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Lord of the Rings Online News - World Tour of Middle-earth
Posted by on Mar 27, 2007 | 21 comments in our forums
Lord of the Rings Online presents the World Tour of Middle-earth. Up to 1 million players will be invited to take part in this event that begins on April 6th.
Turbine, Inc. and Midway Games Inc. (NYSE: MWY) announced a massive, free "World Tour of Middle-earth" available to players throughout North America. Over one million players are planned to be invited into The Lord of the Rings Online (TM): Shadows of Angmar (TM), the most complete and authentic massively multiplayer online (MMO) world based upon the famous Books of J.R.R. Tolkien. The World Tour of Middle-earth is scheduled to begin on April 6th and continue until the anticipated launch of the game on April 24th.
"We decided to launch the World Tour of Middle-earth because of the overwhelming demand from players to get into the closed beta," said Jeffrey Anderson, President and CEO of Turbine, Inc. "We expect the World Tour of Middle-earth to be a spectacular event like nothing that you've ever seen before."
Free access to this hotly anticipated game combined with the staggering size and scale of the World Tour of Middle-earth make this an unprecedented event in the MMO industry. Players can pre-order the game at select retail stores nationwide or at www.lotro.com/preorder and start their adventures in Middle-earth beginning on March 30th.
Advancement in the game will be capped at level 15 which will give players a great opportunity to experience the most authentic online persistent recreation of Middle-earth ever created. Players should visit www.lotro.com/worldtour to get more information on how to obtain a World Tour key.
The Lord of the Rings Online is the first and only massively multiplayer online role-playing game based upon the Books of J.R.R. Tolkien. The game recreates the vast world of Middle-earth with incredible dedication to the lore with an unprecedented level of detail. The game delivers an experience that takes players beyond the Books to where they can create their own story within the most famous fantasy world of all time.
Read more here.
It's only sort of 'free' since you need to pre-order, but you're not paying for the pre-release weeks you play.
Edit - whoops, this is incorrect. Looks like the World Tour is completely free and there's no pre-order needed. Pretty impressive marketing idea I have to say. It certainly makes checking out the game much easier! Turbine must be pretty confident of the game they've made.
This sounds like a very good way of distrubing the initial load on the servers, the dedicated hardcore players will pre-order and get out of the low-level zones in those couple of weeks they won't be as crowded when the game is released.
Edit - Pre-ordering will allow people to keep characters which will still help alleviate crowding in the low level zones even with an initial level cap of 15.
they most likely have back up servers if things do get too crowded. Because I am just going to take a wild guess and say that they have thought of that problem just as you have
Turbine has done a heck of a job in terms of making this game... when it comes to retail and servers... i pray your right. I fully expect to have almost a WoW type of rush here... I sure as hell hope im wrong but Turbine has done just such a good job, even the hacks on FoH have started to wake up lol.
Ok, I could be wrong about this (it happens from time to time). But I think you only need to preorder if you want to start playing March 30th. April 6th starts what I believe is a truly free open beta. I admit I don't know what you need to do to get a key for the April 6th beta since I did preorder after enjoying closed beta so much.
You are 100% correct. The poster you quoted hasn't done any research at all.
You only need to pre-order if you want to play in the open beta on the 30th of march, want to keep your character into release and want the founders deal. The rest of us can play open beta for free like normal on April 6th, just like you said.
If any US, AUS, NZ players want a key for the open beta just go here http://www.gamespot.com/betas/lord-of-the-rings-online/index.php
The website doesn't even check your email, I just got 5 keys for me and all my mates. See you all in Middle Earth.
Turbine has been quoted as saying they have plenty of servers available that can be turned on "by a flip of a switch".
Believe me... they're prepared. :)
Heh, probably some left over DDO servers that never got used =p
I hope Turbine has failed for the last time.
I wonder if that 1,000,000 includes closed beta and pre-order testers? Anyone know? The number was already at 250k when I got my key.
Thank you for the correction. I did not read the original announcement correctly and misinterpreted the paragraph on pre-ordering.
And thank you for the link, it looks like I will also be going to get my world-tour key
See you in Middle Earth!
This is due for expansions. They have always said they intend to release expansions following the books, so eventually you will have the entire world. I believe the first is Rohan.
Waaa Waaa "I want to gank hobbits in the shire" That is all this post says. Turbine is sticking to the Lore and doing the book justice. In the book evil always loses. How much fun would a faction based game be if the evil side always has to be weaker and will always lose. Tolkien's son would never of let them make a game where the evil could win, it goes so much against the lore of the books.
And your hope of failure will not come true. The very fact that they have 1 million open beta keys (and I am pretty sure these do not count the pre-order keys) shows that they are very aware of the fact they will succeed. Will it attain WoW like numbers, probably not, but there is no chance of it being a failure.
No one said there was only going to be seven servers to start. They only gave you the names of seven of them. That "seven servers" thing has to be one of the most misread pieces of information regarding LOTRO this past week.
And 14 servers.... that's a fraction of where they're headed. ;)
Well, let's see...there're 3 servers for the elves, 5 for the dwarven kings in their halls of stone, 9 for mortal men, and of coarse, 1 for hobbits.
Apologies for not having it memorized - I'm sure some true fanatic can polish this up
Three servers for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One server to rule them all, One server to find them,
Apologies to JRR