Lord of the Rings Online

Personally, am having a pretty gtreat time not worrying about getting killed by someone who is bored with the content and decides to make other people annoyed. The decade for annoying , no purpose pvp is over, it is time to move on and find new ways to challenge players, and LotRO does that very well.

If you are a try PVP fan, you would be playing Shadowbane, regardless of it's graphics, it is the best pvp game ever made.

The story of LotrO has always been about the "journey of the fellowship", the dependence on others through darkest of times, the Story is not about some solo nobody hiding in a bush to kill a hoobit, it just never happened in the books , solo isingle pvp element would of ruined this game , the game would of been huge disaster is it was released as a working version of MEO.

Turbine has played there cards professionally , not backing them self in a corner with a linear good vs evil pvp game with 0 content. They created a game that is fully featured to role play in Middle Earth, a game that brings players together quest . With that said Turbine has left many branches to test , like MP , how people would actually play a monster, the answer is in how many monster player there are, does number of MP's give Turbine the insentive to create a crossover expansion for an evil side like with CoV ?

Think the people whining how MEO would of been this or that have really not thought out the true possibilties of what Turbine is capable of ... Also see these small threads as a desperatation to disturb what positive flow the game has right now, the buzz on LotRO is getting bigger , and it has a few games "To be released" a little worried. example this thread discussion on what was never been.

Originally posted by elondor

no, I play mmo's to fight dragons and gods, i play FPS games to test my skill vs other humans skill, not my class/race/armor/uberleetraidgear vs someone elses

 

MMO pvp is finding which class has the most advantage over all others, or the best chance to win, there really isn't a challenge, and even that matters little, because in the end it all turns into a zergfest in all MMO pvp games.

QFT!

If I want PVP, I play a shooter. Meet me in BF2 if you want challenge :)

DB

Middle Earth Online was originally developed by Sierra, not Turbine.  This was the first link I came up with:

programmerjoe.com/2007/05/28/whatever-happened-to-middle-earth-online/

I'm sure there is an actual detailed history of MEO/ LoTRO lying around somewhere (I could swear I've read one), but I'm too lazy to go looking for it.

In any case, I agree with several posters in this thread. PvP in MMOs usually bites.  I can count on one hand the matches I've been in that came down to skill (i.e., knowledge of my class and the one I was up against).  Usually it's numbers (i.e., zerg), gear, levels. or classes that are inherintly unbalanced in a particular setting.  DAoC stands out in my mind for having some of the best PvP I've experienced, at least pre TOA or on classic servers.  But even in that game, it very often comes down to numbers.

Originally posted by solareus

Personally, am having a pretty gtreat time not worrying about getting killed by someone who is bored with the content and decides to make other people annoyed. The decade for annoying , no purpose pvp is over, it is time to move on and find new ways to challenge players, and LotRO does that very well.

If you are a try PVP fan, you would be playing Shadowbane, regardless of it's graphics, it is the best pvp game ever made.

Think the people whining how MEO would of been this or that have really not thought out the true possibilties of what Turbine is capable of ... Also see these small threads as a desperatation to disturb what positive flow the game has right now, the buzz on LotRO is getting bigger , and it has a few games "To be released" a little worried. example this thread discussion on what was never been.

 

As for "Middle Earth Online was originally developed by Sierra, not Turbine." I mentioned earlier that it was being worked on at some point in the 90s and got shut down. Turbine picked it back up with Vivendi and Tolkien Enterprises and it was being based around the Asheron's Call 2 engine (which I think it still is anyway), that was in... 2001 or 2002. Around 2005 or 2006, Turbine won the rights to develop away from Vivendi, and they changed the name to Lord of the Rings Online to demonstrated the new focus (even though the devs told us the focus hadn't changed much, which was a massive lie). Instead of living in Middle Earth, sandbox style, with alignment and making choices and becoming part of the world (and never seeing the Fellowship (they were supposed to be either just out of Moria or in Rivendell at the time setting in the launch of MEO)) they changed it to a WoW style system with huge class restrictions, instances, quest and gear based leveling up, and a linear path through the game.

Perhaps this list will make it more clear:

Middle Earth Online (MEO)

Mythica

Marvel Universe Online

Star Trek Online

Wish

MEO may have been something people would have played... but until it's released by a company it's just vaporware.

Also, Tolkien Enterprises not only approved of Turbine's LotRo but just recently extended the license to 2014; with an option to extend to 2017.  So, there might still be a chance for MEO to come out... in like 2020 or so. 

Who knows perhaps by then we might be tired of LoTRo. 

I found an article in Gamespot dating back to 2003....

It appears there was a time when taking an evil path was considered possible. Obviously something changed their minds on it.  I agree though, MEO might have been a truly interesting game to play, but the WOW influence won out.

www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/middleearthonline/preview_6028194.html

At the ongoing E3, we took an up-close look at Middle-Earth Online, VU Games' upcoming Tolkien-inspired online role-playing game in development at Turbine Entertainment. The version we saw was, according to Turbine president Jeffrey Anderson, "in a prototype state," though the already-impressive graphics engine suggested otherwise. Though the game will be based on the same engine the developer used to create Asheron's Call 2, it will look considerably better, featuring enhanced support for improved water and dynamic lighting and shadow effects, as well as support for far, far more graphical detail, especially with respect to character models. We watched a human character wearing a suit of extremely ornate, glossy plate-mail armor underneath a worn traveling cloak stride through a festival in a colorful hobbit village in the Shire. The Shire itself was also remarkably detailed, complete with cozy-looking hobbit holes and groups of hobbits milling about outside.

According to Anderson, Middle-Earth Online will attempt to bring true role-playing aspects to the world of massively multiplayer games--a world that, as he suggested, seems more focused on creating large fields of monsters to hunt rather than allowing players the freedom to play as epic heroes and villains. To that end, Middle-Earth Online's graphical engine will allow for many more characters and monsters to appear onscreen at the same time, both to let players stage huge battles and to let them congregate in populated areas, such as the Shire, in which we watched hobbits chatting with each other, seeing to their chores, and even gathering for a dance in the town square. Middle-Earth Online will also put more emphasis on interactive and destructible environmental objects, such as the fireworks launchers in the Shire.

Once we'd seen the Shire, we were able to visit the dank mines of Moria, a series of huge underground caverns adorned with crumbling dwarven architecture. Some particularly important ruins, such as the tomb of the King Under the Mountain, will be clearly indicated--in this case, with a single shaft of blue light that cut through the darkness overhead and illuminated the dwarven runes carved on the bier. Middle-Earth Online will allow you to play as characters of different races, such as humans, dwarves, and elves, and you'll occasionally encounter ancient writing and glyphs in different languages and be unable to read them. So, in this case, unless you happen to be playing as a dwarf, you'll have to complete various quests on the behalf of the dwarven people so they'll reward you with some rudimentary teachings of their language. Otherwise, you'll need to enlist the help of a friend playing as a dwarf character if you want to find out what the runes say.

In addition to choosing a specific race for your character, you'll be able to determine what sorts of skills and abilities you'll have using a hybrid profession system that will let you develop your character both as a member of a specific character class and as a character with a varied set of skills that will unlock advanced abilities along a skill tree, much like in Asheron's Call 2. You'll also be able to customize your character's appearance by recovering or crafting powerful weapons and armor, as well as wearing different clothing over your armor. However, the most important factor that will distinguish your character from others will be your character's level of virtue, or vice, as the case may be. By successfully completing quests for the cause of good, your character will become far more well liked by good-aligned factions, may gain access to specific abilities, and will also change in appearance. Similarly, if you take on important quests but opt for the evil alternative, your character will instead increase in vice and will change in appearance to reflect this fact--and may even gain some of the otherworldly powers of Mordor. The game will take place around the timeframe of the first novel in Tolkien's trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, so Turbine will likely ship the game with highly developed versions of the areas in the first novel and then add new areas in the coming months. However, the chaotic realm of Mordor will likely serve not only as a seat of Middle-earth's evil power, but also as the game's free-form player vs. player combat area. Middle-Earth Online will be released late next year.

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Originally posted by dragonace

Perhaps this list will make it more clear:
Middle Earth Online (MEO)
Mythica
Marvel Universe Online
Star Trek Online
Wish

MEO may have been something people would have played... but until it's released by a company it's just vaporware.
Also, Tolkien Enterprises not only approved of Turbine's LotRo but just recently extended the license to 2014; with an option to extend to 2017. So, there might still be a chance for MEO to come out... in like 2020 or so.
Who knows perhaps by then we might be tired of LoTRo.

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I will take a game that's out and I enjoy over one that might have been.  Even if Turbine had stayed focused on a "sandbox" style game, there is no way of knowing if it would have been any fun.  Developers often promise all sorts of things that don't make it into the final product.

I think the reason you aren't getting the sympathetic response you might have been expecting is that most of us like LoTRO, classes and all.   If we wanted something more sandboxy, we'd be playing EVE, UO, or sitting in the SWG forums mourning the NGE :-P