Ehh what? Where did they use the Lonely mountain? I would love to know that, as I have never encountered such an instance.
Forochel, Evendim, Angmar and Esteldin are part of western Eriador, so they were allowed to use it within the LOTR license (maybe these locations were mentioned in the appendixes).
The fact is, they DO NOT have permission to use anything from the other books, like The Hobbit!
Otherwise we would have had a proper Mirkwood expansion covering entire Mirkwood and Lonely mountain.
The fact is, they were not allowed to! This has been mentioned in QA sessions back in that time, when people were disappointed about the small Southern Mirkwood map and why we didn't get the full Mirkwood area.
They are only allowed to use material from the LOTR books, including the Appendixes. That's it.
The Beornings are another example. Goblin Town was never set foot in for LotR, yet there it is, with deeds and a huge questline covering Bilbo's adventures there.
I'm sure there is probably material where they feel compelled to get permission from Tolkein's estate. I think they did just that for Beornings, from what I recall from interviews at the time, but I doubt there's any hard line preventing them using things from The Hobbit.
to answer Po_gg: Yes Tolkien didn't mention another hobbit there. He also didn't talk about hobbits running around the golden wood or Elves running around the shire.
Elves are passing through the Shire a lot, during their march to the harbour, and we only arrive to Lórien after the Fellowship is already gone, so it's kinda open business
This is just the way they build their narrative, maybe stretching it a bit sometimes (ok, sometimes a lot, cough*beornings, or even more COUGH*high elves), but never directly against the storyline. And the end is not even a grey area, it is clearly written by Tolkien, that until the tower stood, nobody from the freep side entered Mordor, besides Sam and Frodo. It's not something you just jump over for some additional fun - unless you are a gigantic, almost monolith like ( ) douche and want to spit on the lore like their crappy shadowssin of creedor did.
(I'd love to say SSG's writing team is much better, and they really are, but... come on, high elf cappy? seriously? )
It's still a stretch. Were there many elves, dwarves and hobbits at Helm's deep? How about hanging out in Bree?
And yes Elves would pass by the shire but they wouldn't go hanging out "inside" the shire. At least to my memory.
This is just how the game is.
but the players don't even have to be "at the battle" or inside. They just need to be somewhere in the world to witness the event while they are doing something equally important.
Again, for millionth time, there are not 1000s of characters prancing about. That's the GAMEY aspect of it. If you want an in lore explanation, there is probably just ONE member of each race present in the story of LoTR:O. Or, we could stretch it as such, one member of each class. Still, I doubt that a Calaquend would be present in Middle Earth(he...kinda has no reason to, they closed that chapter ages ago). Even ONE is too much lol. Will require some serious headcanon. If you think that there is 1000 Elves parading through the Shire...do you think that there's 1000s of Smugglers in SWTOR or just one(canonically) -> I am obviously talking about Captain here, not some random spacer?
Yes that's true, that's the gamey aspect. Which is why I said it would be fine to have the main characters at the black gate.
But the truth is there are player dwarves hanging around Lothlorien and hobbit players in the dwarven areas, etc.
Which is was my entire point. Since we have many players with many races in many iconic areas that normally don't have such a cacophony of races we have to nod to "that's the way the designers made it" and because of that it's not so hard to understand the players at the Black Gate.
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I'm sure there is probably material where they feel compelled to get permission from Tolkein's estate. I think they did just that for Beornings, from what I recall from interviews at the time, but I doubt there's any hard line preventing them using things from The Hobbit.
But the truth is there are player dwarves hanging around Lothlorien and hobbit players in the dwarven areas, etc.
Which is was my entire point. Since we have many players with many races in many iconic areas that normally don't have such a cacophony of races we have to nod to "that's the way the designers made it" and because of that it's not so hard to understand the players at the Black Gate.
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