Chris Taylor on Middle Earth Online 34
Recently, GameSpy's Andrew Bub caught up with Vivendi Univeral's Chris Taylor (of Fallout and Starfleet Command) at GenCon to talk about their Middle Earth Online MMORPG which is in the works. A lot of ground is covered, from which parts of middle earth will be in the game, to how they manage to keep track of all of Tolkien's lore, to Tom Bombadil's poetry.
Tolken's rolling in his grave.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldnt be surprised in 2 years, most people will hate the "Lord Of the Rings" series of books. In a way, It's kind of sad.
Re:Tolken's rolling in his grave.... (Score:4, Interesting)
It will be kinda sad when leet games are all bragging about the phat lewt they got camping the Shelob spawn...
In any case, at least with the media saturation, many new people are exposed to Tolkiens work - hell, some of em may make it through the Silmarillion
Re:Tolken's rolling in his grave.... (Score:1)
Beginning the chapter he was interrupted with the mutter from the back of the room "Oh God, not another fucking elf!"
Be glad you weren't named after a character.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm glad it is a pretty obscure character. Any Aragorn's or Bilbo's out there?
Q.
Re:Be glad you weren't named after a character.... (Score:1)
Re:Be glad you weren't named after a character.... (Score:1)
Re:Tolken's rolling in his grave.... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Tolken's rolling in his grave.... (Score:2)
It should be good (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It should be good (Score:1)
I think they cancelled the title a long time ago, and then revived it after the LotR movie(s) did so well. I know they were originally working on it around the same time Half-Life was released...
Re:It should be good (Score:3, Insightful)
As it turns out, a former gaming buddy of mine now works at Turbine in Boston, and is working on this project (in a sysadmin capacity.) Small world! Though, these two friends of mine have never met.
There's no connection whatsoever between the two projects. The only thing that changed hands was the license,
there goes another 15 bucks a month (Score:2, Funny)
There's some (bad) name recognition (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:There's some (bad) name recognition (Score:2)
Re:There's some (bad) name recognition (Score:1, Offtopic)
And let's take a look at Blizzard (which does do a damn good job marketing...even if I'm not a fan of their work, I'd want someone like them marketing anything I developed).
Blackthorne -- boring, stiff movement, repetitive.
Diablo -- I never saw the point in this game, though *damn* it sold well. You find a monster, click click click, it dies, repeat. Of course, I'd played nethack and zangband before, so I saw it as sort of a pale copy of what's out there -- a lot of folks hav
An unfortunate built in limit (Score:5, Insightful)
This compares to the Star Wars games, where Lucas has approved an entire expanded lore, as has Paramount with Star Trek.
Ultimatly, this game will force the creation of non-Tolkien, expanded lore or it will fail.
Re:An unfortunate built in limit (Score:4, Insightful)
basically, if it's set around the war of the ring or near those times, there's no need to poke into silmarillion described parts of the world.
besides, it's an mmorpg, my belief is that most of the game is going to end up killing the rats in some big woods with most of the other players doing the same, so it doesn't really matter if you can't 'go west' so to speak. now, if it had same aspects of freedom as morrowind it might be fun.
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My first reaction (Score:1)
"They misspelt Middle-earth; I won't play."
But looking in the article, they get it right: "Middle-earth". They also get it wrong: "Middle Earth". They also get it wrong another way: "Middle-Earth". Three ways of spelling the same thing in a single article. Does anyone know which one the actual game uses?
Ooh, the Cracks of Doom quest! (Score:3, Funny)
I found this [stupidevilbastard.com] somewhat amusing, speaking of MMORPG + LOTR.
Funnier than this [teemings.com] similar parody, at least.
Another one [companions...realms.com]
(There's another one out there which is funnier, but I can't find it. My leet Google skills have failed me....)
What about Total Annihilation 2? (Score:2, Insightful)
Total Annihilation was a revolutionary RTS game which even today still surpases todays RTS with waypoints, build queues, air/naval/army/tank units, fantastic mod capability, and cool weaponry.
Re:What about Total Annihilation 2? (Score:1)
Re:What about Total Annihilation 2? (Score:3, Informative)
I want to see (Score:2)
Re:I want to see (Score:1)