Originally posted by nitefly

I'm not talking about the world presented in the tabletop Warhammer game, I'm referring to the Old World that the tabletop game takes place in. The whole Order / Destruction Axis is pure nonsense though I'll readily agree on that.

My comment was in response to an earlier comment saying that the Lore would drive away people from Warhammer: Age of Reckoning.

My point was merely that it depends hugely on the player.

Concerning Lord of the Rings and Middle-Earth and how no Tolkien fans dislike the game I would have to call that a downright piece of speculation. I think that's how Turbine/Codemasters fans think, not how all Tolkien fans think.

I'm personally a huge fan of Tolkien's works, but I'm not very impressed with the way Turbine has converted that world into a computer game. For me, the world Turbine presents is extremely generic in terms of fantasy, it takes staple elements and presents them in a generalised fashion mostly reminiscent of the 70's Pen&Paper Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game.

In Turbine's version you have Elves who are just pointy-eared humans with a predisposition towards trees and bows but in Tolkien's works they are magnificient creatures with a huge mythological depth and a millenia deep background seeped deep in the bygone ages of myth and legend. To some extent you have the same with Dwarves and Hobbits, one Turbine (D&D) version and a vastly different, much more unique, Tolkien version.

The game is set to be in the Age of Man, where the other races are fading but if you don't make use of this rather central point in the story, are you really then respecting the fundamentals of the world? Aren't you just going down the road of D&D or other such trivialised fantasy genres?

To be very pointy, apart from the names used, what separates the Middle-Earth presented by Turbine from Forgotten Realms as portrayed in Dungeons & Dragons? Think about the massive amount of magic items, the monsters, the levels?

Another point is the size of the game world. Why take on such a large part of the fictional world if you only intend to do so little? Middle Earth is huge (even Peter Jackson got this quintessential part of the original works absolutely spot-on) but it is also very much an open world of grand open spaces and ruins. The ruins are present in Turbine's version but the grandness, the scope, the wonder and the splendour is not, it is a miniature world where only the aggressive (XP-related) elements are fleshed out in any real detail, again an obvious tip-of-the-hat to D&D.

There is plenty of grand material in Lord of the Rings and Middle-Earth to make the foundation for a MMO set in that world but in order to do so you have to realise that elves, hobbits, and dwarves are not playable races, they are creatures of wonder, quaintness and scarcity.

You can say that would make a lot of people sad but those are not the Tolkien fans, they are the D&D fans, because the Tolkien fans are well aware that the role of Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits is not on the center of the stage but rather as elements of wonder in a world that gradually looses more and more of its Splendour.
 

I respect your opinion and I think that was a really nice post!

Even if I disagee with you on the whole you have some valid arguments.. but remember that doing a MMO based on Lotr is probably one of the hardest things to do (cant belieave someone even tried!)... and it would be impossible to make the books justice as a game and they had to adapt to fit the format... (just like Peter Jackosn did with the movies)  they have to balance between making a game that people would whant to play and staying true to the books.. I think they do a good job most of the time and Im amazed by the level of detail that is in the game that is drawn from the books!

I might give WAR a try, but doubt it will stick...I'm not  a pvp'er.  I'm an explorer/quester.

Originally posted by Papadam

I respect your opinion and I think that was a really nice post!

Even if I disagee with you on the whole you have some valid arguments.. but remember that doing a MMO based on Lotr is probably one of the hardest things to do (cant belieave someone even tried!)... and it would be impossible to make the books justice as a game and they had to adapt to fit the format... (just like Peter Jackosn did with the movies)  they have to balance between making a game that people would whant to play and staying true to the books.. I think they do a good job most of the time and Im amazed by the level of detail that is in the game that is drawn from the books!

Thanks and likewise. Just as my disappointment in Turbine's implementation cannot detract from the enjoyment other people get from the product it should be acceptable to have a difference in opinion.

Lord of the Rings is a huge and daunting undertaking as there is a very big fanbase around the world all with their precious elements they would like to have expressed whenever Lord of the Rings is mentioned. A good example is the whole Tom Bombadil debacle following Peter Jackson and co-writers' decision to leave him out of their movie version of Lord of the Rings.

My pet element is the mythology, the part where orcs aren't just evil monsters you hit to earn levels, the part where elves are special wondrous creatures very much apart and very different from humans and so on. I find some of the liberties taken to be detracting heavily from what sets Middle-Earth apart from general fantasy and I feel that instead paying homage to the fact that Lord of the Rings was among the pioneers, it is dumbed down to become exactly what all others that followed, that did not have the depth of detail and scope of imagination as portrayed by J.R.R. Tolkien, a simplified D&D type fantasy.

In many ways Lord of the Rings is the grandfather of modern fantasy (not the sole ancestor but an important one) and the portrait Turbine has made is basically Dungeons & Dragons: Online once more this time set in Campaign Setting: Middle-Earth instead of Eberron.

So is it easy to step in the footsteps of one who was genuinely original without risking to alienate a lot of potential players who have grown up with DragonLance, Wheel of Time, the Drizzt novels, and so on? No, ofcourse it isn't, but on the other hand, when you take on the IP, apart from the obvious publicity benefits, a reasonable amount of attention to source material could reasonably be expected.

Another poster above said that elves have elongated faces so this was everything he imagined Lord of the Rings to be like and ignored the rest of my post. If that's the attention to detail a person expects, I would say that a lot of other MMOs with Elves in them must have felt just like Middle-Earth to said person.

So in closing, we'll have to agree on disagreing.


 

Originally posted by nitefly

 

mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/userPosts/553235/page/5

gg .

As for War, as long as that community can contain itself better then the  Vg community, I will try it. For me it is 90% community  that makes me want to play a game.

I don't think many will.  At least not many will stay with WAR.  Two totally different kinds of games.

WAR's PvE will honestly be nothing like that of WoW or LotRO.  If you go into it wanting more of that, you will be disappointed, guaranteed.  Think side dish instead of main entree.  Yeah, there are tons of people who are fine with a MMORPG that has world PvP as its main strength, but I don't think your average LotRO player is among them.

Unfortunately Tolkien didnt live enough to finish his opera :( ... Even though i think Turbine could make an effort to put something like arenas or tournments in LOTRO... Since u can actually duel someone in the game.

What do u think?

No thanks, plenty of other games with that kind of thing. Lotro is fine the way it is.

S