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MMOs released in Q4 2006
Ithar
Member Posts: 20
Gonna be a crazy MMO market come the final quarter.
Vanguard...LoTRO...Age of Conan
Would you wanna be first, second or third? 
Comments
sunflame.
I was thinking the same thing about release delays, but then I got to thinking how all these developers who are making fantasy-based MMOs would want to release their game before the competition.
Case in point, WoW released basically same time as EQ2. I'm not saying EQ2 would have had critically acclaimed success, but I do think EQ2 kinda got trampled by WoW just because of the timing of those two releases and because they are both same genre.
Now there are three (even more if considering games like Spellborn, Gods & Heros, etc) so some of these games might get brushed right off the table just because of release schedule. Whereas, they could very well have been great successes.
What happened was that Blizzard pulled a fast one on SOE. When Blizzard released their launch date, it was much sooner than SOE had anticipated. As a result, SOE had to release EQ II before it was really ready for prime time.
IMO, Blizzard has been one step (or more) ahead of SOE ever since.
(Note: I no longer play WoW, so please don't accuse me of being a mindless WoW fanboi.)
The only game I'm looking forward to for this year is Age of Conan.
Vanguard might be good, but I'm not sure if I even care anymore: It'd take some very strong praise from people whose opinions I respect to get me to try it out.
LotR Online is doomed. Middle-earth simply is too much like real Earth for it to make a good setting for an online game. Death in Middle-earth was *real* and it was *final* (Gandalf was a special case). Furthermore, the history of Middle-earth is well known to many people, and there was NOT a ton of fighting or wars leading up to the War of the Ring. Their attempt to jazz things up to make the game interesting breaks the world's history -- badly.
So, from what I've seen, Conan looks like it might be pretty good. Not so fluffy as most MMOs, with some interesting ideas on combat. The world of Conan *is* a place with lots of magic and lots of fighting, and people *can* come back from the dead. I am inclined to try it out.
That is where you are wrong. Firstly, to make things fit into the story, rather than being directly in the story, you play ahead of the ringbearer and his fellowship. Your fellowship will help clear the path and try to make his journey less perilous.
As for death, there really isn't death in MEO (or LotRO) because they use a morale system, rather than a HP system. If your morale is too low, you are essentially "Retreated" making you lose the battle.
Honestly, if you read more about a game before making blind assumptions, it would help you very much.
As for the games coming out, I might play LotRO a bit, I am desperately awaiting Spellborn (sad I didn't make beta), I am 100% psyched for WAR (far off) and Heros Journey is also on my watch list. Everything else seems just too bleh
Um, yes there was, just not in the Shire. Gondor was essentially in a constant state of war (or at least border skirimishing) for several centuries leading up to the War of the Ring. They ceded Gondorian territory to Rohan for it to settle in specifically because the Rohirrim pledged to be their military allies. The Elves of Mirkwood had their hands full with the spiders and orcs empowered by the corruption from Dol Guldur during this entire period. The refugees of Arnor (the rangers) were fighting a hidden guerrilla war to protect the realms of the northwest (including the Shire) from the threat to the east. And those were just the major long-term ongoing conflicts, there were more brief conflicts elsewhere.
Gondor gave what became known as Rohan to the Rohirrim around 500 years prior to the War of the Ring. But yes, there was some fighting around Gondor, mostly in Ithilian and along the southern coasts (close to Umbar). But these were not wars.
The only major battle to take place before the War of the Ring was the Battle of Five Armies. Before that, there was the Dwarf-Orc Wars (fought entirely by those two races.)
The Elves of Mirkwood were simply keeping the baddies out of their lands. They made no expeditions anywhere else that is recorded. The same goes for the Galadrim in Lothlorien.
What is LotR Online going to do? Thousands of people running around fighting the baddies. Is that realistic in Middle-earth lore? No. It is not.
I'm not saying there wasn't any conflict in Middle-earth prior to the War of the Ring. Middle-earth was a dangerous place. But what they are trying to accomplish isn't going to go over well, IMO. And I don't think it is very thematic, either.
I'm sorry, and please don't take this personally, but I find the idea of having people playing "ahead" of the Ringbearer to be absurd. Clearing a path? What path? Along the Misties to Moria? Why not send a map to Sauron? Are we to suppose that some "adventurers" arrived in Moria prior to the Fellowship? What about Hollin (where there was nothing making any sound for miles around the Fellowship).
The question about Death is really pretty silly as well, IMO. Orcs eat human flesh. They like to eat it. They're not going to leave people unconscious, and if you're badly wounded, how will you "retreat?"
If you want to know of a world I think would be ideal for an MMO, it's the old Dragonlance world of Krynn, before they screwed it up. IMO, Middle-earth is just too refined -- too realistic -- for it to be able to be turned into the setting for an MMO.
sunflame.