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LOTR: War of the Ring Real-Time Strategy Game 159

Posted by timothy from the no-hobbit-on-hobbit-action dept.
DiZASTiX writes "Just saw this on Gamespot about LOTR: War of the Ring a Warcraft III like LOTR game: "The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring has only been in development for around seven or eight months, but at a press event in Berlin this week we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the game in its current state. The map itself was relatively featureless at this stage of development but boasted some great grass textures and trees, which were occasionally shadowed by the suggestion of clouds passing overhead. More impressive still were the character models on display, which, although unfinished, bore more than a passing resemblance to the colorful, stylized units of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.""
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LOTR: War of the Ring Real-Time Strategy Game More

LOTR: War of the Ring Real-Time Strategy Game

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  • Woo! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @07:26PM (#5415563)


    > The map itself was relatively featureless at this stage of development but boasted some great grass textures and trees, which were occasionally shadowed by the suggestion of clouds passing overhead.

    Sounds like a great game - can't wait!

  • Warcraft and LoTR? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by That_Dan_Guy ( 589967 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @07:26PM (#5415564)
    What resources am I supposed to mine? Tolkien was about how awful industrialization and cutting down trees and mining stuff was. And here's a game that may end up glorifying it?
    • Playing the bad guys, I assume that's exactly what you'll be doing -- ripping everything to shit. I would expect the environment around the bases of Sauron's forces to blacked and die, like with the creep in Starcraft.

      For the good guys.. er, maybe you'll go around begging large amounts of food and supplies of Tom Bombadil, elves and other forces that meander along seemingly at random throughout the game. That would seem to fit the paradigm of the books pretty well...

    • Re:Warcraft and LoTR? (Score:5, Informative)

      by levik ( 52444 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @07:36PM (#5415615) Homepage
      If you bothered to read the article, you would know that the game is divvied up into two campaigns:

      The "Good" campaign is about making do mostly with "hero" units, while the "evil" campaign is about massive buildups of force (possibly resulting from resource mining).

      So no inconsistencies here.

      • Actually I did read the article. And I'd say it was ambigious as to that point, thus my use of the word "MAY" in the original post.

        The fact is, having played the old warcraft games' missions where you only get a small group of heroes was a whole lot les fun than getting to build armies. Thus it MAY turn out to be more fun to play as "EVIL" and build up the massive armies, thus glorifying the very ideas Tolkien railed against.

        In my opinion it would have been much better to make the game more like MYTH than Warcraft.

        Therefore I stand by my original post.

    • Re:Warcraft and LoTR? (Score:5, Funny)

      by nomadic ( 141991 ) <`nomadicworld' `at' `gmail.com'> on Saturday March 01, 2003 @07:37PM (#5415616) Homepage
      You could grow pipeweed to power your troops.

      Sounds unlikely? Look at what they did with Galactic Battelgrounds, where you can have your R2 units gather berries and fish.
    • " What resources am I supposed to mine? Tolkien was about how awful industrialization and cutting down trees and mining stuff was. And here's a game that may end up glorifying it?" Tolkien wasn't really about anything. He tried to make his story's as socially irrelavant as possible. You could say his story was about the the threat of nazism, communism, nuclear bombs, industrialization, mining, cartoons, the slashdot effect, or whatever else. Who knows if he was for or against these things. His stories definitely weren't about any of them though.
      • There is something distinctly Nazi about Saruman and his operations. Him and his "master race" of humanised Orcs...you caught a distinct whiff of Adolf from Saruman.

        And if Saruman was a Hitler figure, where does that leave his boss, Sauron? Considering that JRR Tolkien was a very devout Christian, Sauron was none other than Satan. The Fallen Angel. The Great Deceiver. A giver of gifts with definite strings attached. Hitler as a minion of Satan? Not really a stretch if you accept a Christian worldview. I'm sure many Christians believed that Hitler was the Antichrist and that WWII was Armageddon.

        You cannot read LOTR and NOT get a sense that it was an allegory of what was going on in the background, namely World War II.
        • I seem to recall that Tolkien firmly denied accusations that his book drew upon events of WWII.
    • Tolkien was about how awful industrialization and cutting down trees and mining stuff was.

      Not entirely, Orthanc, Minas Tirith and the various Dwarven works show that the "good guys" could do large scale engineering as well.

      Of course, in Middle Earth they have flamin' magic to get things done...no such panacea here. ;-)

  • RTS Games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by unterderbrucke ( 628741 ) <unterderbrucke@yahoo.com> on Saturday March 01, 2003 @07:27PM (#5415566)
    I'm a small-time programmer at a rather large gaming company (can't say who, obviously, but no MS), and recently the demand for RTS programmers has gone up tremendously. This is mostly due to the success of Age of Empires.

    Just goes to show how much MS is the proverbial "golden goose", turning everything it touches into gold...
    • Just goes to show how much MS is the proverbial "golden goose", turning everything it touches into gold...

      And there was me thinking Microsoft had Peons to mine the gold for them! :p

    • Re:RTS Games (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:21PM (#5415813) Journal
      Age of Empires? Yes, it's nice and now several years old, not even close to what hit Starcraft or its expansion was for example. Warcraft III would sound more logical to me since it's more recent, but what do I know. :-) It just seemed strange to me that a single game, and that exact game, would increase the desire to make RTS games.
    • You are thinking of the midas touch, not the golden goose.

    • Re:RTS Games (Score:5, Interesting)

      by voodoo1man ( 594237 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @09:53PM (#5416162)
      Actually, if you go back to the good old days of 1998, you'll realize that the RTS bandwagon effect was at it's first peak right about then, and that this is only the second coming. Microsoft's AOE rode in pretty much on the tail end of the peak.

      Now you may ask yourself, why did the trend suddenly decline for a few years? Remember such classic titles as Earth 2027, KKND, KKND expansions pack, Earth 2227 (or whatever), KKND 2, KKND 2 expansion pack, and of course C&C Red Alert: expansion packs 1, 2 and 3 (is there a fourth one I'm missing?)? I believe the phrase "C&C clone" first became popular during this time, and for good reason. Most of these games sucked and sold poorly.

      Now the great cycle of life continues: the investors who got burned on the first crop have largely gone some other way, and Warcraft III (what the hell does AOE have to do with 'recently'?) is one of the top-selling games in recent memory, proving once again that if you're Blizzard, you can get away with making incremental changes to your games, slapping on a roman numeral on the box, and still make millions. Of course, to game publishers this means leeching season (never mind that most of the clone titles are guaranteed to flop miserably - they're investors! they take risks without thinking!).

      Also, why exactly can't you reveal who your employer is? Do they chain you to the radiator and beat you for talking to strangers? Or do you use your exotic on-line identity to post internal memos on Fatbabies? In any which case, you could have at least posted anonymously.

      • Also, why exactly can't you reveal who your employer is? Do they chain you to the radiator and beat you for talking to strangers?

        Probably not literally, but at at least one "rather large game company" that I know of (hint: first letter "E", second letter "A"), it would definitely be bad for your career to make public comments that might displease an exec or producer somewhere. (And what might displease them? Ah, there's the rub! No one can know in advance.)

      • When I post, I don't state what company I work for. It doesn't bare any relevance to the post. Besides my views will not always correspond with my companies views. To avoid possible censure and fun stuff like corrective action, it's best to not associate yourself with any company. I believe it's perfectly acceptable to not state who you work for in this case.

        As far as RTS goes, It's not my thing, and I tend to avoid them, yet everybody else I know seems utterly jazzed about things like this, especially as the letters LOTR are attached to it. I'm sure people will buy it just because the letters LOTR are attached to it.
      • if you're Blizzard, you can get away with making incremental changes to your games...

        I don't know about you, but even though the gameplay was similar to Warcraft II, I thought the story in the single player campaign of Warcraft 3 was worth what I paid right there... then I get the bonus of getting my butt kicked on the Battle.net for no additional charge!

  • I could be wrong, but didn't Microsoft release one a few months ago to coincide with the release of the Two Towers?

  • Impressive? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @07:30PM (#5415583) Homepage
    How much can you really tell from a pre-pre-beta version of the game? At this point, there's still a 50-50 chance we'll never even see this one in production.

    Good to know it's (maybe) coming, though. I wonder how well LoTR will translate to this format -- it is an extremely hero-driven mythos (even beyond the quest of the Ring Bearer), and the avatar/hero units in RTS games I've played previously were rather disappointing when compared with Gandalf or Aragorn.

    If Aragorn can't lead an army of the dead, I'll be very disappointed. If they turn Galdalf from subtle mage into just another flashy area-damage unit, I'm tossing the whole affair out the window. That is, of course, assuming it runs well under WineX in the first place...

  • erm (Score:2, Interesting)

    by odyrithm ( 461343 )
    shadowed by the suggestion of clouds passing overhead

    Hope the weather dont get to bad, else wont be able to see bollocks.. bet they copy the UK weather patterns.. always over cast here ;)
  • Instead of them making a LOTR rts which will probably be just like every other RTS. They should make a LOTR strategy game like the Total War series. You know Shogun/Mediaval war. Turn based Strategy with real time battles with thousands of units.
  • ... it will be possible to pit the forces of good and evil against their own kind, but in order to stay true to the books there are apparently a number of events that will never be allowed to transpire--hobbits attacking other hobbits being one of the examples mentioned.

    With that in mind, I know there will be a lot of players who will never be hobbits(es). Some players just join these games to run amuck and kill everything in sight, so they won't be able to stand being a hobbit.

  • I am getting really tired with all the lotr movies, books published in 100 different ways, action figures, playing cards and everything. I loved the books, the movies were okay-ish but IMHO there were no need for them either. Why could they not just let the books rest as the king of fantasy litterature ?
    • Why could they not just let the books rest as the king of fantasy litterature ?

      Do you really need an answer to that? You gotta milk the franchise for all its worth while the fans are buying. Just take a look at the sudden surge of superheroes movies.

    • You have your own opinions about the books, movies, etc and I have my own.

      To answer your question:
      Apparently you will never be an entrepeneur or business exec in modern america because you don't have that incredibly strong desire to harvest as much money from as many people as you possibly can no matter the cost (unless it gets to blatantly illegal, maybe not even then though) for as long as possible. If you had the ganas, it not be hard to understand why things are the way they are here in This Modern World [thismodernworld.com]

  • Developer's Track Record (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SubliminalLove ( 646840 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @07:43PM (#5415643)
    Black Label Games, it seems, is a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal Games, the makers of such great games as Homeworlds, Baldur's Gate, etc...

    I'm not really sold on them, though, for this kind of production. Homeworlds, while it was a pretty game, was absolute crap in terms of strategy, and the next closest thing to a RTS they've made was the Caesar series, which is a lot like Sim City for crack-babies (don't get me wrong; I liked it, but it's weird).

    I'm sick of this dichotomy in the gaming industry. Any game based on a universe the gaming community knows and loves will suck, because the company in charge knows it will sell like crazy based solely on the license appeal. I wish just once the big men on top would be sack-heavy enough to take a solid license and then give the game the time it takes to really make it rock.

    There is hope for us. Matrix: Reloaded looks like it may very well not suck. But when a company gets the license to LOTR and then just starts pumping the games out like this (evidently Vivendi's Black Label has sole license to the video games for the LOTR universe), they're all going to be crappy and/or simplistic.

    Game companies: We gamers are patient. We'll wait the two or three years it takes to bring together a good title! Making a good RTS doesn't happen in eight months!

    ~SL

    • Patience? I dunno... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TopShelf ( 92521 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @07:59PM (#5415717) Homepage Journal
      I, for one, cannot wait - I haven't bought a PC game in a few years, but this is a guaranteed first-day purchase in my book. My brothers and I used to play a great War of the Ring boardgame long ago (mid-80s, can't remember the name). I always enjoyed running Saruman's forces out of Orthanc, who for my money is the real wildcard in the war.
    • Homeworld was made by Relic. Baldur's Gate was made by BioWare. The Caesar series seems to be made by Impressions Software.
    • >the next closest thing to a RTS they've made was the Caesar series, which is a lot like Sim City for crack-babies (don't get me wrong; I liked it, but it's weird).

      What, you don't like hearing "More Plebs are Needed!" every 5 seconds? :)
    • Er, Homeworld was developed by Relic Entertainment and *published* by Sierra - who are a Vivendi subsidiary. In general terms, this means that Homeworld (not Homeworlds) is pretty irrelevant to the development going on at Black Label Games.

      Which isn't to say it's a good or bad thing, just to say it's not as if it's the same development team.

    • Vivendi didn't make any of those games, they published them. You argument would still work except that in my experience, the publisher can't be used as an indicator of quality. Relic made Homeworld, Bioware made Baldur's Gate, and as far as I know, a group at Sierra made the Caesar and Cleopatra games.

      It's more appropriate to refer to Liquid Entertainment's past work, which is Battle Realms and the Battle Realms addon. BR was good, certainly giving me a good feeling about Liquid developing this LOTR game. In fact, when I found out it was them, I was very very relieved.

      You may still be right, and it may be rushed out the door too fast. I don't think Vivendi does that too much.

      Still, I'd take a rushed game from Liquid over a non-rushed game from, say Phantagram (makers of the horrific Kingdom Under Fire.) Liquid itself doesn't have the longest track record, but the two founders both worked at Westwood and Ed Del Castillo (one of them) was "the sole Producer in charge of the entire Command and Conquer series, including Red Alert and its expansions..." This info is available at Liquid's annoying Flash site.

      Ravi

    • Game companies: We gamers are patient. We'll wait the two or three years it takes to bring together a good title! Making a good RTS doesn't happen in eight months!

      Yes, you'd think so... but I did a brief stint working on an RTS title at a Very Large Game Company, and lemme tell ya, that just ain't the way the industry works, at least as far as I can tell.

      Once the powers-that-be decide on a shipping date for a game, and start advance promotion, and make commitments to major retailers that it'll be on their shelves on a given date.... it's pretty much gonna ship in that timeframe, or heads roll.

      It's really a shame, because, inevitably, quality suffers (though apparently the market doesn't really care, as long as the game has really cool explosions). Think about it, how many PC games have you bought lately that had a half-dozen patches in the first month or two, and *still* felt like they were rushed to market way too early?

      Perhaps if the industry would stop its habit of hyping a game 8-12 months in advance of its anticipated ship date (which are generally pure fantasy in the first place, from my experience), they wouldn't end up in this sort of situation... but somehow that seems unlikely. Alas.

    • It looks like this is also being developed by Liquid entertainment who did work for Battle Realms. They are good group of guys that came up with a good concept for a game, that was overshadowed by WCIII because of many delays in their launch date. Hopefully this title will be a lot more successful.

  • Thousdands of elements (Score:3, Interesting)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @07:43PM (#5415646) Homepage Journal
    I always got annoyed with starcraft, being only able to control about 100 elements at a time, max. Most of the time you were limited to even less.

    I'd like to see an RTS that let you control thousands of elements at a time. Maybe they could save CPU time by mirroring some guys, or something.

    How lame would it be to have the final battle of the ring with just 100 guys total :P
    • Dont just stand there then! Run out and grab a copy of "Cossacks"... the new version based on american history has a unit cap of around 10k or so... battles look rather cool :)

    • Total War (Score:3, Informative)

      by Brian_Ellenberger ( 308720 )
      The Total War games can get into the tens of thousands and still look pretty cool. The battlefields are huge as well. Check out: http://www.totalwar.com/ [totalwar.com]

      All those people griping about RTS games being stagnant just haven't looked hard enough.

      Brian Ellenberger
      • The Total War games can get into the tens of thousands and still look pretty cool.

        This is because of a little trick called using 2D sprites for the army, and not having fully 3d characters.

        Right now, thousands of 3d characters on screen at one time is impossible, but Total War's 2d replacements aren't half bad.

  • nice screenshots (Score:2, Informative)

    by suhit ( 171059 )
    Well, even though the game sounds blah, there does seem to be some very nice art work associated with it - Check it out at http://www.warofthering.net/gallery/ [warofthering.net]; not to mention the nice screenshots of the game available at http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters/products/scre enindex/0,11104,563555,00.html [gamespot.com]

    Suhit
  • Lets all pray they use MASSIVE in the game somehow. *drools at the though*
    • No need to just check out Rome Total War. That trailer is of actual game graphics.

      http://www.3dgamers.com/dl/games/rome/rometotalw ar .zip.html
  • They make games out of everything these days.

  • Frodo Tanks (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mordarion ( 516938 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @08:15PM (#5415788) Homepage
    Hey, if the game has Mammoth Frodo Tanks, then I'm sold.

  • I will say up-front that I'm not a fan of "real-time strategy." For that reason alone, I probably will not buy any LotR RTS game, no matter that I love the movies and the book both.

    I think it would be possible to do this in a turn-based game; and it might even turn out better. Does anyone remember the strategy game "War of the Lance," based in the DragonLance universe and published some 12 or so years ago? The graphics obviously weren't as well-developed; but a lot of the concepts behind "War of the Lance" and this proposed "War of the Rings" game could be very similar.

    There's such a glut of RTS games already - quite a few of them good on their own merits, that I fear this game faces an uphill battle to begin with. Better to let it shine in a genre that's been all but forgotten the last few years.

  • "Man I thought this game was going to rock but all anyone does is Elefunt rush 5 minutes into the game"
  • *yawn*

    Yet another Starcraft/Warcraft/Dune2/whatever RTS clone. Only with a Tolkien theme! (oh, joy!)

    So, this game will be about mining resources, building barracks, "buying" soldiers, researching upgrades and rushing attacks... nothing new to see here.

    Flame on.

  • disgusting (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The make a commercial computer game of a book which is anti-modernist. How ironic.

  • Not clouds (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 01, 2003 @09:04PM (#5415992)
    The map itself was relatively featureless at this stage of development but boasted some great grass textures and trees, which were occasionally shadowed by the suggestion of clouds passing overhead.

    Clouds? Those are Nazgul flying overhead!
    [eerie music sounds]
    Mwhuahaha!
  • That was like the best Civilization scenario ever. It really seemed to capture the desperation of the forces of good and pretty much the only way to beat it was to follow the general outline of the story and take the ring "unit" to Mordor. Mad props to whoever made it.

  • Anyone care to guess how long until a LOTR MMORPG? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SuperMario666 ( 588666 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @09:34PM (#5416109)
    I'm thinking two years max. I'm not sure what kind of scenario they'd set up, but it would be a blast to go on some "The Hobbit" style adventures with some online friends.

  • The game of my dreams :) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Khalidz0r ( 607171 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @09:36PM (#5416115) Journal
    I am waiting for this game like I never waited for a game.

    Lord Of The Rings is a very interesting fantasy story, and I advice everybody who haven't read it yet to *read* it.

    Watching movies might be fun, but reading it is very great. It is one of the best peices of art I've been exposed to. Tolkien is a genius.

    This game might just be using the great story to sell a product that's not as good as the story itself, but I have high hopes in the game. A real time strategy game is just what fits this style of stories :).

    We want a game up to the level of LotR, please!

    Thanks for reading,

    Khalid

  • This game will be a truly monumental achievement (Score:3, Insightful)

    by voodoo1man ( 594237 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @10:22PM (#5416252)
    But first, let me comment on this quote:
    More impressive still were the character models on display, which, although unfinished, bore more than a passing resemblance to the colorful, stylized units of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.
    Ignoring the startingly strange opinion that half-done art with an "inspired" style (if you don't have lawyers, this is called "copyright theft") is "impressive," I as a fan of LOTR must take objection to to the "colorful, stylized" part. There are other, much more subtle ways to differentiate small units in a strategy game.

    Now, to my original thought:

    [WOTR] isn't being designed as a hard-core real-time strategy game, but ... as an RTS that will be accessible and fun ... fans of [LOTR] who might never have played a strategy game before ... Liquid Entertainment
    hopes to incorporate a variable difficulty level .. in which the strength of the enemy will be automatically determined by how well you are doing ... how quickly you are managing to build units.
    I think it is a monumental task to dumb down what today constitutes an RTS, but Liquid Entertainment is trying. God help us all - this game can't help but sell well, and whatever features it has are sure to be copied by future RTS clones. There go the last elements of strategy - don't worry if you can't even amass a tank rush, the game dumbs itself down! Of course, you have to consider that this thinking is implying that 'tank rushes' constitute strategy and are difficult to do. This is the reason why I switched to turn-based after Myth II.

  • Hopefully not another Theme Game (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Keyer ( 642407 ) on Saturday March 01, 2003 @10:22PM (#5416259)
    I hope this does not end up like the StarWars thing. StarWars is an amazingly over used Title. May of there game are just bad graphics and storyline with the name "StarWars" in the title. It is for this reason that I never look at these games when I decide what kind game I want to buy.

    I can only hope that these devoplers don't make the same mistake in the LotR title.
  • Many of the characters and units from Warcraft 3 appear to be derived or borrowed from the Lord of the Rings. The Warcraft 3 creature types are very similar (Elves, Humans, Orcs and Undead), heros bear a resemblance to those in LOTR and IMHO Warcraft 3 itself could have been marketed under the name War of the Rings. Warcraft 3 has benifitted greatly from LOTR inspired mythology. This should be interesting then because in order to not be almost a replica it will have to be more innovative and groundbreaking than even Warcraft 3, which I hold very highly in this regard. I'll be very interested in the outcome.

    In any case, by the sound of the time period of this thing it will serve as a nice interim between WC3 and WC4.
    • > In any case, by the sound of the time period of, this thing it will serve as a nice interim, between WC3 and WC4

      hmm..you obviously don't know much about Blizzard if you think there'll be a WC4 any time this decade, let alone by 2005 ;)

      We'll be lucky if we even see WoW by then...
    • Well, no kidding. Axe-carrying dwarves, woods-dwelling elves, elderly staff-bearing wizards, and foul orcs were brought to the masses in LOTR.

      Plenty of subsequent fantasy books, games and movies probably draw upon that, the same way many draw upon fantasy-medieval-European themes -- it saves work, and makes the material more accessible to readers who are already familiar with the rehashed ideas.

  • OT: plain text of Tolkien available? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know this is OFF TOPIC, but can someone point to me a repository of plaintext files of Tolkien's work? LOTR would great, more Tolkien would be awesome. I know some are out there, I downloaded FOTR quite some time ago, but now just try and google for something LOTR and get through the movie slag! sigh.

  • RTS...bleh (Score:3, Funny)

    by DumbWhiteGuy777 ( 654327 ) on Sunday March 02, 2003 @12:00AM (#5416746)
    RTS?! Where's my LOTR-Sims game?! "Damn you Aragorn! Stop overflowing the toilet, and get a job!"
  • There was a War of the Ring game years ago, I probably have it around here somewhere. Definitely highly on the strategic level, with small bits of a non linear computer RPG thrown in. You could even take the fellowship through Goblin Town, where I had Gandalf alone take out some 400 goblins, the rest of the fellowship took out the rest.

  • LOTR Icon! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bacontaco ( 126431 ) on Sunday March 02, 2003 @02:02AM (#5417244)
    Why can't we have an icon specially for Lord of the Rings? C'mon, we have a Star Wars icon, and now we want one for LOTR!
  • If not they don't have a hair on their asses...
    Come on guys, LINUX SUPPORT PLEASE !!!
  • And I'll tell you why:

    " According to Marcus Lindblom, the game's producer, War of the Ring isn't being designed as a hard-core real-time strategy game, but rather more as an RTS that will be accessible and fun for both strategy fans and fans of The Lord of the Rings who might never have played a strategy game before"

    You know what? I want to play a game based on Lord of the Rings, the first of its kind, to be for strategy fans. I want it to be for those of us with a lot of experience, who are looking for something new and innovative, yet at the same time incorporating all that has come before.

    I want to see the orcs crawling over the mountains in the distance, covering them like bugs as they advance. I want to see the classic over-the-horizon shot as an army of uru'khai come to wage war. I want a Risk-like map available showing me where I can move my troops in position, and then be able to switch to a warcraft-3 like view to see the ensuing battles.

    I want the slow buildup of supplies and buildings, and long sessions with cabinet members on how best to defend my kingdom. If this is real time strategy, it doesn't have to go at Warcraft 3's pace. I don't need another Warcraft 3 mod that has Lord of the Rings characters and a "Warcraft 3-esque" storyline. You know why? Becuase people have modded Warcraft 3 enough already that there are maps that replay the adventures in The Fellowship of the Ring (playable w/ 8 of your friends) and The Battle of Helms Deep. I don't want a few more units, some new models and a screwed up story. If you're going to go, do it right!

    This is one of the single biggest opportunities that a game designer could have and they are screwing it up so they can get sales. I'm sure they'll try to put this out on all platforms (probably not GBA, but hell, in some marketing meeting they might throw out the possibility for laughs), on all systems, so they can make tons of cash and have the Click Button Repeatedly To Win syndrome that is so common nowadays. You ever played The Two Towers on PS2 or PC? Same concept. Oh sure, there are "combos", but really, you're just mashing the same buttons over and over.

    Think of a combination of Medieval: Total War (and for that matter Shogun: Total War) and Warcraft 3 and Master of Orion. You could have commanders that report to you, building guilds who construct defense structures, a cabinet to help advise you, and then, when the battle heats up, you can go there and watch it happen.

    Are we really so void of time and in such a hurry that a half-way thinking man's LOTR RTS is impossible?

    I'd like to think not.
  • The question has to be asked: Why isn't Weta making this game? Sure, they're not exactly a game development studio, but in conjunction with such a company they could put their Massive [wired.com] software to good use in RTS form. Half the work is done - the A.I. is already there, and it would be relatively easy for them to scale down Massive. Furthermore, they have high quality models and animations of all of the heroes and other characters already.

    On a seperate note, who gave Vivendi the right to take over lotr.com and lordoftherings.com?


  • I think we may have enough versions of the the games now.
    If you read the book you don't need 10 different games to impulse your fantasy.
    (Some drawings from the game looked really cool though).

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