Psh, I loved it when randoms came up and played in front of me. You people must think your time is worth more than it obviously is, or have poor taste in music. I remember a guy jamming out the Goldeneye theme and I just had to whip out my lute and join him. Oh, I guess it helps if you actually enjoy the music system itself, I can see people getting pissed if they suck at it.

I guess it's directly relatable to whether you see a guy playing guitar in RL and consider him a douchenozzle immediately, or feel inclined to listen for a moment. Chances are that if you pick the former route off the bat, you don't have any musical skills and simply hate that guy for trying.

The nice thing about the system is that you can disable it should you become annoyed. That honestly ends all arguments about it being annoying.

You can't hear "What I've Done" played on a lute anywhere else. The music system is great - and, again, if you didn't want to hear Linken Park in your Middle-earth, you can turn the player-generated music volume down to (gasp) ZERO! Then you can just run by a small group of people clapping and dancing, looking like morons to you, completely oblivious to whatever one guy (or one group) is playing. But, that's your choice.

I heard an ABC rendition of "Rock Me Amadeus". Hah, really? Falco? Even more scary, the song was pretty catchy, especially the solo (it was on lute). I also heard a version of the Benny Hill theme song on clarinet... or oboe... clarinet, I think. It was hilarious.

Originally posted by Comnitus

You can't hear "What I've Done" played on a lute anywhere else. The music system is great - and, again, if you didn't want to hear Linken Park in your Middle-earth, you can turn the player-generated music volume down to (gasp) ZERO! Then you can just run by a small group of people clapping and dancing, looking like morons to you, completely oblivious to whatever one guy (or one group) is playing. But, that's your choice.

I heard an ABC rendition of "Rock Me Amadeus". Hah, really? Falco? Even more scary, the song was pretty catchy, especially the solo (it was on lute). I also heard a version of the Benny Hill theme song on clarinet... or oboe... clarinet, I think. It was hilarious.

I think most people who took issue with the music system, myself included, said it was only an issue if they couldn't turn it off.

Since it seems that turning off the music is an easy-to-do feature of the game, I have no problem with it.  Let the people who enjoy it play songs and the people who don't turn the system off.

Now, an in-game musical feature that I COULDN'T disable would be annoying. :D

Originally posted by erictlewis

Yes you can turn off player music,  they you would also need to turn off combat sounds as well.

The reason why is mini's do music sounds durring combat.  So you get the drums you get drum sounds, lute you get kind of lute sounds, theoboy sounds like a bass guitair, then were back to the bagpipes.  You just cant put your mini on ingnore in a group.

its a silly system,  they want to do something good let us bring in mp3's into the game.

 

Ugh, you have to turn off combat sounds to turn off the music?  See, that's not acceptable to me.  If you're going to include a fluff feature like this that will annoy as many people as it "delights" at least make it optional, without having to sacrifice the normal audio output of the game.

I don't like listening to most "amateur" music, personally.  If I want to listen to music I can choose from history's greats from Bach to The Beatles without ever having to suffer through some grungy, unshaven guy trying to impress people with bad guitar playing...  if that's your thing, fine, but if I want to listen to music I have a collection of gigs on my iPhone I can whip out any time I like.  If I want to hear guitar music I'll go see a local band play down at a pub or coffee house.  Please not in my MMO.  Artists that are any good are usually getting compensated for their efforts.  Even small indie bands can get gigs in my home city at small bars.  

;)

Now - being able to listen to MP3's in game of my choice would be cool if only so I didn't have to run iTunes at the same time as my MMO.  :D

Regardless of how people feel about this particular dynamic I do applaud Turbine's robust support for rp in the game and wish other new games did as well. Between the music, outfit system, social clothing, canned emotes as well as freestyle, the game really encourages players to be more than just an avatar if they so wish.

Why do I applaud and support it? Because I find that games that support rp have better communities, and even if I'm not the kind of person who rp's I feel that the people who do rp generally add to the depth of the game.  It's all about adding depth to the game.

Originally posted by WW4BW

Almost forgot to mention my approval of any system that allows for players to freely express themselves, that allows the player to add content to the game that they themselves invented and created. Like a piece of music or guild crest.

Written chat is a good start, but its often dificult convey sarcasm for instance.. often the recipient would think you were applauding his skill when in fact you were scolding him.. Guess thats why people are often so damn obscene in their critique.. they want to make damn sure you understand that they arent pleased with you.

I often use....... elipses... or so Im told they are called, when chatting in games..

I have been told it makes it look like I think the other person is an idiot.........

But in fact I was trying to convey a pause in my..... train of thought and.... by that extention in my.... well.... my speach.

I can see why people would think I thought they were stupid, when my answer to a question would be something like this:

"You need to go to talk to your trainer....."

But I was infact making those elipses to express that I wasnt done talking and that more detailed info was coming and I just needed a long time to check my facts and type it accurately.

".... he is in the capital by the blacksmith and say: "Send me on my epic" and you also need to have done "prequest 1"  and "prequest 2". Let me know if I you need any more help.

 

Wouldn't another answer be to brush up on your linguistic and interpersonal skills?  It's sad how few 20somethings can write a letter these days with proper spelling and punctuation; despite spell checkers, free K-12 education in the US, etc.

Honestly if people in my social circles were constantly misunderstanding me I'd take a long, hard look at my own communication style and then change it as needed.  Shrug.

I use text messaging all the damn time myself but I have to say it's killed the communicative ability of an entire generation... ;)  If you can't get across sarcasm in text, you're not trying hard enough.  Try adding (that was sarcasm) in parenthesis after your paragraph.  

:D

given Blizzard’s recent propensity to trample all over their own IP (pop-culture-based dancing, motorcycles, helicopters, etc.)

There were helicopters in Warcraft 2, I'm just saying.

Originally posted by Justarius1

Originally posted by erictlewis

Yes you can turn off player music,  they you would also need to turn off combat sounds as well.

The reason why is mini's do music sounds durring combat.  So you get the drums you get drum sounds, lute you get kind of lute sounds, theoboy sounds like a bass guitair, then were back to the bagpipes.  You just cant put your mini on ingnore in a group.

its a silly system,  they want to do something good let us bring in mp3's into the game. 

 Ugh, you have to turn off combat sounds to turn off the music?

No, player music, game music and combat sounds are all separate sliders.

Originally posted by dhayes68

Originally posted by Justarius1

Originally posted by erictlewis

Yes you can turn off player music,  they you would also need to turn off combat sounds as well.

The reason why is mini's do music sounds durring combat.  So you get the drums you get drum sounds, lute you get kind of lute sounds, theoboy sounds like a bass guitair, then were back to the bagpipes.  You just cant put your mini on ingnore in a group.

its a silly system,  they want to do something good let us bring in mp3's into the game. 

 Ugh, you have to turn off combat sounds to turn off the music?

 

No, player music, game music and combat sounds are all separate sliders.

While that is true, the musical instrument that the mini has makes sounds durring comat.  In order to turn those combat sounds off you have to slide your combat slider down.  Say you get a mini with bagpipes you get bagpipe sounds the entire fight.  So you either turn of the combat sounds to deal with the instruiment th mini has or not   the music system has its on slider.    I do have that turned way down. 

Bah silly editor! I don't need my own text in this box!

I'm not sure what's worse, when an published authour doesn't research or when the commentors don't research before posting.

The system is likely to stem from what is called MML (Music Markup Language). Other games also provide this. Such a game (which is also free to play) is Mabinogi (which another poster has stated).

A link to a YouTube video of such a rendition is www.youtube.com/watch perhaps not the best video there but what ya going to do?

Originally posted by Justarius1

Originally posted by WW4BW
I often use....... elipses... or so Im told they are called, when chatting in games..

"You need to go to talk to your trainer....."

But I was infact making those elipses to express that I wasnt done talking and that more detailed info was coming and I just needed a long time to check my facts and type it accurately.

".... he is in the capital by the blacksmith and say: "Send me on my epic" and you also need to have done "prequest 1"  and "prequest 2". Let me know if I you need any more help. 

 

Wouldn't another answer be to brush up on your linguistic and interpersonal skills?  It's sad how few 20somethings can write a letter these days with proper spelling and punctuation; despite spell checkers, free K-12 education in the US, etc.

Honestly if people in my social circles were constantly misunderstanding me I'd take a long, hard look at my own communication style and then change it as needed.  Shrug.

I use text messaging all the damn time myself but I have to say it's killed the communicative ability of an entire generation... ;)  If you can't get across sarcasm in text, you're not trying hard enough.  Try adding (that was sarcasm) in parenthesis after your paragraph.  

:D

There's no sense in going over the "Dumb idea, can't mute it" agro, so lets get to something a little different.

Another comment in which was largely unresearched has been made by Justarius, claiming that twenty somethings can't write a letter in this era and use proper spelling and punctuation. Last time I went to school (and I'm twenty something) 20 is a number represented in figure format while twenty is how it should (in most situations other than the exceptions) be represented in most situations; this is because the '20' figures disrupts the reading flow.

The problem however is that first and foremost the above poster is not twenty something, he is thrity something. So you are both in the same age bracket of ten years.

Instead of laying down insults as you have Justarius, why not try to educate? Thou a public comment section isn't the best way to do so. Lets try these examples of the 'American English' correct way of using the famous eclipse. And on stating "American English" lets also state that WW4BW is Dutch.

"The most common and formal use of eclipses is to indicate an omission [typically in a quite]."

Example: "Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens: “I cannot help it ... I love her against reason.”

Another use for eclipses are in the following:

• A falter in dialog
• Passage of time
• An unfinished list
• The speaker has trailed off
• The speaker has left something unsaid

These are all grammatically correct uses for the infamous eclipse. However, what our member Justarius is trying to say, is that if you over use them, it becomes annyoing.

The use of the example question and answer above seems like a good way to reply and grammically correct.

You don't want to come of as being a noob-hater so you start to reply and indicate you haven't finished "...", and you don't want to take to long in replying to the new player as time is going to go by and the person who asked the question will have likely gone off saying "^@#! you too". For not replying in a timely manner.

One thing to note however is that an eclipse is only three dots "..." that is to say that where you have two or more than three, it is incorrect. If it's two its likely to be a typing mistake while when its more than three is likely to be an indication of how long the speaker was thinking!

WW4BW, if someone has a problem, just think of them as an uptight older person who has nothing better to do than bash you over the head with an eclipse or two... but maybe I'm missing something. Food for thought maybe...

Originally posted by erictlewis

Originally posted by dhayes68

Originally posted by Justarius1

Originally posted by erictlewis

Yes you can turn off player music,  they you would also need to turn off combat sounds as well.

The reason why is mini's do music sounds durring combat.  So you get the drums you get drum sounds, lute you get kind of lute sounds, theoboy sounds like a bass guitair, then were back to the bagpipes.  You just cant put your mini on ingnore in a group.

its a silly system,  they want to do something good let us bring in mp3's into the game. 

 Ugh, you have to turn off combat sounds to turn off the music?

 No, player music, game music and combat sounds are all separate sliders.

While that is true, the musical instrument that the mini has makes sounds durring comat.  In order to turn those combat sounds off you have to slide your combat slider down.  Say you get a mini with bagpipes you get bagpipe sounds the entire fight.  So you either turn of the combat sounds to deal with the instruiment th mini has or not   the music system has its on slider.    I do have that turned way down. 

In that context the bagpipe sounds are the same as any other combat sound and has nothing to do with hearing player music. I personally wish there was a separate slider for the all the screaming the chars do during combat.

Just another great idea that no one else has picked up. What he calls metagame is part of RP tools to my mind and they have been in decline for ten years, doubt they will see a come back.

 Yeah the music system is great. And listening to it while smoking some serious pipe-weed in Bree is something other games lack. Pipe-weed and music ftw!

Im sorry but I find it unbelivable to hear ppl talking about how good the music system in LOTRO is.  Who cares ?   Im not starting a MMO to play some music.   And LOTRO is crap in so many OTHER features that I can't even think of installing it again - ever.  Moral system, bad animations, very limtited mod and poor custimation setup.  - Just to name few.

As for other games have not picked up on this music system.  Probably because they consider other things more important.  And I agree with them 100%.  WOW doesn't have player housing - does not have guild ranking function (yet).  There are alot of things that WOW could do better before adding a crap music system. 

I still consider Turbine to have failed miserably to bring LOTR to life.  The main reason is probably BECAUSE of systems like the music system that is a extra featrue - and it seems to have gotten more attention from the devs than the more important features that seriously need some extra work to become abit intresting.

I thought it was a very interesting innovation. I had some fun with it, but of course, those with no musical ability are annoying to be around. It would have been interesting if playing certain notes had some use in some quests, but as a novelty item, it gets old after a while. Its probably not copied because for the effect required to implement it well, there is limited benefit.

Great article and great innovation. Like others have said, this is one of the few things that would have me be interested in this game. I hope others pick this up. I'm always puzzled when people don't want social features in a social game. I mean, if you don't want to be bothered by other people you can play Dragon Age.

I love the music system in LoTRO.  I enjoy hearing people standing around playing instruments.  It makes the towns more interesting and alive.  LoTRO is the only game i've played where people sometimes sit around in a tavern, talk, play music, and smoke pipes for fun.  

Seems like a lot of people that are complaining about player music that really have no idea what they are talking about.  The music doesn't carry very far.  It won't even carry from one side of a normal in-game tavern to the other.  If it's bothering you, which I find hard to believe but whatever, then walk a few steps away and it's gone.  If you don't want to be social in a social game, ie mmo, then go play the many single player games that are available.  This isn't MW2, Gears of War, or Oblivian.  If you get that annoyed so easily by other people then MMOs may not be the games for you.

I thought it was a great idea.  Some people are very talented.

I'm not so talented, so I just download music I found interesting.  I used to enjoy standing at the horse stalls and playing "Horse with No Name"

A player-created music system is a nice idea, but it is hardly essential to any MMO being released. What proportion of the LOTRO base actually use the system?

Also, it's interesting to see that most players' expression of themselves as individuals via music appears to be doing cover versions of existing songs. ;-) (Person who said they did original songs is excepted!)