Never Winter Nights to name the main two), would YOU like to try an adapt a limitless game (witch true D&D is btw) to a digital format that HAS to have limits? It's hard when it's offline, but turning into a MMO it's pracitally insane!!
I gotta admit I did beta DDO and was very dissapointed in it and guess what? I'm back playing it again.. thats the wonderful thing about MMOs THEY GROW, this disscusson as been on this forum before and I stand by what I said smaller games do FAR better in the long run as there are less demands to be met.. Again take our favourate refference point WoW.. Now poor poor Blizzard, being the nice people they are, are flip flopping all the time as they meet the 'casual' players demand, then upset the 'raiding' players, so have to meet their demands and they have what.. a 7 million-ish player base to 'keep happy'.. Same can be said about content, you can offer bucket loads of content to begin with but who is to say all that content will be used, and not just bepassed for end-game (again like WoW)..
Now all that waffle I just said leads m back to DDO and LotR.. Now your going 'TURBINE HAS DESTROYED D&D/LOTR!!' I'm saying I bet you dollors to donuts Turbine havn't even started, they have been cleaver they've started small and building games as they go. They are adding what people want, not just dumping in content and turning around and saying 'like it or lump it'.. With that in mind whos to say in 12 months BOTH games wont turn out to be the best thing since sliced bread? Others games have done it, why can't these?
Fatal mistake here is that people always conpare, always set the bar too high, and always expect too much.. Remember this tho: 'Next big things' have fallen, it's been proven right in front of people's eyes this year, yet the 'minor, crappy, low player base' games are still plodding on, and still enjoyed
Bring on the WARRRRGGHH!
Modjoe86- Gambling is a sin.
Laserwolf- Only if you lose.
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Waiting for= PSU, WAR
you summed it up pretty good. Ive been pissed about this myself for a bit
the 2 biggest names in Fantasy are gone to the greedy hands of Turbine. God knows how much they forked out for those 2 licenses, so much they created 2 mediocre game worlds
I mean why didnt they just stick to one of those big franchises and make one killer game with it? Instead, they buy 2 huge franchise licenses and make 2 piles of dung
and its not really that both games are total garbage.. theyre just both incredibly small and lack content. the combat in DDO is ground breaking, the quests and lore in Lord of the Rings is top knotch. but the small details just arent there and the content is easily completed with a few months.
gah i need to stop before i breach an NDA
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
Wow.
/concur
Hear that? Turbine just committed hiri-kiri.
Blizzard almost fell into their undug grave.
SOE just had a heart attack.
Lol.
I cannot hear you over the SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Asheron's Call 1 is the best mmorpg i've ever played. I love turbine, never played DDO(simply because that seems a bit over the edge for me), but I'm very excited to play LOTR. It's understandable that you're not a turbine fan because of the whole AC2 thing i guess. Give it a shot, i'm backing them 100% with LOTR
D&D is the greatest RPG license, there is nobody but Turbines to question that.
LotR as a RPG license? Well, name me 1 RPG that use the LotR license...Now there are a FEW, but I don't expect anyone to be able to name it, from memory.
If I have to put a second name with D&D as a RPG, it would be Warhammer, however this is for RPG-license and by no way even close. If you want the second biggest "RPG computer games", I would have to say Diablo, even if I would like to pinpoint that Diablo is not a real RPG...or Final Fantasy. Yet, considering the overall views of product release, with the computer games...the second best setting to start a RPG, it is either Diablo(WoW) or Warhammer, there are a LOT of stuff to spread the franchise of warhammer inside the gaming communities, aka peoples buying games. So the 2nd best start is either Blizzard or Warhammer, and as you know, Turbines as neither. Blizzard made the top-selling MMO with an incredibly strong franchise, but IMO folks using D&D have 1 tiny step ahead, and if Blizzard sells better, it is because of the product itself. Luckily for competitors, Blizzard made the raiding-mistake...which will hurt them a LOT in the future.
LotR is a strong license for the: 1- Movies, 2- Books. You may argue about if the books or the movies make more fans, but that is pretty much where this license stop. It is a wonderful setting to build a RPG, but it is by no mean a "leading RPG-franchise", it is definitely 1 class lower.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Maybe he expected them to actually care about the game and the players the way SOE is still constantly releasing expansions and improvements for Everquest 1?
Haha, D&D isn't even flinching in front of the DDO release. Do you really think that 1 tiny little game, a "MMO that wasn't a MMO" can really shake the giant of D&D?
Granted, DDO is not what it should have been, but well, D&D will continue to prosper and developp long past Turbines closing it offices, no matter if Turbines close soon or in decades.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
DDO doesn't run on my computer but I completely disagree with your choice of franchises. The thing that makes D&D great is that a coopperative group activity. This is obviously gone once you translate it into an MMO. Aside from that, all you have is exelent monster library, which any other MMO could just as easily have. D&D class system works fine for pen and papper but it's rather stale for MMOs. D&D has the potiental for a really epic story but that really depends on your setting and GM. Personaly, I think to just have one D&D Online by one company is mockery of the game.
As for LoTR, it's one of the worst ideas for MMO out there. The setting isn't well defined at all. Look at the LoTR boards! They're all up in arms about 'fights are going to get fought that never happened' and how 'it's going to take us to places Tolken never wrote about. They practically want a game where there is no freedom becausae a player might break lore. They don't want an MMO set in the LoTR world, they want another LoTR movie that runs on their desktop and let's them grind rats. You thought WoW was stale? You thought player could change the corse of the world in WoW? Wait and see LoTRO
I think Final Fantasy could of been on of the greatest MMO IPs ever. But unfortudently there's too much grinding. I'm waiting for Shin Megami Tensei Online to get translated. Personaly I think Granada Espada is going to own the IPs anyway.
Then came all the cries, player whining...and the everquest clone era.
With 7 million + players in one eq clone you can't blame turbine for trying to cater for the current MMORPG crowd.
It's really sad to see what Turbine has turned into. It would seem the original dev team must have left for greener pastures (hopefully to work on darkfall!)
Im pretty much in agreement with the OP.
Turbine have shown with D&D what the philosophy of creating a game around 1 persons interpretation of a licence is like.... basically crap lol....
I get no comfort from reading the design docs for LoTRo as it seems they are on the same path again. Whacky ideas about things will work that 95% of people look at and go WTF ??, but the devs seem to brush it aside and press on with the madness anyway.
I mean... who could argue that LoTR is a PvP environment. Every inch of the lands outside places like the shire is desperate and dangerous. So whats the solution ?
Have players earn points toward taking over a monster for a while in order to simulate playing the "evil" side of the LoTR world.... I mean.... WHAAAAAAAAAT
I guess it was too easy to just let someone play an Orc ???
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
At least D&D was saved with NWN2... thank goodness. As far as LOTRO, sucks to see it solely in the hands of Turbine. Now the question is, with NWN2 out... will DDO last until launch day for LOTRO? I decided to use my DDO disk that came in my NWN2 box to see if anything has changed on the servers. Yes, yes there has. DDO is a very lonely MMOG now. One hour ago I got my character to level 4 and FINALLY saw another player. I'm going to use this free trial to see if I can find a server with some population to it.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
This is what absolutely KILLS me about what Turbine is doing with LoTRo...!!!
Ok here you have an IP based around the most Epic of all Epic battles almost ever written about, I mean seriously think about the books, it was constant fear, constant danger, epic battles and epic heros, horrible things lurking around every corner, good guys who you warn't to sure were good guys at all and amazing characters and courage comming from the most unlikely of people and bad guys that were so interesting you liked reading pages and pages that were just about them.
And so Turbins idea is uh... well, how about we let you turn into monsters! Uh... WHAT !!!???
It absolutely BLOWs MY MIND.
OK, yes, DDO is a horrible masacre of the D&D IP but whatever, it's a bad game, it will develope a niche or die, really in the end, it's not big loss. But, how in the world do you take such a horribly narrow point of view with such an amazing amount of story telling to choose from in an IP like Lord of the Rings.
As much as I hate to say it, because I'm really not a vindictive person, but if Turbine doesn't get their heads out of their asses, they completely deserve to go under if they can't manage to do something at least semi-decent with this game.
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Damn good question. Its all about the $$$.
What I dont understand is why these game companies cant get it through their thick heads that if they make a good game the $$$ will roll in. Yeah great business decision take two titles that each have the oppurtunity to be the best mmo EVER, but instead just make them both mediocre at best.
$oE did the same thing with the gradual downhill crapfest that resulted in the current swg game that we know today. They have less then half of the amount of subscribers that they had before the NGE came out.
Make some changes.. take some risks with new concepts... thats where the money will eventually be... instead of making the same damn game over and over in a different package.
Why in the world are they landing these big liscenses anyways? You'd think the franchises would have done some research before they handed their IP over to them.
NGE Refugee.
Ehh, What does Turbine have to do with CoH/CoV? CoH was created by Cryptic Studios, and was published my NcSoft.
Edit: Spelling
I somewhat agree and disagree with some of posts, for one thing D+D is only as good as your DM, and DDO is like having a bad DM with no imagination that can only follow the module he bought step by step rather than making up his own campaign, or using a module/campaign box as a springboard for a large grand open ended adventure.
There is no openness at all in DDO, and thats very sad, and plurality does not mean quality, and games like DDO prove that it is better to have a niche hit than an attempt at a vanilla one-size-fits-all game that flops.
Many people hail 3rd edition and 3.5 as the most successful age for D+D, and many of the old gamers know its just a paperthin revamp to make you buy more books/manuals.
as to all the mentions of other RPG's, thats totally redundant as ALL of them at their core owe their existance to D+D.
And I was never a suprefly D+D junkie, but if there was a good enough DM to be had you bet your ass I'd dust off some old char sheets and dig out some oddly shaped dice and have at. (Though I admit that its been almost a decade since I've played, and many years before that since I played even semi-regularly).
Does anyone remember how high level Rangers could have a forest stronghold? What about a warriors followers? a roges den?
What about getting a deed to an estate from a deck of many things, then have an adventure of just finding shit to stock it with and finding a trapdoor in the lowest celler leading to the underdark?
And you don't have to know dick about D+D and p+p RPGs to know that when you make a NEW game people want a NEW GAME, not the same old same old with some shiney new graphics but all the same guts. There needs to be SOME innovation, or at least some advancement using the cutting edge of whats available.
D+D is far more than just a library of mobs, its an idea about immersion, and char development. Yes, it was a lot about magikal loot, but you made your char and you played him differently than any other mage, you used your skills and focused on talents different than any other ranger, and while it was hardest to make a warrior distinct, you did your dead best to try with the Warriors Handbook, or the Barbarian one, or choosing oddball weapon specialties, or whatever you could think of.
The greatest failing is the most obvious, char creation. And all Turbine games lack in that department in different ways, and universally in its shallowness.
Mr. Potatohead in the "1st 10 levels" article about made me puke.
It seems for some reason that some newer games promise depth of customization and end up lying (WoW), or try and fail (Ryzom). EQ2, CoX, and the released info of AoC (shown in in game vids rather than bullshit promises) are the gold standard, and anything less than that level is unacceptable!
The only reason to accept less out of Char customization is the lack of technology or know how, but that is no longer an excuse! If these games can do it, anyone can, and if they don't its because it wasn't deemed important enough, and that shall be the downfall of many a game.
Why do people go on 8millions raids? Why do crafters pay a gaming company to get a second job? Why do people that can do neither farm gold like its their FIRST job to buy that special item?
To set themselves apart, to gain some form of uniqueness. Its human nature, we all want to be recognized at a glance, to stand out from the crowd, to have fame or infamy and failing that at least be acknowledged for our creativity.
And any game that fails to deliver it on the very first interaction you have with it, will eventually fail all the way down the road.
Now while not a commercial failure (everyone buys bread, and sliced white bread is exactly what it is) WoW is feeling these effects now as the afore mentioned flip-flops go on.
Raiders want more raids for new gear cause everyone looks the same in their teir 3 armor, (remind you of any other game? I'll give you a hint, its not very fantastic, and its certainly not the final one), casual gamers are sick of looking like, and in that item-centric circle-jerk of a game it also actually makes you, gimp in tattered clothes compared to the raiders, so they have to make acheivable goals that unfortunatly everyone will rush though for anything useful.
Sure, your hero in CoH/V might have a similar feature or two as mine, but a guaran-fuckin-tee after I've spent 4 or more hours, or sometime 2 if I am inspired and already have something in mind, you arn't going to see anyone exactly like me, and once you've grouped with me a couple times you can easily pick me out in a crowd. Who knows how long I'll take on just my face on AoC.
Does anyone remember how long it took to make a char in d+d ? (provided you weren't throwing one together at the last minute when you stumple onto a game with none of your papers or books with you but wanted to jump in, and even then you spent so long on your last char that you weren't in a rush for you could almost recreate him from memory)
If it doesn't take me HOURS to make a char the RPG, MMORPG especialy, has failed.
I always found japanese RPGs, where you could change you name or possibly class at most, to rather shallow... you are technically playing a role, but are YOU playing the role or are you playing the role AS generic-teen-hero-coming-of-age-X (I hope you nite the subtle differance). Sure some things had to be sacrificed for consol RPGs of the 80's-90's, but that day has passed, and a new age where I can spend almost as much time creating a char's looks in a game as it would take to draw him by hand IRL. Sometimes, more.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
I am not really certain how your comment applies to mine so I will explain myself more.
I am skeptical that it is even possible to translate Tolkein into an RPG of any form and not murderlize it. I do not think Tolkein world lends itself to being systematized and generally most Tolkein RPGs are pale and not truly faithful to the work. And I do not really expect any RPG to ever do much in the way of making me feel like I am in middle earth. Maybe I know too much about Tolkein and am to big of a Tolkein geek but I am fairly convinced that it will never lend itself to this genre. Yes, there are many things in this genre that are based on the underlying myths and whatnot of Tolkein, but RPGs will never capture someone as cool as Hurin. And will certainly never capture the coolest of them all, Finrod Felagund and his self-sacrificing duel of songs of power with Sauron to save Beren in the pit of the tower of werewolves all to keep a promise. In fact I would go so far as to say any implementation of Tolkein as an RPG will always be inherently unsatisfying. And for someone like me would probably wind up very much bugging me.
As for D&D its a fine system with a long history, but I do not actually consider it awesome. It is essentially average. Perfectly adequate for an RPG, especially as a PnP game with a DM. If you wanna run a table top game and do some RP etc D&D offers everything you need as an ok framework for doing so. But as a CRPG without a DM etc. Most D&D winds up being simply average. I mean D&D's system is not meant to be exactly flashy, its for the players and the DM to makethings flashy. Many of the mechanics/ideas of D&D do not even really fit that well into a computer environment, especially an RPG. I mean a Wish spell is supposed to age you a year, some spells age you more. Back in 1st ed Raise Dead could permanently reduce your consitution. Also many of the die rolls of D&D are too simple. The D&D system is made so that the math is doable by a human. It is true that most of these games use the D&D simplified HP(which is meant to be a represntation of a combination of health and skill) system and not something more realistic like the old Warhammer fantasy system. It may be true that most of the current MMORPGs do not even attempt to take advantage of one of the hallmarks of computer, large amoutns of computations. But it is also a fact that many MUDs did actually take advantage of the ease of compuitation and have much richer damage models etc.
It may seem like things like EQ are just a version of D&D and D&D online could have been good etc. And it is true that EQ1 is heavily D&D like, which is no surprise since a ton of old DIKU MUDs were D&D clones and EQ1 is based on one of these DIKU MUDs. But it is also true that there were a ton of other MUDs that took advantage of the benefits of a computer to actually implements RPG systems with more richness when it came to mechancis. Yes most MMORPGs of today are under-designed and lazy and are essentially variations on D&D. But there are richer systems from old MUDs and the rare MMORPG that have a richer system that takes advantage of the benefits of computers rather than making all the compromises that D&D does to make it usable by humans. For its purpose D&D was fine although I won't concede it was better than GURPS, but was designed to operate on wetware not hardware.
Certainly history wise these to IPs have a seminal importance in the fantasy RPG genre. But I do not consider either one actually be particularly stellar for the basis of a CRPG and was never actually excited about either one.