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what i would like to see is an mmo set in the earlier days of middle earth
arthen999
Member Posts: 183
i thought lord of the rings online was graphically a very nice game . it seams to have a very friendly close nit community but i found it to be slighly dull . while there is pvp its not very well thought out and i would have loved the chance to play an orc or goblin and level that character from level 1 and invest some time in it rather than find it limited to the pvp areas . i think the original concept of middle earth online was a far supperior idea . i think it would have been a lot more popular but like dungeons and dragons online codemasters really missed the point again ( although this game is nowhere near as bad as ddo ) . i dont think an mmo set in the later days of middle earth is a paticulary good idea because any game that wants to keep to the lore will lack the scope needed for an mmo . instead i would put the point that an mmo set sometime in the earlier days of middle earth may make for a more accessable game experiance and allow what we see now in other games to be implemented in middle earth setting . while this game has been a success its not the game it should hae been . i hope in the future someone with a little more imagination than the current developers can take a second try at bringing tolkiens world to life online .
Comments
It's a good idea, but unfortunately the Middle Earth of the First and Second Age gets sunk by the Powers That Be thanks to Sauron's seduction of the Dúnedain.
Still, plenty happened before then.
Yeah, I'm playing now and having fun but ultimately being locked into the storyline, limited race selection and the parcelling out of the map over time will limit how long I stick with it. I would have MUCH preferred and probably would have been in it for the long haul if instead of the game being LoTRO it was Middle Earth Online, a more sandbox type game, the whole map open, and it took place just after the events of LoTR. Would be such a great world to play in.
I followed MEO form it's earliest days at Sierra back in 99 or 2000 all the way through to Vivendi and Turbines . Most of those years it looked as if the game was classic vaporware and would bever be released. When Turbine got the license and announced MEO was now LoTRO and would not be a RvR style game I can promise you no one was more upset than I was. I swore I would never ever play the gameand thought Turbine was the worst MMO company on the planet. Time rocked along and I was accepted for invited to early beta and man was I ever pleasanty surprised.
Anyway there were a lot of us that had our own vision of Middle Earth and how the game. Some of us love Turbines interpretation, others stormed off in a butts in a knot because they thought they knew better than Turbine on how to design a successful game.
I know a lot of the old MEO's strongest supporters were bitterly dissapointed. There were a few who wanted a SWG sandbox set in Middle Earth, others free style or RvR PvP. I remember one fool who thought it should take 70 hours of game time to run from one end of the shire to the other and could not understand why that was a bad idea LOL. I adjusted to Turbines vision, others are probably still creating alts and trolling the forums. I figure theymight as well just accept and move on, but then that is their business, myself I am enjoying the game for what it is, not being bitter over what it is not.
I miss DAoC
The Valar sank Numenor, not Middle Earth, as punishment for an attempt to enter the Undying Lands.
That forced the surviving Numenoreans to return to Middle Earth.
As I recall, the original concept for Middle Earth Online was exactly what the OP suggested - set it in that period between when Isildur lost the ring and when Deagol found it. I think it probably would have been better - a lot of people are probably turned off LOTRO as a story they already know from having read the books/seen the movies - even though Turbine seem to have done a decent job of telling a story parallel to it.
The first age would be interesting. I'd love to see Turbine's version of Beleriand.
Something people seem to forget on topics like this is when a company licenses a big IP to make a game out of, the company that owns the IP gets a lot of say in what can and can't happen in that game. So to say that another company would do it entirely differently isn't true, they'd be limited in the same ways that Turbine was in what can and can't be allowed.
I'm pretty sure the Tolkien group wouldn't of wanted a game where griefers playing goblins just sat in the shire and killed noobs all day and that is probably why it wasn't allowed. I'm also guessing that a lot of the art and story lines in the game had to be approved through Tolkien group.
With all that in mind Turbine did a great job on this game, when I went into it for the first time I thought it looked amazing and I loved running around in areas I had read about.
You seem to be implying that we've said another company would do it differently because it's another company.
When in fact what we've said is the other company that was originally making this mmo would have done it differently because that's what they said.
And what you can clearly see in this interview, is that the choice of timeframe was made by Turbine, not anyone else.
http://www.gameshark.com/features/317/Lord-of-the-Rings-Online-Interview.htm
What went into deciding the timeframe for Lord of the Rings Online? Did you know that you wanted to put it into the same setting as the books or was there debate about having it take place before or after the books?
Well there was a slight difference of opinion there from when it was being run by Vivendi. Even the name change itself reflected that. When it was Middle-Earth Online it was almost timeless in its placement. We wanted to go to a much more specific role where we talked about the Fellowship, where we talked about Tolkien, and we really talked about the timeline around the trilogy itself. So that you felt you were in the middle of the War of the Ring and you were watching the events unfold and you were at the places when these things were going on.
I would have thought just the opposite; since more people know of the LoTR from the movies & original books that they would want to play in familiar surroundings. Even though I've read the books many times since I first got them back in '73 I've never read any of the pre stuff so the draw for a game set in that time frame wouldn't be there.
I'm sure that not only would the Tolkien estate want to capitalize on their IP, but so would any financial investors, which would mean going with the current time frame of the game.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
Turbines license with Tolkien Enterprises only extends to the the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit books. t does seemm as if they get some leeway to a degree though since a some of the single player epic instanced quests in MoM predate the Hobbit time frame.
I miss DAoC
As I understand it, Christopher Tolkien owns the rights to (or not to) licence stuff from The Silmarillion, i.e the first and the second age, and his No! has been pretty definitive.
Having said that there must a grey zone in there, what with First and Second Age legendary items now in the game, and The Rift-raid taking place in the ruins of a First Age city etc...
I also would have liked to see an earlier time and more than one playable faction. I am a casual player who likes in world PvP kinda like the "normal" WOW servers give, or SWG where you only fight if flagged for PvP, but can otherwise just play the PvE parts unmolested. The journey through is fun, but without real PvP in the world, or at least a good battle ground lineup besides the moors, it got boring for me after ~5-6 months.
I agree, but think a better timeframe would be just after the events of the books. The LoTR storyline would be the backstory, most would be familiar, there'd be less of a feeling of being locked in since the 'future' as it were would lay before us. I figure just after the RotK there'd be tons to do as the races of ME had to work and fight to set everything right, which would also give an opportunity for orc/goblin races for players, adding a nice pvp dynamic. Plus while the devs would still be able to introduce expansions for new dungeons, and perhaps lands outside of the main map (like Harad) the entire map would be avail to adventure in.
Setting the game's backstory to right after the events of LotR would be stupid. Who would you fight? Your shadow? The Fourth Age was the age where Middle Earth became OUR Earth. I'd have zero interest in exploring that time.
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