LOTR: War of the Ring Real-Time Strategy Game

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.""

Comments

RTS Games

[unterderbrucke]

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...

Re:RTS Games

[Jugalator]

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.

Re:RTS Games

[voodoo1man]

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.

Impressive?

[Skyshadow]

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

[odyrithm]

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 ;)

Developer's Track Record

[SubliminalLove]

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

Thousdands of elements

[autopr0n]

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

Hopefully not another Theme Game

[The Keyer]

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.

OT: plain text of Tolkien available?

[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.