Ask Turbine's Jeff Anderson About LOTRO 282
Last month, Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar went live in what was arguably the most well-received launch for a Massively Multiplayer game since World of Warcraft. The game soared to the top of the retail charts, and has been a breath of fresh air for gamers looking to get a taste of something just a little bit different and a little bit hobbity. Today, you have the chance to ask Turbine's CEO Jeff Anderson questions about the process of creating the game, the Tolkien license, and new content we'll see in Middle Earth in the coming weeks and months. One question per comment, please. We'll take the best of the lot and put them to Mr. Anderson in a phone interview later this week. We'll post his responses as soon as we can, so make sure to get your question in today if you want it to show up in his response.
Virtual Economies (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Virtual Economies (follow up). (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Virtual Economies (follow up). (Score:5, Funny)
I would doubt it, after all its a racial characteristic of Dwarves and Dragons.
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I would doubt it, after all its a racial characteristic of Dwarves and Dragons.
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In a game like World of Warcraft (where many people seem to take issue with) the ability to craft top-end items are completely out of reach of many players, so they resort to buying what they can, which drives up the market on crafting materials and fees by the few who can actually craft the items.
WoW has very little player-controlled economy. The servers are act
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Right, so the the solution is a large, player controlled economy. That's what I said. ;-)
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Exactly. And that is my point. Some people don't mind doing it. CCP has successfully made what would otherwise be a boring, pointless activity a part of the game. Heck, even griefers were tolerable in Eve for some reason. Sure, it is still annoying to have your ore/loot stolen, but outlaws and pirates are part of the game.
Talking about EVE almost makes me want to get into it again.
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According to Wikipedia:
A sense of humour is the ability to experience humour, a quality which all people share, although the extent to which an individual will personally find something humorous depends on a host of absolute and relative variables, including geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education, and context. For example, young children (of any background) particularly favour slapstick, such as Punch and Judy puppet shows. Satire may rely more on understanding the target of the humour, and thus tends to appeal to more mature audiences.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humor [wikipedia.org]
Re:Virtual Economies (Score:5, Interesting)
How does LotRO plan to handle these problem as the player-base expands? Is it possible that players will be allowed to gain experience from crafting rather than by mob-grinding or quests? Will it be feasible for an individual to gain renown on a server as a master craftsman (which should be extremely difficult to attain) if they only want to spend their time in Bree rather than strangling Orcs?
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I'd love for crafting to be divorced from level advancement, and for crafted goods to be worth more to vendors than the sum of their components - but that, too, seems to be a requirement of MMO Design 101.
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Crafted items can never sell to a vendor for more than the sum of their components. If this was the case people would just plan up shop next to a vendor and setup a macro to keep buying the components and then selling off the finished products to th
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There are ways to do this right - it's how 'real' economies work, after all - they're just much, much harder than making sure the finished good
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So, what has changed? Is the current 'state of the art' a step backwards?
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It would probably make the economy more complex and more difficult to balance. It could be more interesting though.
Any plans for a (Score:2, Interesting)
Gaming Addiction (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's a messed up society we live in when we're asking game developers to not make their games too addictive.
If a game is extremely addictive, it basically means normal, healthy people will enjoy it a lot. The few mentally unstable who get too addicted... well... they can be sacrifised for the benefit of the greater good.
Certainly, game developers should not have any obligation whatsoever to make their games LESS addictive. That just sounds insane.
If you make a product shouldn't you be somewhat responsible for the harmful effects of that product? I'm not saying it's the current case with MMORGS, I've never even played one so I can't really comment intelligently on it. But in the hypothetical scenario that a game maker found some way to make a game addictive enough so that significant portions of the population were adversely affected by it then shouldn't that game maker have some responsibility (at least a moral one) to try to reduce the addictive n
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Yes.
The other requirements were also out of line. They ought to be repealed, not used as a basis for further restrictions.
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Obviously not. I simply don't think you should be prohibited from doing so. You can still choose not to do so on your own, of course, and I think most decent people would make that choice.
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I don't think it's out of line but I do think it isn't really possible for game developers to do much to decrease gaming addiction (other than writing less addictive games). Even if they limit the amount of time you could spend playing a particular MMORPG per day/week the person could just own a couple of MMORPGs and switch from one to the other when the limit is reached. They could encourage people to take breaks from time to time like the Wii but I doubt it would be very effective.
I once had a roommate w
End Game (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:End Game (Score:4, Interesting)
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How many expansion packs will we have to PAY for to reach the end game? Right now we can only go as far as Rivendell; how many times and how much money to make it to Mordor?
WoW influence (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:WoW influence (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's clear that Turbine learned much from both the failure of AC2 and from the success of WoW
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all the mmo makers out there were waiting for one to be successful to copy it and obtain a working formula.
but heh wait.... isn't it how it worked for decades already ?
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WoW is kinda like the "Dummy's Guide to MMORPG" -- it doesn't cover very much; and, like a "Dummy's Guide", it's far from being the definitive source.
Now, for the rest of the story...
Lord of the Rings Online is only similar to WoW from the stand-point of not reinventing the wheel. The keypresses are very similar. The general layout is familiar. Combat is as similar to WoW as it is to any other MMORPG. It stops there. LotRO is vastly different.
EverQuest is still more of a defini
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I feel sorry for developers of ne
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Indeed. Without going back to the drawing board and attempting to revolutionize MMOs as a whole, you'd have to be stupid not to copy WoW (and by extension EQ and friends). You can say what you want about it, but they've gotten quite a lot right, and I'd be very skeptical of any typical MMO that didn't pull a lot of their ideas straight out of WoW.
Farming? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you done anything to decrease (or possibly eliminate) the need to farm, and if not what is your stance towards automated play?
Linux Port (Score:5, Interesting)
So, when is the Linux port coming out? (Yes, I've read the FAQ)
Mod UP (Score:5, Insightful)
Get this question up to +5 and watch Zonk ignore it like he's does every time there's a game dev interview.
We understand the size of the target market. We understand that it may not be economically viable. But does it hurt to ask for a port? I'd drop wine/WoW for a native LOTR online port.
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We understand the size of the target market. We understand that it may not be economically viable. But does it hurt to ask for a port?
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We DON'T know for sure. And asking the question at least makes our voices heard.
Heck, it worked for getting Dell to ship ubuntu machines.
Why linux, Why no Mac Client. (Score:5, Interesting)
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30 people using Macs....I know there are least 2 more
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30 Mac users, therefore it had to be an RP server ;)
Random animosity aside, I do hope they do show decent support for that platform, as games are one of the few reasons I'm still tied into Wintel. Linux+wine almost works but not quite. OSX, with it's familiar unix backside, would definitely have more marketplace potential if gaming ever hits critical mass (again), and give me the excuse I'm looking for.
I don't care how many times Bill & co reinvent how to launch a program, it feels tired and bloated
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I have little expectation for developers to cater to the Mac market still... I wish they would but I don't blame them either at the moment.
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Dual booting/virtualizing is inconvenient, especially if you're just doing it for one application.
why not all 3? (Score:2)
After gigabytes of game code,an OpenGL rendering engine, scripting, modeling, artwork, and sound, the subtle differnces between OSX and linux wouldn't be that big of a deal to port.
Polish (Score:5, Insightful)
None of these individually are game breaking issues, but them and a host of other UI annoyances all pile up to make it a much less enjoyable experience then playing with WoW's incredibly smooth UI (which is even more so once you start using mods).
I'm curious if the developers are going to take some time to go back and improve the UI?
Re:Polish (Score:5, Interesting)
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Italian is way more in.
What's the point? (Score:2)
I tried LOTRO, but left it for dead when I realized that the developers took design cues from the same guy who thought Vista could use 5 clicks to do anything I needed it to do...
Silly Suggestion (Score:2)
Try a lower resolution.
When the price of a 1650x1080 widescreen LCD is as low as it is now it's simply retarded for a modern gaming company to not make allowances for large monitors and varying resolutions.
We're not in the old days, when 1024x768 was an extravagant.
What would the professor think? (Score:5, Interesting)
As an avid fan who knows this, how can you justify, to me, putting the professor's world into a game genre. Why should I play it knowing Tolkien would most likely disapprove?
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Also, the Tolkien estate was against the early incarnations of d&d if I remember, and isn't this the reason "hobbit" was removed and replaced with "halfling" in the game. I could be wrong on this last point.
I do know this, Tolkien said a lot of stuff, and if you look long enough you can find him saying about anything. No, wiki is not the best source. There are more reliable sources
Re:What would the professor think? (Score:4, Informative)
The quote you reference was a part of his complaint that the BBC messed up their LoTR broadcast (letter 175). He was never against dramatisation on principle. Tolkien is quite consistent on this point: dramatisation of the LoTR was always something he had in mind, not least because of the financial possibilities, as he was quite broke. Christopher's ambivalence was well-known, but he didn't write the books, so who cares what he thinks.
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Christopher's ambivalence was well-known, but he didn't write the books, so who cares what he thinks.
JRRT cared what Christopher thought....
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Tolkein's legacy was a fantastic series of fantasy novels that created a mythology unto their own. If I recall that was his goal in the first place, to create an English mythology. His legacy does not include a set of rules for ways in which we can enjoy this legacy. Any more than the ancient Greeks can object to us using their mythology to make God of War.
This being aside from any legal and copyright issues. But if
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I don't think this is an attempt to seek permission or validati
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I'm of the view that if you want no one to distort, tarnish, or otherwise transform your works you simply shouldn't release them. You can't hand someone an idea then give them a set of rules on how to think about it.
Yes the creator has certain rights but Tolkien wasn't the only creator, even ignoring the fact that he, like any artist, took inspiration from the culture around him, the fans of his works are creators as well. When you read Tolkien your imagination expands those wo
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Most people didn't know about computer games in 1968. Most associations with computers and games would likely bring up tic-tac-toe or chess in the public's mind. There was a small subculture of hackers working to lay foundations of the video game during this time period (Spacewar), it would still be a couple years before the industry was born (pong and spacewar adaptations). I would be very surprised if computer
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To me, th
Mr. Anderson (Score:5, Funny)
Leveraging fans (Score:4, Interesting)
As a fan and former Vanguard member on AC2, I noticed Turbine's greatest strength was a rather fast and sane response to player feedback (despite many claims to the contrary). I recall many AC and AC2 fans and 3rd party developers ended up on your dev teams. I witnessed all of this first-hand when you were developing the hero-class endgame mechanics. And despite the system's friendliness, balance, and incorporation of player feedback, most players were unhappy (they thought the system was too simplistic, a la WoW, or had other esoteric gripes).
Do you have any plans to try and continute to leverage your community, or do you find vocal MMOG players just too darn irrational and hard to please? Blizzard seems to regularly ignore players, and does quite well from what I hear.
And thanks for making games that don't suck. Asheron's Call was, to me, the finest example of storytelling with thousands of players done yet. Logging in to find my Monarch was Bael'zharon ranks as the coolest moment of my 20-odd years of gaming.
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Kung-fu magic (Score:2)
I remember in beta there was the ability to cast spells from the number bar in melee combat. I even had a sword-warmage. It was good times then, with the slidecasting and broken skills (free dagger did more damage than 16 point swords). It required skill, unlike nearly all other MMOGs (WoW is so dang boring and easy).
You may be right though, most everything that made the game great (easily breaking your character, the complete and total dependence on magic) was largely a mistake. The stories and lore we
Lessons Learned (Score:5, Interesting)
End-game content (Score:4, Interesting)
Leap of faith... (Score:5, Interesting)
User created content? (Score:3, Interesting)
LetterRip
Plans against spammers (Score:2)
What is the end-game? (Score:5, Interesting)
Essentially, there is no other story line in World of Warcraft other than to kill Illidan and spend a lot of time farming farming farming for reputation. I so miss the innovations that Ultima Online had with housing or seafaring ten years ago.
What does LOTR bring to the table in the end-game that makes it different from other MMOs?
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Ahmen. Even reputation became group required. This is my #1 reason for leaving WoW. I couldn't participate in the End game (which I COULD get to easy enough). My #2 reason? Too hard to find a group (even when in a good guild, oddly) to participate in the end game.
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If Blizzard *really* wanted to make things interesting then they could turn on Global PVP (i.e. anyone can kill anyone else at any time and for any reason without warning) AND make the entire map like battlegrounds (where opposing sides can capture and control areas by meeting objectives). If the capital city of either Horde or Alliance falls then all of the players on the winning side get
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In-Game Music System (Score:5, Interesting)
What I want to know (Score:2)
WoW Comparison (Score:2)
The Lifetime Option (Score:4, Interesting)
Most Complaints (Score:2)
Licensing (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you envision being able to add future expansions/sequels/engine-using-content-environme
Most games have an escalation of power as they get older, but with the LOTR mythos, the power diminishes over time. However, adding elements as alluded to above would fit the increased power design pattern, plus fit into the overall mythos with more elegance.
Will you be selling an experience, or a game? (Score:2, Insightful)
* Is that a key component or just a "nice to have"?
* In most industries, the idea of "closing" a sale on a website would be laughable, but could a website make a difference in video games?
* Do you see your web community as important to you?
* Do you purposely not invest in resources (art, programming and copy) until knowing if the game is taking off?
I joined WOW about a year after it came out, so I never saw
How will you avoid the traps? (Score:5, Insightful)
I worry about this, and wonder: do you have a way of solving this problem in the longer term for LOTRO, or are you (like EQ and WoW before you) pushing off those choices until you're already in the expansion release cycle?
Dear MMORPG industry (Score:3, Interesting)
When will you stop making games designed to waste huge gobs of time?
I don't put up with random 10 minute periods of doing nothing in other games, why should I with yours? Any game that makes me sit/travel/do nothing for 10 minutes running I immediately uninstall. I'd like a modern adventure game, but for some reason they refuse to jump to the next level on this issue.
-Z
Is Turbine-employee participation dealt with? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is Turbine going to enforce rules for Turbine employee participation to avoid issues like censorship and favouratism, and to avoid other potential scandals?
The Censor Filter (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Funny)
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Going one step further with your example, you would imply that I would think detergent should be in
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Think about other markets. Cell phones are available for free with service contract. Satellite TV systems are available for free with contract.
That's what I see here. The company wants to charge twice.
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I swear, some people refuse to take personal responsibility for their actions.
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Personally, I think the war in the north and east of the Misty Mountains would be good area for a large PvP campaign. Lorien, Mirkwood, the Lonely Mountain, the Iron Hills, all saw major engagements in the War of the Ring, but these were just basically footnotes in the book. A very major campaign co
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I have heard that the PvP they have now is fun, but I haven't got that far yet (at level 10 you can take the role as a lvl 50 monster player, but you have to be level 40 to use your main character.)
Re:Ent (Score:5, Funny)
(and you still don't get any women).
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