Middle Earth MMORPG Announced

learithe writes "A new Middle Earth MMORPG, Middle Earth Online, has just been announced by Turbine, who produced Asheron's Call 1 and 2 with Microsoft. It looks to be just as pretty and cpu/graphics card intensive as AC2. More (flash-free) information can be found at IGN and Gamespy."

Comments

Damnit

[mao che minh]

I thought that I was done with MMORPGs. Ultima Online went all "candy land". Earth and Beyond was boring. It took too god damned long to get from point A to point B in Dark Age of Camelot. I had wrestled my life back from the clutches of these glamorus, yet malicious, time sinks.

Now they have both a Star Wars and a Middle Earth MMORPG. I hope I have some personal and sick days left in a couple of months, I'm gonna need them. All they need now is a "You get to bone Britney Spears in real life" *game* and I would instantly reach a state of Heavenly Nirvana and transcend to the plane of eternal bliss. Well, a "You get to bone Jolene Blalock in real life" game would work too.

Re:Damnit

[kmac06]

How about "You get to bone John Romero?

(Hey, at least its a video game reference :P

Re:Damnit

[Shadow Wrought]

Just imagine if they were combined:-) Rangers with light Sabres and Elvish heavy cruisers. Plus you could great names like Darth IronHeart and Gimli Skywalker!

Or not...

Re:Damnit

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh, I'd personally rather a *BONE YOU RL girlfriend because you're not addicted to these games* game ;p

-- vranash

Looking Bad for My Real Job

[AlabamaMike]

Oh well, hope the boss understands. Finally cancelled my AC subscription, and now we have this. If it lives up to anything close to its potential, I don't see how I won't be addicted.
-A.M.

Re:Looking Bad for My Real Job

[sweetooth]

Don't worry, you've got until 2004 to save up for when you get fired for playing MEO all day.

Here's hoping

[jbellis]

Sierra tried twice to get MEO (Middle Earth Online) going and failed. It is widely believed in the community that the first dev team [the 2nd didn't even get off the ground] made the "mistake" of making the game too Tolkien-ish, i.e. too realistic and not mass-market enough. Death was permanant, wizards were Gandalf-ish and not some D&D creation, etc. Too bad.

So with that history, I hope Turbine pulls off the game we ("we tolkien fanatics") want to see, but I'm not making any bets on it.

Re:Here's hoping

[ellesar1]

I guess now that Peter Jackson and company have made LOTR mainstream, it will work?

Here's hoping, I got excited the first time it was announced!

Re:Here's hoping

[Karhgath]

I do believe that the market is now ready for a Permanent-Death MMORPG. I mean, the market is so full of similar games that a trully different and risky feature such as this might be what's needed to get a good share of the market.

Sure, making a PD game requires planning it from the start, making every features in a way that PD is possible for everyone to ENJOY. There are lot of problems to solve, and those are solvable on paper, and probably in practice. I just wish one publisher had the balls to really do it.

I wouldn't bet that Turbine will keep the PD, I'm sure they won't. This sucks. I just wish there were still risky companies around like Looking Glass were. Ion Storm isn't bad with Deus Ex and now the sequel, although they used Looking Glass' legacy to build Deus Ex on... While you can be successful and make great games without being overly original and risky(Blizzard), we still need risky ventures to revolutionize and advance toward new and greener pastures.

Oh well, don't mind me, the old skeptic gamer, but I'm sure the new middle earth will just be a 'standard' MMORPG with some new and unrisky features and the same old gameplay, with some tweak here and there, and more importantly, the Tolkien world! Wow, quite a change of setting...

Please, someone, bring Permanent Death and more risky idea to the world of MMORPG and then, maybe, maybe I'll actually play one.

Re:Here's hoping

[Draigon]

I might be crazy, but considering this announcement comes at what seems to be very early development for the game, I think it would be wise of the developers to spend the first parts of development just asking the Tolkien fan community what game they would want. It seemed to be the problem with previous attempts. For most MMOGs you create a game then community, but for this and Star Wars you can't do that. You have to make sure the community that already exists is happy with what you're offering.

Re:Here's hoping

[Carnivorous Carrot]

> Please, someone, bring Permanent Death and more
> risky idea to the world of MMORPG and then,
> maybe, maybe I'll actually play one.

It's called mass marketing. For every one of you, there are 10,000 who will say, WTF! I just died and lost everything I had from the past six months?

With any luck, and nice asking, mmmmmmaybe they'll create a perma-death/cough up everything you're carrying server, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Re:Here's hoping

[syrinx]

I remember that, I was very excited about it, I never got into the MMORPGs, but I would have loved that one.

But this new one will probably be just the same as all the others. Too bad. Plus in the intervening years I've decided that online gamers are, as a whole, too stupid and annoying to ever get a good MMORPG to work. So I probably won't do this one either.

Re:Here's hoping

[DNS-and-BIND]

One thing I really like about Middle-Earth is how few Wizards there are, and how they're not using wizardly powers to heat their coffee, unicorn horns to "burn off" drunkenness, and other idiot things that are so prevalent in other crappy pulp fantasy fiction. I can count on one hand the number of times Gandalf used magic.

Too bad they're dumbing down the game in order to appeal to the masses. It'll be just like every other game out there, only with Official Middle-Earth Theme[tm].

Re:Here's hoping

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'll kindly go outside long enough and try to have that same conversation with a normal person, I'm sure someone will bring you Permanent Death in no time at all.

Re:Here's hoping

[Karhgath]

You are one of the many who do not think really about a PD system as a new beast completely. A PD game cannot just be EverQuest with PD added just like that. Everything, the whole game - economics, character advancement, features, etc. - everything must be built from the ground up to be Perma-Death. It's not as simple as adding PD or creating a PD server, as this will just fail and won't be useful at all. There is a real challenge of doing a PD game, and much reward I think.

However, for that, people must lose they preconceived ideas about permanent-death. I think I'll start the PDAA (PD Awareness Association). =)

Re:Here's hoping

[jazman_777]

However, for that, people must lose they preconceived ideas about permanent-death.

Yeah, like "I'll never die!" Those of us a bit older are starting to think about our mortality.

Re:Here's hoping

[DunbarTheInept]

The problem with permanent death is that first the game engine has to be at *least* as fair as a compenent human gamemaster would be in a tabletop RPG. And that just isn't the case. When you can die because of bugs, or network lag times, and things like that, that's when permanent death just isn't fair. And if you think permanent death is somehow true-to-form for middle earth, NO it isn't. Gandalf was ressurected as The White. Sauron died by Isildur's hand - but no not really. And the author's hand was in there making sure none of the characters who needed to live for the plot ended up dying, even though there were many cases where they easily would have.

If Lord of the Rings had been an MMORPG with permanent death, then Frodo would have died from the wraith's wound before reaching Rivendell and the whole story would have ended right there. The "he almost died but barely pulled through" story element that happens a lot in Tolkien wouldn't work if a computer was calling the shots.

Re:Here's hoping

[DunbarTheInept]

One thing a game has to have before you can even consider PD is real consequential results from your actions. In the real world, if you just kill someone out in the street with witnesses and take his stuff, you're not going to get away with it, and your life as a free man will be pretty much over. Consequences like that have to exist in the MMORPG or PD isn't going to be fair. (Hey, let's go beat up on some newbies for a while...)

Re:Here's hoping

[Broodje]

You should check out what SWG is planning as far as perma-death. At least they plan on including _some_ form of death: If your character gets far enough in the game, you can become a Jedi, but if you die, you revert back to a plain old plebian with no powers. They are making it very hard to become a Jedi. I realize this is not what you are talking about, but I felt I had to point this out. Otherwise, I salute ya: A correct implementation of perma-death in an MMORPG would be a breath of fresh air in game design!

linkage

Re:Here's hoping

[Karhgath]

Exactly. In fact, a good PD system will nearly eliminate PKillers and that sort of people, and strengthen the community and interaction between players, much more than a conventional game could.

Like I said before, the idea is to solve the problems of PD(death by lags and glitches for example) and not just whine about them, but actually try to solve them. It's easy to say PD won't work because of X or Y, but it's harder and more rewarding, I think, to try to actually solve those problems. These new ideas might revitalize the MMORPG market, EVEN if the game fails, the ideas and new features because of PD might be really useful even for other games.

Check a discussion I'm having on BluesNews about PD, posts #11 and up.

MEO Discussion on BluesNews

Re:Here's hoping

[Karhgath]

That's why you must build a system to eliminate death by lags and glitches and such, what I call "unfair" death.

A bit deeper in the thread I've posted a link to a discussion on BluesNews about MEO and more specifically PD. Go check it out.

About things like "almost died" and such, which are really roleplay elements more than 'game mechanics', maybe adding something like the Karma system in Shadowrun(and not the /. one =). The more experience you gain, or the more heroic you are, or the more you follow a belief or alignment or something like that, the more Karma you gain. If one day you do good, the other you do evil, then good, then evil... you won't have much Karma.

Then, you could do 'miracles' like cheating death or doing an heroic feat by 'spending' Karma. In roleplay terms, it might be luck, divine intervention, etc.

I do believe that every difficulty and problems of PD can be solved by a clever idea like that, that's why I think we're ready for PD.

Re:Here's hoping

[Carnivorous Carrot]

As I pointed out in another article on the same subject, notice how the two most powerful wizards in the movie, locked in mortal combat, did little more than simple psychokinetic tricks.

The powerful magic in that world is in slowly manipulating things behind the scenes, like in creating orcs and bending the minds of kings over years and centuries.

If you could play a wizard, what would you really do?

Re:Here's hoping

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

No MMORPG with Permanent Death will EVER sell enough copies to make it. Most people don't pay a subscription fee if they can "have it all taken away".

Besides, with Turbine's record in making stable clients, I wouldn't want to play a game where a complete BLACKSCREEN reboot of my machine would result in my losing months worth of progress. Happened to me many times in Asherons' Call. Only had to happen ONCE in Asheron's Call 2 for me to say "Never Again".

I've never had such a horrible and jarring software fault caused problem with any other game, never mind MMORPG.

Re:Here's hoping

[Anonymous Coward]

> "A lot" is two words. You wouldn't say "alittle", would you?

Bart Simpson: Nor would one say "adumbass".

Re:Here's hoping

[Karhgath]

Why? I mean, there as SOOO much MMORPG that the market is pretty crowded and getting shares of it is starting to be pretty hard. Now, to take those shares, you can make a risky MMORPG with PD and maybe, just maybe, this will lead to a better game and maybe a bigger share than if you just had done a normal MMORPG with some 'new' features. Or it might fail. Risky business is, well, risky, but usually the reward is much greater, especially with stiff competition.

Now, in a PD game, you MUST remove all(or a vast majority of) 'unfair' deaths, like disconnects, lags, glitches, etc. There are many ways you can handle this, one, maybe not the best, would be to have 3 state: alive, incapacitated and dead. When you get under 0 HP, you are incapacitated., loosing some XP or even permanent HP or such. When in that state, monsters will switch to another target(thus not really killing you), and you cannot use any 'physical' skills and such, only mental ones, but with great difficulties. If you are in a group, the rest of the team will probably kill the monster and heal you. If you were alone(BAD idea in a PD game), what happens depends on the monster. Some might just let you rot there until someone finds you or you slowly heal. Or, he might bring you to his camp to eat, which gives rescuing opportunities, and ways for you to escape. Others, more powerful and dangerous monsters might just eat you whole or shred you to pieces. However, those would be rare, and you would know that beforehand, so it's very risky to try to bring down a dragon or such, especially alone. With good monster AI, you could have opportunities to retreat and bring the incapacitated characters with you, go back to town, heal up and try to go back better prepared.

Furthermore, even creatures that can really kill you, takes time to 'eat you', and are vulnerable when doing so, so it gives you even more chances of being rescued or even 'waking up'. The same holds true for PvP, as someone that incapacitate you have a CHOICE of leaving you there, rotting away, or really killing you. Permanently killing you would have deep consequences (alignment/humanity shift, killer flags, big bounties on you) and takes some time, and during this time, you would be vulnerable to attacks, and thus, it's a double edged sword, you could be permanently killed while trying to do the same to someone else. If you play Vampire the Masquerade, think of it as a kind of Torpor/Incapacitated mix and Final Death, with diablerie the only way to put someone in Final Death.

The possibilities are endless, and this is just a somewhat half-assed idea, but even that could bring a breath of fresh air to MMORPG.

Re:Here's hoping

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

I'll grant that your ideas have merit. I've yet to see a game company capable of actually implementing them. Also, a "mass market" kind of game has to at least partially pander to the lowest common denominator (AKA AOLers).

If it were possible to implement what you describe in a more informal, neo-mud type setting, it would be very interesting.

I would NEVER play ANY PD MMORPG game if it was also PVP. Too much potential for griefing.

Another reason for keeping the scope of PD smaller is that for the reasons you mentioned (being alone is stupid in that context) it almost requires groups of RL friends. I don't trust strangers on the street, I'm hardly likely to trust them in game with those kind of "stakes" on the line. With the market splintering with all the choices, I have a hard time getting more than one other of my friends in the same game at the same time. some are playing Planetside, some EQ, a couple Toontown, I play DaOC co-op, one is holding out for SWG.

I'm one of those guys who NEVER played UO until the dreadlords were smacked down. I don't play to be a victim, and I don't have the urge to be a victimizer. A game that forced me to be one or the other didn't have anything for me. Sadly, by the time those elements were removed, the other games I was already playing had surpassed UO. I tried it, it was amusing, but I was already subscribed to AC and EQ at the time (have since left them for DAOC) and couldn't afford to add another.

Re:Here's hoping

[Melchior_of_wg]

Actually, that is not what will happen. You can unlock a Force Sensitive slot in some wierd way. Any character created in that slot are perma-dead after getting killed three times. If you die, tough luck, start over. Your previous characters will not be affected by this char in any way.

Re:Here's hoping

[HBI]

Gandalf and Sauron were both Maiar, immortal beings. They both participated in the Music of Iluvatar before the beginning of the world.

Sauron was a Maia bewitched by Melkor early on. He served as his lieutenant in Endor (Middle Earth) while he was chained in Valinor for three ages. After Melkor/Morgoth was defeated at the end of the First Age, Sauron fled into Middle Earth and started some good old empire building.

Gandalf was the Maia Olorin, clothed in gray by Manwe and Varda and sent off into Middle Earth to counter the evil of Sauron, as many of the Eldar had fled. He was one of the five Istari (wizards), all immortals who took on mortal guise. He was the only one that didn't stray from his task.

Killing them was fundamentally impossible. Even Saruman didn't die. He just fled into the West and was probably cast outside of Arda...but only Manwe knows.

Humans did not come back. They were given the 'gift of Man', ie. they left the world and did not return after their death. Whereas, the Eldar *could* come back. They went to the Halls of Mandos in western Valinor upon death and could be released after a time. It is said that Finrod Felagund was released from Mandos, as were Beren and Luthien, but they were a special case that required the intervention of the Valar themselves.

The Eldar who came back from Mandos, incidentally, were not permitted to depart Valinor again.

Frodo pulled through, beside his very mortal constitution, because of the application of what you might call magic. Athelas, the miruvor of Imladris, and that bit of song that Glorfindel sang over him. All of those were attempts to arrest the progress of the shard of Morgul-blade from killing him. Eventually only Elrond fortified by Gandalf were able to locate and destroy it.

I used to do theme for a Tolkien MMORPG so ...sorry for the digression.

Re:Here's hoping

[geckofiend]

Never underestimate grifers. If there's PD in an MMO the only people playing it after a month will be griefers.

Re:Here's hoping

[amembrane]

Diablo 2 has a "Hard-Core" mode that is permanent death. It was about as popular as the regular mode, and apparently addictive. Of course in Diablo 2, you were in essence replaying the same game over and over again. It would be interesting to see how it worked in an MMORPG.

Re:Here's hoping

[Karhgath]

Like I said, there are lots of things to consider. For my part, I think meeting new people in game and making friends and allies is very fun and rewarding. When I played in the AC1 beta, I made lots of friends, teachers in magic, and such, it was more fun than any other game(at that time EQ and UO) just because of the community. Of course, that was in the beta...

The goal is really to strike a balance between a lot of factor and GIVE incentives and things to do for every character type. Loners would have a LOT opf things to do, just not going one-on-one against big bad monsters. He could be a really cool rangers, knowing the area by heart, but rarely fighting monster, and he's the guy you go to if you need to pass thru the forest unhindered or something.

With a 'reputation' system, where you can 'rate' people, either in-game or out-game, it would be cool. You get to a city, and look around and hear that Mister X is the best ranger there is around here and can easely get you from point A to point B unhindered... for a price =) There must be ways to also get XP other than just killing monsters.

Anyway... I'll leave that to the company that will really try to do a PD game. Done right, it migth be really cool. Done wrong it might be the worst MMORPG ever. It won't be easy.

Also, since the market is so cluttered, maybe a mass-market appeal isn't a good idea? Maybe that a niche, or smaller demographic would be better? Check AC2, a LOT of people are leaving in flocks... wouldn't it be better to have an average but stable group of people?

Re:Here's hoping

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Well, that's where I got the "shoot for the Mud crowd first" idea. If you can generate a core group of players who enjoy and evangelize the game, you can have success with a model like what you describe.

Seriously, I think you have some great ideas. I'm just not optimistic about the current publishers' ability/willingness to follow through on them in a manner that will actually make a good game.

Re:Here's hoping

[domninus.DDR]

The problem is how detailed must the logs be? If I track the latency for every player for the entire time they are logged on.. or even when they start losing connection, logs will be huge. There are also hard-to-duplicate client side bugs that could cause it also. Its difficult to make accountability for bugs, lag, etc. All the time in EQ I would just /petition the server lagged out and I fell down a cliff! or 3 giants pathed to the middle of thuradgin, wtf!

Re:Here's hoping

[ProppaT]

I'm hoping, just hoping, that all you PD well wishers get your wish. You'll get your shiny new cd-rom with your brand new, PD encompasing MMORPG!! You'll install it and start playing it...and here's what you'll find:

First few days: At first it'll be great. You'll die a couple of times at lower levels figuring out the game, but that's the learning curve.

First week: Your level 10 Super Shadow Slayer thingie dies. You actually put REAL hours into this character. You curse that class and pick another, disgusted that, "due to a bug in the game" (or your favorite excuse), you died. Figure you'll be more careful next time.

First month: You're level 20! Wow! However, now you've invested REAL time into your character. You start worrying about "loosing everything." You make sure that you choose your battles. You make sure you'll ALWAYS win.

Second month: The game has turned purely social. All you do is talk to guild mates, plan a strategy for possibly killing the a dragon in some cave somewhere...however, no one actually wants to follow through with the plan because no one wants to die! Everyone maxes out their trade skills and makes the best weapons and armor in the game to show who has the biggest...umm, sword. Yeah, that's it...

Third Month: Everyone gets up the balls to go into the dungeon. 2 people out of 30 die. Those people get super pissed off. They blame the cleric for not healing them, the warrior for not taking damage for them. They might be right. The point is, they trusted someone with their life and they were failed. They cause a tear in the guild, the guild disbands. Disgruntled players quit the game.

You see the point. People don't want to risk what they've invested, literally, days, weeks, even MONTHS of their life on. There's always the potential to die! We're not playing marbles...you're gonna loose more than your aggie.

What it boils down to is that you're eventually going to have to place your life in the hands of others. Yeah, that's great roleplaying I suppose...but there's a difference between pen and paper RPG's and a computer game. There HAS to be a difference! No computer can ever take the place of a skilled DM. So why even try to attempt it?

Bottom line is, if you're gonna have PD you're going to have on of the following.... 1) A game full of utter chaos 2) A game full of heroes that NEVER die 3) A game full of very nervous and distrustful people 4) A game that's pace is so absolutely slow that only the most hardcore RPGer's are going to want to play it -or- 5) A game that is 1% fighting, 99% social interaction, tradeskills, and errand based quests

Option #5 is the only viable PD option IMO

Why not just play Neverwinter Nights, a game where there actually IS a DM?

Re:Here's hoping

[DNS-and-BIND]

Movie? I was talking about the book. The "psychokinetic tricks" are pure fabrication, probably to appeal to the same people who like kung fu movies like "The Matrix". And calling them "psychokinetic" implies that they are psychic powers, which they are most certainly not.

Re:Here's hoping

[DNS-and-BIND]

Another movie fan who's never read the book, eh.

Frodo and co. would have died (or worse) by the hand of Old Man Willow, before the Deus Ex Machina of Tom Bombadil happened to jog along at just the right moment.

If you have permanent death in a game, you just make it harder to die. That, or make it easy to start over. Look at nethack, it's one of the most popular games in history, and it not only includes permanent character death, but also includes all sorts of nasty and insidious ways to instantly die ("Thou durse call upon me? Then die, mortal!--More-- The lightning bolt hits!--More--You die.").

Re:Here's hoping

[Anonymous Coward]

a PD system? yeah that'll work. It is supposed to be a GAME remember? last I checked people played them to have fun.

a PD subscription based MMORPG would get 5 subscriptions, because it's the same bloody 5 people that keep beinging up this stupid subject /sigh

Re:Here's hoping

[mst76]

These new ideas might revitalize the MMORPG market, EVEN if the game fails, the ideas and new features because of PD might be really useful even for other games.

I just heard that there's this new and incredibly realistic MMORPG with PD and tons of other goodies. Apparently, subscription involves turning off the computer and walking out the door (expensive, I know). Someone tried this yet?

Re:Here's hoping

[mst76]

Gandalf and Sauron were both Maiar, immortal beings. They both participated in the Music of Iluvatar before the beginning of the world.

But you don't know this from LOTR. You can't, since it (or more precisely, the Redbook of Westmarch) was written by hobbits, who have only the vaguest notions about Eru and Ainur. Resurrections are cheesy, whether it's the Bible, LOTR or Sherlock Holmes.

Killing them was fundamentally impossible. Even Saruman didn't die. He just fled into the West and was probably cast outside of Arda...but only Manwe knows.

Which is death for all practical purposes. You might as well as say that when we die we are cast outside the universe but our spirits don't die, only god knows. Changing the words does not change the meaning.

The Eldar who came back from Mandos, incidentally, were not permitted to depart Valinor again.

*cough* Glorfindel *cough*

Frodo pulled through, beside his very mortal constitution, because of the application of what you might call magic.

...or plot devices. That is the whole point, you don't get these in a MMORPG, where there are no protagonists.

Re:Here's hoping

[Anonymous Coward]

Thou durse call upon me? Then die, mortal!--More-- The lightning bolt hits!--More--You die.
>>>>>

And people wonder why I wish for SDSM & quest artifacts of other classes with MR ;)

Re:Here's hoping

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't that stuff authentic Tolkien, from Silmarillion?

Re:Here's hoping

[Carnivorous Carrot]

Little groups of teenage fanb0ys are gonna gather up and gangjump RPG'ers just like they do in, oh, I don't know, every other such PK-able ever made?

What a damned psychological prize that is. Think about it. Some buffoon RPG'er has been playing six months and you just ended all his effort by you and your buds hiding behind a tree.

Sorry, unless I hear of some spectacular system AND see it executed successfully in reality, I'll continue to doubt the viability of free-for-all PK games, thank you very much, regardless of how they are labeled.

Re:Here's hoping

[0spf]

I am very intrigued by the idea of PD and I think it would add some interesting twists to an online game. IMHO you would have to structure the whole game around the PD system.

For example every character starts at the age of maturity for their specific race. Every race has a life expectancy of x years. All characters would eventually die of old age. The character would have a y% chance of dieing of old age relating to the +/- factor of x. A much lower factor of dieing from accident or disease could also be added. Some stats would be raised or lowered depending on the relationship to x. DEX decreases and WSD increases the closer you get to x.

Races with longer life expectancy would gain xp slower than short lived races. You could have a system where after you reach a specific xp threshold you could create another character who is heir the older character. This new character would inherit all of the banked stuff from the dieing character.

I would be interested to see what type of player community developed around this type of game. I would hope that it would lower the ratio of l33t d00dz.

Re:Here's hoping

[0spf]

You raise many valid possible problems but I think there is a solution. Every character ages and dies naturally or by combat. This game would not be popular with people who enjoy raising stats and skills as quickly as possible so they can lord over the land with their god like powers. I think it would be popular with others who enjoy the process of building a character more than the eventual result (weekend warriors). We have many examples of the former and few or the latter.

It will still suck big time when the character you have put months into dies but the pain would be some what lessened if they were going to die in another month anyway. (over 50 death matches anyone?)

NWN will eventually get old

Re:Here's hoping

[ealar dlanvuli]

Please, someone, bring Permanent Death and more risky idea to the world of MMORPG and then, maybe, maybe I'll actually play one.

I'm all for PD, just don't institute Complete Heal around characters having 2000 hps and not modify it 5 years laters when characters have 7000 hps. That spell and that spell alone will be the downfall of Everquest, it will only take time for them to make a bad decision about it.

Re:Here's hoping

[HBI]

You get hints about Sauron and Gandalf during LOTR. You know that there is something funny about both of them. Also, some of the characters know, such as Elrond, Galadriel, Aragorn and Denethor.

The Glorfindel you meet is not the same Glorfindel from Gondolin. The Eldar were not permitted to travel east from Valinor to the Havens. Only West...

Last point, the *GAMEPLAY* of a MMORPG is the plot device! If you have healing spells those fill in for what the author would have written.

Re:Here's hoping

[cyko500]

I really read up on one of the attempts at the game before.... I was totally stoked about it when I heard about it :P Anyhow the way the PD was planned to work was that most mobs wouldn't actually kill you, they would beat you until you were near dead on the floor unable to fight back and leave you alone. Players would be able to duel until one player was in such a state and then they would be given the option to finish their foe. Doing so, though, would make them an outlaw. Being an outlaw would cause guards to be KoS and they would finish you off. Basically only insane mobs (imagine sleeper from EQ) or players could kill you. Killing mobs that would kill you reaped great rewards and pking would make you insta-fucked. Killing townsfolk npcs would also yeild the insta-fucked status. Basically the game was going to be set up so you could be killed, but the chances were slim unless you were willing to take the risk. Also, I think there was a period where you could be revived and whatnot. I remember playing gemstone III (which had a perma-death setup) and it was fun as all hell. Ah the good ol' days of muds... damn mmorpgs have ruined my imagination.... I can no longer play muds, but that is OT so I'll shut up now ;)

Re:Here's hoping

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect to your detailed knowledge of something I am completely ignorant of :

You are such a dork!

Re:Here's hoping

[HBI]

Ehh, I don't take it very seriously. I liked the books, so I read them in detail, and this is my memory of same.

I dunno that knowing something like this qualifies you as a dork. If i were making chainmail and trying to outfit myself as a Prince of the Noldor, i'd agree with you.

Re:Here's hoping

[DunbarTheInept]

Frodo pulled through, beside his very mortal constitution, because of the application of what you might call magic.

Yes, but put it in terms of a computer game with hit points or some other such damage mechanism. To make Frodo's player really *feel* that notion that Frodo almost died, Frodo has to be down to scant hit points left. And then the difference between him dying and him living is a mere matter of typing speed and how on-the-ball the players of the elves at Rivendell are. "Oh, darn, I made a typo and that slowed me down enough that Frodo is dead. Darn Darn Darn! Oh, man I'm so sorry. Now who's
gonna be able to carry the evil artifact."

My point is that in a GAME, you can't really have too many near-death scenes before one becomes an actual-death scene. In a game with fair rules mechanics, you are just as likely to fail in a 50/50 situation as live. This is not really how novels like LOTR work. In a novel, you die if the author things it makes sense to happen there. Senseless, plot-setting-back deaths don't happen. But realisticly, they would.

I'm not saying a PK MMORPG can't work at all - but there's no way in hell it will be as grandiose a story as LOTR. To make your character likely to live, you would avoid the quests where the odds are heavily against you, like, oh, say, two low level newbie halflings walking to the heavily armed enemy-held zone and chucking the world's most powerful artifact into a volocano mere days march from the enemy's main stronghold.

Re:Here's hoping

[rickwood]

Not to pick nits, but the First Age hero Glorfindel is indeed the Glorfindel who carries Frodo to Imladris to save him from the Nazgul.

I thought the same as you (and have argued vehemently that there were two Glorfindels) but I happen to be reading The History of Middle Earth, Vol. XII at the moment. To wit...

The only real resource we have to answer this question is in The Peoples of Middle-earth (The History of Middle-earth Vol. 12): XIII Last Writings, Glorfindel. Christopher Tolkien dates the notes he gives here at 1972, the year before his father's death.

These notes clear up one question immediately: at the time of the writing of The Lord of the Rings, Glorfindel of Rivendell was not conceived as the same character as Glorfindel of Gondolin. Tolkien says, 'Its use [i.e. the name 'Glorfindel'] in The Lord of the Rings is one of the cases of the somewhat random use of the names found in the older legends ... which escaped reconsideration in the final published form...'.

Tolkien was far from happy with this state of affairs, however, and it seems that he intended to reconcile the problem by uniting the two strands of the story. In summary, the notes tell us that Glorfindel's spirit returned to the Halls of Waiting, but was after a time re-embodied by the Valar. He then returned to Middle-earth (either in the mid-Second Age, or as a companion of the Istari in the Third). For the full story of his return, refer to The Peoples of Middle-earth.

q.v. http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/g/glorfindel.html

Re:Here's hoping

[PhilHibbs]

Please, someone, bring Permanent Death and more risky idea to the world of MMORPG and then, maybe, maybe I'll actually play one.

I think this could be addressed in a different way. The main problem is that resurrection is so close as to be impossible in Middle Earth, so allowing it in-game would be disappointing. So, what you need is a more appropriate solution to dying. What happens in the books? A heavy-hitting NPC swoops in and saves the hero. Bombadil, Aragorn, Glorfindel, Treebeard, all turn up in the nick of time and save the heroes from doom. So, the game needs to spawn an NPC nearby that comes and drags the bleeding near-corpse of the character to the nearest friendly location. The player should have to butter up the important characters in the world (Gandalf, Strider, any Elf) in order to earn these rescues. If you go round killing Hobbits, your chances will diminish... or you might get 'rescued' by one of the more unsavoury characters.

Doh! Must spend more money...

[Ikeya]

Looks beautiful! This will be nice. I really like Middle Earth. It's a fun environment. After reading some of the books, watching the movies, playing the Lord of the Rings TCG and that kind of stuff, I've really grown to love Tolkien's Middle Earth.
This sounds neat that not only will you have more character classes, but actually have different races in an RPG with building of race-specific buildings and stuff.
Kudos!
ikeya

Will they double charge?

[Jason1729]

My objection to MMORPGs is that you have to buy the software and pay a monthly fee. I will pay one or the other, but not both.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Will they double charge?

[Elwood P Dowd]

No no no, the problem is that in addition to expecting you to pay for the software, and then the monthly fee, they expect you to continue buying more software in order to see any improvements in service.

Re:Will they double charge?

[sweetooth]

The initial fee covers the first month of play plus the cost of distribution of the nice box, manual, cd, maps, posters, etc. It isn't going to go away any time soon. The monthly fee pays for access to the servers, access to updated content, and bandwidth. I've really enjoyed the effort that Turbine put into monthly events that made the fees worth it. AC1 was great and I played it for far too long. AC2 was beautiful, but I didn't really care for the game. This game should be interesting as it should be using the same engine as AC2. Besides, there are hundreds of thousands of people that won't think twice about paying both prices so they really aren't worried about losing one or two subscribers that won't pay the initial fee.

Re:Will they double charge?

[sweetooth]

Turbine is pretty good about expansions. They do monthly updates that add new content. These aren't always the best updates, but some of them were spectacular (AC1 anyway, I can't speak for AC2 but they promised the same things). When the expansion did come out for AC1 it added an entire landmass and while it wasn't necessarily worth the twenty bucks that it cost, you got another month of "free play" which meant the expansion really only cost $10 more than what you were already paying for monthly content.

Re:Will they double charge?

[Jason1729]

How about giving me the option to play the game without having to pay for a useless box and manual that I don't have the shelf space for? All I need is the CD. For a simple CD in a Jewel case they could charge the price of the first month's service and include a month of service. If they did that, I'd have played several MMORPGs by now. Instead, I've never even tried one.

I've bought all 3 WarCraft games and StarCraft, and they're my favourite games since the Sierra adventure games. WoW looks like it will be the best one yet, but I refuse to buy into that model on principle, and I am definately their target audience, I still spend about 10 hours/week playing WC3.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Will they double charge?

[DrXym]

Quite. In fact Everquest complete with various expansion packs graced the cover of a UK computer magazine recently. Thus proving that it is quite possible to give out the game like candy and still make money from the subscription. This is the way MMPORGs should go, since they ultimately make their money from the subscriptions. Do an AOL and practically force people to take your CDs and you'll make a shitload more money than you would otherwise.

Re:Will they double charge?

[gmhowell]

Some game magzine (PC Gamer??) had a breakdown of costs of a typical boxed game. Most of the money went to, surprise!, marketing and retailer markup. I'd pay $15-$20 in the first 6 mos. to a year for the disc, but that's only to reimburse the developer. $50 + $10/month is way too much. But, like you say, plenty of people think otherwise. That's fine. I make decisions like this every day.

Perhaps in an effort to differentiate from competitors, some company will just toss out the initial fee/purchase and offer downloads. We'll see.

Re:Will they double charge?

[Dirtside]

What you're paying for when you buy the game in the box is not the box or the manual (or at least, not very much). Mostly you're paying for (in the case of MMOs) the $10-20 MILLION of development that the game cost before it made a single cent. The initial box purchase offsets the cost of development; the monthly fee offsets the cost of continuing service.

Re:Will they double charge?

[Jason1729]

Then why don't I have to pay AOL a huge upfront fee to buy their disc since they put so much dev work into all their new versions? AOL's monthly fee is only double the cost of most of the online games, and they have to pay for phonelines to provide a dial up connection plus the backend connection, and they offer a lot of their own content that has to be paid for.

It costs a lot more to build a cellular phone network than make a video game, and yet the cell companies will allow me to connect to their networks without paying a startup fee to offset the costs to build their network. If I don't have a phone that will work with their network, they'll even provide me with one at a heavily subsidized price, or even for free.

Earthlink's email station hardware is free even though it must cost them the first 6 months of your service cost.

These companies and most others understand that their main revenue stream is from the service. Initial costs such as activation fees or hardware and software costs are barriers to people becoming customers and that is a bad thing.

What is better for the software company: if 100,000 people buy the software for $30 and 50% decide to keep the account for a year at $10/month, or 2 million people sign up for free and just 10% keep their accounts for a year? That's exactly why barriers are bad; even if you have a lower turnover rate, you still have less total customers

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Will they double charge?

[Dirtside]

Then why don't I have to pay AOL a huge upfront fee to buy their disc since they put so much dev work into all their new versions?

Basic internet service is a different sector of the market. Historically, there's been no signup fee, only monthly fees. Part of the reason is that internet service is basically a commodity -- totally interchangeable. MMOs are not a commodity; EQ is not interchangeable with DAOC, Star Wars Galaxies, or The Sims Online.

AOL's monthly fee is only double the cost of most of the online games, and they have to pay for phonelines to provide a dial up connection plus the backend connection, and they offer a lot of their own content that has to be paid for.

Well, it doesn't seem to be working out for them. AOL charges more for basic internet service than almost any other ISP... and they've been losing subscribers the last few months! Maybe they should cut back on the content and lower their prices a bit.

These companies and most others understand that their main revenue stream is from the service. Initial costs such as activation fees or hardware and software costs are barriers to people becoming customers and that is a bad thing.

I'll reiterate: mobile phone service and internet service are functionally interchangeable. It doesn't matter if I have SBC Yahoo! DSL, AOL for Broadband, or a cable modem from my local cable company -- the things I can do are all identical (barring minor ISP-specific content, but then little of that is really unique anyway; SBC Yahoo!'s custom news site is going to have the same news as AOL's). But if I want to go and kill Lord Nagafen in his fiery mountain lair, I can't play any game except EverQuest. MMOs are not interchangeable in this way. A lot of people have accounts on multiple MMOs -- a far higher percentage than have accounts with multiple cellular services, or multiple ISPs -- because the content is game-specific. It doesn't matter what ISP I use, I can still get to Slashdot.

There are other reasons, as well. People aren't used to the idea that the game is free and the service costs money, so there's a huge inertia problem to overcome -- they will quite probably shun a game that looks like it might have come from the bargain bin. Free products are often seen as having no value, and games are seen by most customers as products, not services.

What is better for the software company: if 100,000 people buy the software for $30 and 50% decide to keep the account for a year at $10/month, or 2 million people sign up for free and just 10% keep their accounts for a year? That's exactly why barriers are bad; even if you have a lower turnover rate, you still have less total customers

If the game was free, how do the customers get it? Maybe they download it. Well, that excludes anyone on dial-up, which is still half the country. So the people on broadband get to download a 2-3 gigabyte game -- costing the game company around $4-5 in bandwidth per download, depending on what their ISP charges. The dial-up people will presumably need to get a CD, which won't be given away for free (at best it might come included in a magazine, but magazines aren't free).

Those CDs cost money to print and distribute. Maybe stores charge $5 for it. Well, that's a barrier. So if 500,000 people download the game (costing about $2 million), and 500,000 people buy the game (and the CDs at $5 are probably a loss, what with printing and distributing them), now the company's just spent maybe $2-3 million to distribute the game -- instead of having an income of around $3 million (300,000 copies at a more realistic $50, 20% of which might go to the developer).

Maybe you should talk to some MMO developers about this. Surely they must have thought of this model as well; perhaps there's some good reasons why they don't use it.

Re:Will they double charge?

[Saeger]

costing the game company around $4-5 in bandwidth per download, depending on what their ISP charges.

If I pay $0.25 per GB I'm sure those companies can get an even better bulk deal.

--

Re:Will they double charge?

[hmccabe]

Yeah, but how much money did AOL/Time-warner lose last year. IFRC, it was like $99 billion dollars. They only did that because they wanted everyone to have an AOL disk. Now AOL's software is more advanced than anything I'm likely to program soon, but it really doesn't hold a candle to what these games are. That must have cost a whole lot to develop, and I bet that the $40+ dollars a box they bring in at launch helps significantly with the bottom line.

Now if you'll excuse me, I just realized I'm reading a message board about a game I have no chance in hell of every playing (unless it's going to be for Mac OS X, and I think we know the chances of that) so I'm going to go do something productive.

Re:Will they double charge?

[sweetooth]

If you are only planning on spending 10 hours per week playing I don't think you are really thier target audience. They seem to focus more on the people that play 40 hours per week. That's just my opinion though.

I still don't think they care about losing a few customers that don't want the box. It seems from reading other threads and having played MMOGs for a while that you are in the minority and will probably not be catered to.

Re:Will they double charge?

[Jason1729]

Historically, there's been no signup fee, only monthly fees.

My first internet account in 1993 charged a sign-up fee, and then when I switched to high-speed in 1997, there was an other sign-up fee. It's only more recently that customers have smartened up and will refuse to pay it. It's too bad they're still making the same stupid mistake again. I will never pay another activation fee. I don't have a land-line because my phone company does have a fee. They also offer satellite TV, high-speed internet, and cellular phone service, all three of which I get from other companies because this one changes an activation fee on their land lines. In all, I spend over $150/month with other companies that I would spend with the phone company if they didn't have the one-shot $50 activation fee, I have also talked dozens of people into going with their competition.

EQ is not interchangeable with DAOC, Star Wars Galaxies, or The Sims Online.

You're wrong here too, it may not be the exact same service, but it fills the same market. These games are in direct competition with each other. If someone signs up with Sims Online, it drastically decreases their chances of signing up with EverQuest. People only have so many hours a week to play the games, and only want to incur so many of the monthly fees. If EQ offers a better deal, they will steal business from SWG, even if the player would prefer SWG.

That's exactly the same mistake Polariod made and that's why polariod is in receivership right now. They thought they were in the "self-developing picture" market and had a monopoly, but in reality they are in the "instant picture" market and are competing with digital cameras.

If someone has to pay $50 for the MMO, they are taking a big risk that they might hate the game. If they just have to pay the $10 fee for the first month, a lot of people who would never consider risking the $50 will try the game, and a lot will decide they like it and keep playing (and paying).

If the game was free, how do the customers get it?

I answered this earlier. Sell the for the price of the first month of service and include the first month free. They will probably break even on the discs, and then have to eat the first month of service, but they will make up for it many times over in more customers.

Surely they must have thought of this model as well; perhaps there's some good reasons why they don't use it.

Surely the book publishers must realize that a lof of people enjoy reading on their PDAs, and that is a great opportunity.
Surely the RIAA must realize that people like having their entire music library on their computer so they don't have to deal with swapping discs, so copy protection is a bad thing and electronic distribution is good.

300,000 copies at a more realistic $50, 20% of which might go to the developer

So you're saying that the developer only gets the value of the one month of service out of the game anyway and the rest is lost in the distribution channel. That means the publisher doesn't even get any benefit from charging the customers but they've introduced a huge dis-incentive to potential customers.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Will they double charge?

[sweetooth]

Then you'll simply see the inital charge in place to cover bandwidth costs like with Anarchy Online. There were plenty of people that downloaded Anarchy Online, but I don't believe it was at an even reduced fee.

Re:Will they double charge?

[Jason1729]

AOL did not lose $99 billion by distributing their CDs. In fact they did not lose a cent.

In 1999, AOL had a larger market capitalization than GM and Ford combined. When they merged with Time Warner, the AOL division was on the books of the combined company as having that large value. When the dotcom bubble burst, the market value of AOL plunged. The $99 billion was a write-down of the value of the AOL division as the stocks dropped. Their core operations are still making money, and they can't be blamed for how stupid their investors are in bidding them up during the boom.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Will they double charge?

[Jason1729]

I can only play for 10 hours/week because I have to spend 40 making money so I can pay for the service. They can't cater exclusively to people who get mommy to pay for them can they?

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Will they double charge?

[sweetooth]

Believe it or not there are plenty of people that work fourty hours a week and then turn around and play for fourty or more hours per week. From playing a Turbine game (AC1) for around three years I can gaurantee you they have no problem catering to those that play more than 10 hours per week without making much of an effort to please those that don't. There were always small concessions for those that played a little, and towards the end of my playing time with that game they changed thier ways quite a bit however many casual players had long since left. I hear the same complaints on the boards about AC2. Based on that I have a hard time believing that MEO will be much differant. So while you would think that they can't cater exclusively to those that play fourty or more hours per weeek, in practice that is exactly what has happened previously.

Re:Will they double charge?

[Pingular]

I would prefer to, and regularly do, pay neither.

Re:Will they double charge?

[ealar dlanvuli]

How about giving me the option to play the game without having to pay for a useless box and manual that I don't have the shelf space for? All I need is the CD.

Everquest tried this with their most recent expansion - they ended up having to make a quick boxed edition because too many people bitched about no box. I don't think the box is totally going away anytime soon.

Re:Will they double charge?

[JasonAsbahr]

Whoa! What's your experience been with the Rackshack service?

Re:Will they double charge?

[Dirtside]

On this page, at the very bottom, it says each additional gig of transfer is $1.50. Where do you get the $0.25 figure?

Re:Will they double charge?

[Dirtside]

Whoops, pasted the wrong link in there.

I meant, on THIS page, at the bottom it says $1.50 per additional gig of transfer. Heh.

Re:Will they double charge?

[Dirtside]

My first internet account in 1993 charged a sign-up fee, and then when I switched to high-speed in 1997, there was an other sign-up fee.

There hasn't been a sign-up fee for the overwhelming majority of dialup accounts since around 1994 or 95. The "sign-up fee" for the high-speed access in 1997 sounds more like it was paying for the service of setting it up. My DSL had a $200 setup fee when I got it in 1999, and a $150 DSL modem. (They waived the setup fee; I got to keep the DSL modem.) But even had I paid the setup fee, it would have paid for the time of the technician who came out and installed the wiring in my apartment.

Sign-up fees for simple access (e.g. dialup) to internet service, when the ISP doesn't actually have to do anything but give you a phone number and create dialup and email accounts, have been unheard of for nearly ten years.

You're wrong here too, it may not be the exact same service, but it fills the same market. These games are in direct competition with each other. If someone signs up with Sims Online, it drastically decreases their chances of signing up with EverQuest. People only have so many hours a week to play the games, and only want to incur so many of the monthly fees. If EQ offers a better deal, they will steal business from SWG, even if the player would prefer SWG.

This is false. Content is mostly not interchangeable; if this were true, then the cheap $2 second-run movie theaters would always be full, and the mainstream, first-run theaters would stand empty, because even though the moviegoers would prefer to see new movies, they'd settle for old ones because it's a better deal (one-fourth the price of a first-run movie). However, this is not true, because content is not interchangable. EQ IS going to be a better deal than SWG, in terms of cost per month at least, but there are a lot of people who have no interest in EQ but will gladly pay through the nose for SWG. Why? Because it has exclusive content.

You're right in that people only have a limited amount of time to spend on these games; but a lot of people (a LOT of people) are quite willing to have multiple MMO accounts, even if they only play each game a little each week. Since you refuse to buy any MMOs, you don't seem to think these people exist. :)

If someone has to pay $50 for the MMO, they are taking a big risk that they might hate the game. If they just have to pay the $10 fee for the first month, a lot of people who would never consider risking the $50 will try the game, and a lot will decide they like it and keep playing (and paying).

You're right in that this is a superior option for the consumer, but you've yet to prove that it's superior for the game companies. Would they actually sell more units if the game cost $10 to buy and that paid for the first month free? Your suggestion is, after all, to ditch the box, manual, and everything except the jewel box and CD, and cut the price by 80%. And yeah, it seems reasonably likely that more people would try the game out... but how do you know? Maybe people see $10 games as being worthless bargain bin crap, and won't even bother. Maybe people are drawn in by the flashy box graphics and the cool screenshots on the back. Maybe not... but do you have any evidence that shows one way or the other? Until you do, it may be a significant financial gamble for a company to make on an MMO that it's spent $15 million producing for the past four years.

Surely the book publishers must realize that a lof of people enjoy reading on their PDAs, and that is a great opportunity.
Surely the RIAA must realize that people like having their entire music library on their computer so they don't have to deal with swapping discs, so copy protection is a bad thing and electronic distribution is good.

Apples and oranges. There's (so far) no continuing service

But will they invest the time needed?

[Araxen]

One thing Turbine has done before and it has shown in their games is that they haven't spent the time to the game just "right".

I never played AC1 but from what I played in AC2 it was lakely alot of content. It is one of the thing that makes MMORPG sucessful. AC2 had the gameplay and the beautiful graphics part of it right but it lacked the content and was unfinished at release. Which is way AC2 is a virtual desert nowadays.

Let's Hope Turbine can do it right this time instead of rushing it out the door like they've had in the past.

Oh jeez...

[Bonker]

Ganndallf_00312 says out of character 'L22 Wizzard LFG in Rivendale'.

Aarragone says out of character 'Ranger and Rogue group needs Wiz for Ring Quest.'

Hobbitbone_05 says out of character 'Not another 'Fellowship' group. L4m3rs!'

(Actually, I wrote a while back for an EQ website.

Re:Oh jeez...

[realdpk]

HAAhahaha. Oh man, the flashbacks. That is exactly how Everquest is. Hahahahah.

Thanks man, that is great.

of course they will

[jbellis]

it's well established now that their target market is willing to pay both.

Re:of course they will

[inkedmn]

it's well established now that their target market is willing to pay both.

or their target market's parents...

Oh! Hey!

[Perdition]

I wanna be Bilgates Ballmersins!

+5 whip of flame

[Whitecloud]

can i play a balrog? seriously though, me and millions more can't play until the ISP's drop prices for broadband. Over here in New Zealand we have to pay premium price's which are aimed at business clients not home users...supply and demand guys! drop prices and watch as the LoTR servers start getting a real workout!

already been done

[nomadic]

In the MUD world, at least. MUME (among others) has been doing it for years. I'd give the address, but I'd feel bad if it was slashdotted, even though I don't play it anymore.

Re:already been done

[jbellis]

dude, if they can't handle the mad clickthroughs they would garner from a /. _comment_ they deserve what they get. :P

Re:already been done

[nomadic]

Wow, both modded as trolls. Wonder what half-wit(s) did that, and why.

Re:already been done

[Anonymous Coward]

MUME, for those who don't know, is a MUD based on Middle Earth. My question is, are they in danger of a lawsuit from the sue-happy Entertainment Industry? In the past, I could see how something like that could slide, as there are relatively few players on the MUD (several hundred--a lot for a mud, not a lot when compared to the number of people who have computers, for example), but now there's going to be a MMORPG, and MUME is sucking potential money away from it.

Re:already been done

[nomadic]

Eh, doesn't matter to me. What's the point in getting karma if you're not going to spend it.

Re:already been done

[neurostar]

yeah, good point. I meant that post as a joke... but I guess the mods that got those two got me as well.
heh.

neurostar

Well, that's okay...

[MmmmAqua]

...I wasn't planning on spending that much time with my family/girlfriend/cats/ferret anyway, but between this and SW:Galaxies, it's starting to look like I'm going to have to build a life-support system into my office chair and buy a second Windows box so I can game *all* the time.

mod parent up

[jbellis]

that link is one of the funniest things I have read in a looooong time.

Re:Turbine = bad news

[Baron_911]

Yeah i think it was worse than part 1 :)

Any chance of a multi-platform release?

[Anonymous Coward]

Win / Mac / Lin? Since they're already a pet of the big-M, I'm thinking slightly less than a zero percent chance.

Re:Any chance of a multi-platform release?

[smittyoneeach]

The free software community needs to do a couple of things:
convince them that there is money to be made by either producing a client or
that, given a published API, that a sourceforge project can make a working client.
there may even be a code-for-play-time business model here: free software game, contributors play at will, non-contributors cough up a few quid...
I've never played one of these MUD things, but this could coax me out. Are they going to make it immersive, and do a lot of dwarvish and elvish, or are the copyright owners going to interfere?
OTOH, if snubbed, the free software community could respond by approaching Robert Jordan for a WOT MUD...

Re:Any chance of a multi-platform release?

[Andrast]

WoT MUD's abound. As do Tolkien muds (mume is my fave and one of the best i've ever played.)
You name a big fantasy author and they pretty much have at least one mud (either in development or already there).

Eddings, Pratchett, Jordan... I am awaiting a mud based on Robin Hobb (it might already be there) you can goto The Mud connector to find out.

The first words you'll hear Frodo say...

[Patoski]

When you initially log in and get ganked by some loser playing a hobbit..
"d00d! I 0wn0rz3d y00!!!!! LMAO!!!!"

*cringe*

I'm not looking forward to hearing those words from a hobbit...

I think I need to go reread LoTRs just to get that picture out of my head.

I want to be an Uruk-Hai!

[burgburgburg]

I don't want to be an elf or a hobbit or a dwarf or a hu-man! I want to be the new, improved Orc! I want this now. Hurry. HURRY!

Re:I want to be an Uruk-Hai!

[Araxen]

World of Warcraft says, "HI!"

Re:I want to be an Uruk-Hai!

[nunofgs]

[OFF-TOPIC] (a bit)

that was one of the things I found completely stupid in the second movie btw... millions or gazillions of uruk-hai (u couldn't even see the end of them), all of them with super-human/super-elf strength and smarter than orc, and faster, and shoot stinging foam from their eyes (ok, ok, I'll get to the point)... against 100 or so elfs with bows! Gimli who is too fat to even pick up an Axe, JUMPS (or gets tossed) into the middle of all those uruk-hai (did I mention they had weapons too?) and he doesn't die!!! c'mon!!! one uruk-hai could kill gimli and all his clones!

Re:I want to be an Uruk-Hai!

[Fizzl]

I hate them for making Gimli a commic side-kick in the second movie :(

Re:Doh! Must spend more money...

[sweetooth]

AC2 already has multiple playable races with race specific paths, buildings, weapons, spells etc. This is being built by whom built AC2

Crack Marketing 101

[asv108]

If a MMORPG just had a monthly fee, and a freely distributable/downloadable ISO, their increased sales would more than make up for the loss in revenue associated with ditching a retail box. There should also be a free 7 day trial that automatically converts to a paid account after 7 days. They should use crack dealer marketing: give them a free taste and get them hooked. The Safari free trial is a classic example in my case. After bad experiences with ebooks in the past, I didn't even consider trying Safari when it first came out. 2 months ago I saw a free trial offer, now I plan on keeping my Safari account for a long time to come.

Re:Crack Marketing 101

[critter_hunter]

Two words: Anarchy Online.

Re:Crack Marketing 101

[Dexx]

A Tale in the Desert has the original game downloadable for free, with a free 30 day or 24 hour trial.

Re:Crack Marketing 101

[zentigger]

Actually, a friend of mine has an Everquest account that he cancelled several months ago. He just got an email telling him that his account has been reactivated for free for the next seven days...bets are that I don't see much of him for the next few months!

Re:Crack Marketing 101

[Psychochild]

If a MMORPG just had a monthly fee, and a freely distributable/downloadable ISO, their increased sales would more than make up for the loss in revenue associated with ditching a retail box.

You are wrong. Retail boxes give a lot more exposure to the game than a simple download client will. People will see the game at the local EB or Best Buy and pick it up because they haven't seen the ads in other places.

I know from experience, because I run a smaller PvP-focused game, Meridian 59 that does not have the coverage that other games do. The game is a bit older (which translates to "stable" and "balanced"), but does not have the interest that a game in the stores does. While we have a reasonably sized playerbase, not requiring a box purchase in a store hasn't really gained us many more customers.

This isn't only a case of marketing, IMHO. Most online RPG players do not spend their time online looking at web sites looking for ads and reviews. Most people will pick up a game they see in the store and/or one that their friends recommend to them.

Even beyond this, the box sale generates income for the developer. Even if they make $10-15 profit from the box, this is equivalent of 1-2 months of profit from subscriptions per player. This helps offset initial development costs up front and fund more advertising efforts. Money up front is always worth more than money to be paid later.

As for free trials, this can be tricky for some games. Meridian 59 does not offer a free trial of the game on the PvP servers, since it could be very disruptive to other customers. Players coming in and building quick random PKer characters could drive away more customers than it draws.

My view on things,

Re:Crack Marketing 101

[17028]

Hey Psychochild, I remember your participation in the online gaming threads at the old Gamasutra forums (which they should never have gotten rid of btw, the IGDA forums doesn't have nearly as much participation). I remember that you got a job offer there at the end, glad to see that it worked out for you. Good luck! :)

technicallity

[Baron_911]

BTW, shouldn't this really be a Games story? :P

Re:Doh! Must spend more money...

[sweetooth]

Here's a link specifically to info on the player races.

Its gonna suck...

[Code Archeologist]

I have this horrible horrible feeling after following the continued off an on development of this game for the past three years that all this is going to turn out as is Everquest in Middle Earth.

Re:Its gonna suck...

[gnarled]

Everquest moving to middle earth will just simply require a new worldmap, and renaming some things. Halfling->Hobit, Dark Elf->Orc, etc...

How can the game mirror the book?

[1337_h4x0r]

In the book, you're going on a grand quest to save the Ring of Power from the clutches of Sauron.. in the game, you're going to be a peon, running around killing other equally useless peons. Same thing thats going to make Star Wars boring. Nobody can really be a Jedi or they'd be unstoppable.. similarly, there's only one Gandalf and only one Ring of Power, so as an MMORPG I don't see how it'll work.

Re:How can the game mirror the book?

[Karhgath]

That's why I think the perfect MMORPG in Middle Earth would be during the second age, or at least long before the LoTR. Times of conflicts between all races, epic wars, easterlings invasions, etc. It's a much better backdrop than the Ring quest and it's backdrop.

Re:How can the game mirror the book?

[Anne_Nonymous]

Sure, but name one other RPG where players might actually want to be a halfling.

Re:How can the game mirror the book?

[Patoski]

In the book, you're going on a grand quest to save the Ring of Power from the clutches of Sauron.. in the game, you're going to be a peon, running around killing other equally useless peons. Same thing thats going to make Star Wars boring.

Very true... One thing that might fix this feeling of "I'm small and don't matter" would be if the game allowed for *massive* battles like in the book. Then ppl could say "I'm just one being but I did my part to influence things." Turbine could just schedule a night when the assault would take place and you could log in to a special "Tonight Only Orc/Human Big Battle Account." This would help solve the problem of getting everyone at the same place at the same time.

I wouldn't mind being a peon Orc trying to take the Hornburg or a human defender beating off the maurading orc hordes. Esp if they incorporated a cool innovative combat system like VSIM. That would be a huge rush! Turbine could then release the movies and announce who won and have the result effect the storyline. It probably won't happen but we can dream. :)

Re:How can the game mirror the book?

[startled]

"Same thing thats going to make Star Wars boring. Nobody can really be a Jedi or they'd be unstoppable."

Well, seeing as players can be a Jedi in SWG, it might be time to rethink your theory. :)

Re:How can the game mirror the book?

[Danny Rathjens]

MUME: Multi Users in Middle Earth. The MUD based on Tolkien's work solved this problem by having an ongoing war between the good races(human,dwarf,elf,hobbit) and the evil races(orc,troll,black numenorean). You could choose to play on either side of the war. It makes for a much more challenging game when your opponents are humans.
For the less combative folks, MUME also had things such as herblore skills where you needed to find rare herbs to use and quests to find rare items and you could even fish! 8^) In addition to the typical experience points for defeating monsters, MUME also had a unique system of 'travel points' that you could obtain by exploring far off lands where people hadn't been.
I was one of those that loved the excitement of penetrating deep into lands held by the evil races and participating in the war by hunting down , or being hunted by, members of the evil races. One of the most frightening and fun experiences I also had was sneaking into Moria on a solo quest
MUME was also really awesome because LotR was translated into 30 something languages and so it was a very large international MUD with contributions from many people and so the world itself was very large.(and 10 years ago the net was more predominately we physics and compsci students and not so many AOLers ;)
Ahh, nice trip down memory lane there, ;) I played for 3 or 4 years religiously, then sporadically for a few more, my primary character being an elf named 'Vosh'.

Re:How can the game mirror the book?

[Carnivorous Carrot]

Making a class-based game on Star Wars without letting you be a Jedi is like making a pr0n online game and not letting you be John Holmes.

Re:How can the game mirror the book?

[NonSequor]

Dark Age of Camelot is kind of like that. There are three realms that fight against eachother. People can coordinate raids on keeps in the frontiers of other realms. Albion almost always has more people than the other realms (for whatever reason some people think they are stronger, even though their classes aren't really designed for cooperation), but it's kind of cool to say "I helped defend X against Y Albs with just Y people."

Re:How can the game mirror the book?

[TopShelf]

Personally, I think the era immediately after the downfall of Sauron makes a good setting. There are plenty of nasties out there to be disposed of - orcs, goblins, Southrons, dragons, etc. You don't think they all just disappeared in the blink of an eye, do ya?

Re:How can the game mirror the book?

[Anonymous Coward]

making a pr0n online game

Your powers are weak, old man.

It belonged to your father. He wanted you to have it when you were old enough.

Now, I am the master...

Aim for the small exhaust port directly below the large one.

And I thought they smelled bad... on the outside.

Re:How can the game mirror the book?

[Anonymous Coward]

Middle/late of 2nd age sounds good. Eriador is in bliss and the Numenoreans roam middle earth. Plus Sauron dwells on Numenor and plots against the Faithful.

Or 3rd age at the time where Arnor has split into 3 competing kingdoms and Gondor is fighting in the south.

Turbine?

[bluemeep]

I thought Sierra was working on a LotR MMORPG...

Then again, it HAS been several years since I bothered to check up on the project. It could have turned into a platformer at one point for all I know.

Re:Turbine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the bottom of the webpage. You'll see a Vivendi Universal logo. Vevendi owns Sierra.

A little glimpse of what it will be like...

[Anonymous Coward]

An epic tale!

Lord of the Rings MMORPG. Roleplay server log!

Old, old news.

[Anonymous Coward]

The forum has been open for months: http://community.vugames.com/WebX?14@@.ef6f931

Driven by MASSIVE

[notestein]

I'm holding out for the version driven by Massive.

AC1 is thrice the game it was at release

[Qinopio]

The AC team has done a great job with very limited resources. It's still the fastest MMORPG, and has the best (IMO) PvM online.

If they make MOE similar to AC, I'll be hooked for sure.

There are three main problems with MS/Turbine game

[Anonymous Coward]

As a long time player of Asherons Call 1 (On the Player Killer Only server known as Darktide). There are problems that plauge MS/Turbine games.

#1) Lag, Sweet Horrible LAG!!!

Wanna go PvP on a Player Killer Only Server? Well good luck having huge battles between clans, having more than 50 people in a single area will cause your ping to skyrocket!

Non Player Killer servers suffer from the same thing, which are gathering places where "carebears" hang out for hours on end chatting. Log on or travel to a main hub or spot and get massive lag, sometimes these people create lag on purpose casting excessive spells which slow down your video rendering or spam your chat box with scripted responces.

No matter how fast your Broadband connection is, you will never get a ping under 100ms.

#2) Rules that MS/Turbine dont bother to enforce.

They hire 10 admins to enforce the rules governing 500,000 players and it just doesnt work. People cheat, hack, exploit and even if theyre caught doing it, even if they admit to doing it and tell others how, they wont get punished. Massive item duplication sprees that as an end result cause gaming servers to CRASH!! Holy Crap MS! They are crashing your servers and you dont even give them so much as a slap on the wrists!

#3) Scripted/Macros.

Since MS heavily relies on scripts to test almost all their products including their games, this latest game will be prone to macros. Its a shake n bake on AC1. You dont even have to do anything, people level for you by passing up Experience Points (The Vassal/Patron system) through an XP chain. Scripts are created to not only level, but for skills and trades. The products of these skills can be sold, so no need to go hunting for cash.

Of course the more MS/Turbine forbids the use of Macros, the more people do it. Its crazy right now, and the new rules strictly stating that macros are against the TOS have had the opposite effect. People macro more than ever.

PS
Their support is horrible.

WHy this will suck

[AuMatar]

Camping Sauron for the one ring drop. No better way to ruin Middle Earth than to have to sit and wait for the ultimate evil to spawn, and staying there for a few days.

Re:WHy this will suck

[tweek]

and then watching it go up on ebay for a few hundred dollars.

A question on their "marketing"

[narfbot]

Why is Vivendi Universal Games making a game on the Tolkien world, when one of their subsidiaries is already been making a similar fantasy type for roughly nearly three years, World of Warcraft? Even then, why do they have the same target frame, 2004 right? I think being practically, the same kind of game, a customer will usually choose one over the other, and not buy the other. This means one of these games will largely fail. I think WoW will be the successful one as it will be more polished with the development time that has gone in. So these games are virtually competing against each other.

Even after that, there are many MMOPG games in production. I don't think they will be too many successful ones because a gamer has only so much money to spend on monthly fees, but more important time. A single MMOPG can consume much of your free time.

So I really doubt the success of Middle Earth Online.

Middle Earth Warcry

[Bruha]

Warcry News Network has had the first MEO site up for a few months now.

Find it @ http://me.warcry.com

Re:slashdot is gay!

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is that supposed to be? What cock are you talking about?!

Something I never can understand..

[Azureflare]

Why do they insist on leaving Bilbo's early times out of all this? Personally I liked the environment that was set-up during "The Hobbit" more than the one during the lord of the rings series. Heck, it'd probably be better if it was even before Bilbo, before that silly ring started popping up everywhere.

A big unifying conflict can be good...and bad. Part of the attraction of a MMORPG is that it never ends...Or at least lasts a long time. If they start right before war breaks out with Sauron, the game won't last that long...

Here we go

[geekoid]

fladnag:"Wanted: hobbit for quest"
hobbit1:"No way, l4mer5"
hobbit2:"No again old man"
orc143:"errr Me Hobbit, me take quest"
orc424:"me too"
orc532:"me too"
noruas:"me too"

What we have is a game thats going to piss off middle earth fans. You know how THEY can be. This means they need to catter to regular fantasy fans. so it will be like every other fantasy game. Why bother buying the rights?

OTOH I might sign up just to get a classin tolkien name, and then sell on ebay!

Suck the life right out of Middle Earth

[kabir]

I can't help but think that an MMORPG will just suck the life right out of Middle Earth. In my head ME is a rich, populated world filled with complexity, wonder and mystery. There's just no way that an MMORPG can do that justice with current technology. I mean, look at _any_ of the current MMORPGs and it's pretty obvious that they're not up to a world as rich a Tolkien's.

Re:Suck the life right out of Middle Earth

[menasius]

My opinion is it is not the technology that'll hold it back. Granted they wont look cinematic like the movies but really fleshing out a game to be as "rich as Tolkeins" is more a question of content, not technology. I think if done right you could have a game as rich as Tolkein's books run from a text console only. After all the books are just text too.

The problem is game makers today rely too much on the "oooh ahhhh" factor of rich graphics which are truly wonderful and not as much on content. I have a feeling the bane of this MMORPG will be the lack of content which makes it a truly tolkein world. We have had the technology to make great games for a long time, then things went all GUI.

-bort

Re:Suck the life right out of Middle Earth

[kabir]

Doing it in text would, I believe, be much, much easier than doing it with AC2 level technology, actually. The biggest thing that I notice about modern MMORPGS is that things just don't seem to be alive around me. NPCs don't go on about their lives, not giving a damn about me (as they should). Forests aren't teeming with wildlife... it's MOBs or nothing, and that just isn't enough. At least in text you'd have both more descriptive ability and more processor time to handle everything...

I want to be Sauron

[DeadBugs]

I was thinking about the scene in the Fellowship, where Sauron takes a swing at the oncoming army and wipes out the first couple rows.

What an evil thrill that would be in an online game.

An added bonus would be warping the minds of weak willed hobbits.

When they port it to the X-BOX

[WankersRevenge]

When they port it to the X-BOX, you just might have your wish come true.

You think that's bad

[devphil]

I'd hate to be this guy.

Finally, I get to play my favorite character!

[Brushfireb]

the RING!!

Also Lineage

[Iowaguy]

Lineage is a nice rpg that is fairly addictive and an excellent community. You may want to give it a look at less than 20 bucks a month. -Iowa

Dibs on the name Legolas!!

[fruity]

----- fruity bastard.

LotR and DAoC

[IsoRashi]

Junk filter won't let me post the text... Head on over to here and check out the first two links to see some humor on LotR in the DAoC world. DAoC players will understand it best, but any mmorpg geek should be able to follow along :)

Re:LotR and DAoC

[Anonymous Coward]

*snicker*

Punctuation? Good spelling? Capitalization? Good use of grammar? These logs don't come from an actual mud. I swear some of the people I've seen play must deliberatly get "you're" and "your" mixed up. Even worse is seeing "ur" used in both cases.

Turbine Engine

[L7_]

When Turbine demo'ed thier Turbine Game Engine, they demonstrated how flexible it was to script and how dynamic they could make the games.

They came up with an example set of inputs to thier engine and called it Asheron's Call 2. Thier engine is beautiful, thier game design is shit.

So, what people should be hoping is that thier game designers (and artists) [where is devilmouse?] don't drop the ball and make a game worth playing. It *could* give EQ2 a run for its money.

Re:Turbine Engine

[Anonymous Coward]

"where is devilmouse?"

devilmouse? the same guy who thought that the most powerful weapon in AC1 should be a toothpick? who single-handedly destroyed all balance for at least two years? and you want him *back*?

Codemasters Sierra

[loomis]

Was this not a couple years ago to be a sierra and/or codemasters project that ultimately got canned, much to the dismay of many people? Wasn't this, if I remember correctly, a sort of nail in the coffin for Sierra and much of their staff?

Loomis

The One Ring

[bigdavex]

Suppose they actually put the ring into this story. Suppose a hero retrieves it. Suppose the game engine actually gives the character a huge boost.

Do you think there's any chance of the ring's destruction in Mount Doom?

Ya Never wanted to be a FedEx Hobbit on a pony?

[arcite]

Its a dream come true! Deliver packages in the morning, slay orcs at lunch, and pay a 'visit' to the brothel ::ahem:: prancing pony in the evening. A hard day's work if you are only three and a half feet tall.

Turbine and AC1

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't played AC2, but I played quite a lot of AC1. What I learned about Turbine from that is:

They like story arcs. If you see a Middle Earth from them, they will most likely be writing epic plots taking place before or after the Fellowship.

They don't like camping quests (as much as Verant). Of course stationary 3 day respawn quests suck, that's why they made random boss monster spawns. No waiting, just dumb luck or hours of running through the desert.

They don't like tedium. In AC1 they did all they could to reduce needless time sinks. In AC2, it was one of their prime objectives. They may have overshot the mark in #2, making it too simplistic, but hey, third time's a charm.

I'm definitely happy Turbine is making it instead of any other company. Here's for hoping it's a winner.

WineX our only hope of playing this game in Linux

[lplatypus]

Turbine's previous game, Asheron's Call 2, uses DirectX and not OpenGL (see system requirements). If this new game uses DirectX exclusively once more, then we won't see a linux (or mac) port of this game. Transgaming's WineX will be our only hope to play it on Linux.

gives it..

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean my precious is just a simulation? GIVES IT TO ME!!

Re:WineX our only hope of playing this game in Lin

[feldsteins]

OpenGL or not, no game developer has much of an incentive to port a game to Linux. Why? Because every Linux user who gives a hoot about gaming dual boots Windows. Think about it. You're a game developer. You can either:

a) not develop for Linux, pocket the savings, sell a million games.

b) incur the expense of developing/testing/supporting for Linux and sell...zero additional units.

At least doing a Mac port involves getting sales that you flatly would not otherwise have gotten. Mac users are not dual booting Windows for the purposes of playing games. You don't make a mac version, you don't sell to the Mac user. Simple.

Turbine's games have been worth it

[DoctaWatson]

Asheron's Call requires a monthly fee, but you also get monthly updates with gobs of new content (dungeons, monsters, storyline, items, etc.).

No, you can't opt out of an update (if you play AC, you must pay the monthly fee and get the update), but its better than most online game companies who charge an arm and a leg for content through "expansion packs".

Turbine has released one expansion for Asheron's Call, but it had the content equivalent of three monthly patches and added player houses to the game.

Re:There are three main problems with MS/Turbine g

[benh57]

MS has nothing whatsoever to do with this game. It will be published by Vivendi Universal.

RPG or action/adventure?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think its important to know what it is people will be getting involved with. On one end you have roleplaying games where you define what your character is outside of just "pick this class and these attributes" and have the freedom to play a role. An action adventure game will focus on the hack and slash and add immersion as a possible enhancement. Look at Deus Ex to see how even a FPS shoot-em-up can be made into an involved and compelling, player driven game.

Some people get into the argument of the words Role and Playing but their definition normally will thusly include Mario Brothers and Pac-Man as RPG's. I enjoyed Diablo and Diablo II but they were clearly not RPG's (especially not the first one). I also like ice cream but would not classify it as beer, much less add any to my Guiness or Shiner. I would really like an immersive RPG world where there is a bit of a "realistic" economy and playability factor beyond the leveling treadmill (kill critter, get loot and experience to level up and buy new equipment to allow you to fight appropriate critters for your new level, fight new critters to get better loot and experience to level up and buy new equipment to allow you to fight appropriate critters for your new level... wash, rinse and repeat). While I will not deny there would be a bit of enjoyment out of YASLMR (yet another self labled MMO RPG) that this time uses Tolkien names and places, I somehow doubt I myself would be interested more than about say... 21 days tops.

That said I can't help but get as giddy as a little school girl and don't I look just as pretty with my new panties as well... uhhh, forget I said that.

Great...

[onelin]

another MMORPG that I won't be playing. I've been clean for 20 months!

At least all those LotR rpg jokes will finally come true now.

Re:There are three main problems with MS/Turbine g

[LightwaveNet]

While i'll admit many of the problems you mentioned were definitely huge gamekillers in the Asheron's Call 1 world...

MEO is based on the turbine 2 engine... like asheron's call 2.

a) I'm unaware of any ability to duplicate items in the ac2 world.
b) the xp chain system has been redone to avoid leveling a character entirely through vassal xp passup.
c) There are very few useable worthwhile macro programs in ac2... and the entire economy/gold system has been redone auch that your point really doesnt apply to what MEO will likely have.

Bad taste in my mouth

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I'm in the minority here, but things like video games and happy meals based on a book by an author who abhored those sorts of things really rubs me in the wrong way. Admittedly, The Lord of the Rings is no Catch-22 or The Stranger, but it's a significant book nonetheless and one that the author and many readers took very seriously. In the Lord of the Rings, beyond the basic orc-killing stuff, you have a pretty passionate defence of romanticism and naturalism by a man who really felt that the machines were destroying his world and the things he felt were important. I know it's Tolkien's fault for selling the rights and all, but I think it's a shame to see his story being essentially bastardized by a consumer culture that he was trying to fight against. Obviously this is not a comment on this MMORPG, which I haven't seen, but more the EA games and Jackson films, and especially the "OMG Did you just see how Legolas slid down those stairs!!" elements thereof.

Re:WineX our only hope of playing this game in Lin

[Luke-Jr]

I only allow open source software on my PC. Very rarely (never) do I need WINE or WineX for games.

Oooh ooh

[Anonymous Coward]

I get dibs on the Ring Of Power!

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

You're incredibly average.

Turbine's Last Stand

[JJahn]

This is the game for Turbine. With the recent horror that is AC2, and AC1 only being a mildly sucessful game business-wise, this is their last chance to prove themselves as an MMORPG developer.

Of course this game is not published by MS, so if it turns out well I guess it is proof that MS was at fault for AC2 being crap like it is now.

Re:WineX our only hope of playing this game in Lin

[sholden]

Since you don't allow open source software on your PC, you will purchase 0 copies of a closed source game with a linux port. Hence users like you don't add an incentice to port a closed source game (which isn't a good or a bad thing to me).

Porting to linux opens up the market of those people who run linux but do not run windows, and who also don't have a philosophical objection to closed source software. Those users are so few that it simply isn't financially worthwhile (unless you are writting a portable game to start with and adding linux has a tiny incremental cost).

Ugh.

[StealthBadger]

Consequences are difficult. UO has done the best job of it, EQ the worst on its red servers (at least when I was playing)

For a while, "naked mages" (think a wizard running around with a spellbook and an attitude) were terrifying... if you killed them, you got nothing, and the only way to kill them was to get in melee range....

I keep up with CMMORPG's...

[ChozSun]

... through Slashdot alone. It has been a while since I have spent one fucking penny or wasted one fucking second on a CMMORPG and my life has been great ever since.

Sometimes, curiosity gets the best of me and I have to read the responses to any CMMORPG announcement in /. Gawd in the 4+ years of CMMORPG's infecting our computers and corrupting young mind's impression of what a Role Playing Game should be, not a fucking damn thing has changed. People are still bitching about the same shit in UO, EQ, DAoC, The Sims and any other CMMORPG out there. At one time, DAoC was suppose to save us from UO and EQ. The Sims in general were suppose to be the end all to all CMMORPG's. Now we are suppose to salivate over the vapourware of the first decade: SWG?

On top of all this, I am suppose to not only pay for the software but actually give them money to be frustrated as hell while running the treadmill of leveling?

WTF.

Re:I keep up with CMMORPG's...

[Winterblink]

How, exactly, do you come to the conclusion SWG is vaporware? You can go sign up for the beta yourself, you know (who knows, might even get in). Then you get actual software that you can install and play the beta with. That doesn't sound like vaporware, that sounds more like a MMORPG that's under development (missed release dates and all).

As to whether you're supposed to pay for the software to be frustrated, have you ever considered that MMORPGs are not the game for you? Now bear with me on this, because I know it's a big stretch: you don't have to buy these games. If they frustrate you, so be it; buy some other game from a genre you DO like.

Re:I keep up with CMMORPG's...

[20_ooodbye]

What's the 'C' all about CMMORPG? MMORPG is allready a horrid acronym, what does the 'C' stand for?

Just curious is all

Re:I keep up with CMMORPG's...

[ChozSun]

"C" stands for Crap

Re:I keep up with CMMORPG's...

[ChozSun]

I did hear that SWG is in beta so I stand corrected.

I don't buy/subscribe to these games anymore. My point is why do other people buy them and why are they so insistant on paying monthly fees for a game they will always complain about.

Re:I keep up with CMMORPG's...

[Winterblink]

People who complain about the fact that there are bugs and balancing issues with these types of games are extremely annoying, I'll agree with that. Personally, I play MMORPGs. Well more accurately, I only ever am playing one at a time. That being said I actually think the pay-by-the-month model works. Why? The developers fix the bugs and balancing issues in the game more frequently than single player games. Also, the constant addition of new content into an already expansive world is also a good thing.

For myself, I play games a lot. If a single MMORPG can hold my attention for say a year solid, I've paid far less for games than I would have normally. Saving cash is always a good thing. :)

Excellent.

[Amiasian]

How about one takes the same filters used in advanced email processing (adaptive latent semantic analysis) which analyze word-pairs, and using these pairs, can determine contextual meaning of such phrases as "d00d! I Own... ugh" well, that atrocity and it could "Tolkien-ify" it.
Human: A fair battle, and I congratulate you on allowing such a just victory, good sir.

Okay, maybe I'm not getting the NB factor right. (Nobility) = how noble a character is. But, it's something worth exploring. I think for suspension of disbelief to fully happen, one has to act as if one truely is the character. And that means, for the most part, none of this haxx0r shit.

However, a high experimental MU...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is at chicago.funcities.org 2222
It's not exactly Tolkien, but definitely worth checking out.

Fighter Ace does just that

[Anonymous Coward]

Another massively multiplayer game that doesn't *require* you to purchase a retail box (although one is available if you want):

Fighter Ace from Jaleco.

I think they have a trial period as well. This game was formerly "Microsoft Fighter Ace" but they escaped MS around version 3. Since then the game has just been getting better and better. It's something of a refreshing change given that the designers are very involved in the community and don't ignore player feedback.

FA is a combat flight shoot-em-up / simulator - but it makes Battlefield 1942's plane combat seem very very weak. Sure, it isn't an RPG, but it is one of the best massively multiplayer online action games on the net - anywhere. It's got quite a pedegree and is well worth checking out if you like airplane combat.

Re:Damnit: An Alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

You do not need these sich days left. Just try ProgressQuest (http://www.progressquest.com/).
Levelling, Hacking through tons of monsters (ever wanted to kill porn elementals?) and collect their lewt. Head to the market and sell it for better equipment.
And the best of all: It's non-interactive. You don't have to sink that much time in that game. It plays itself. And it is not just single player, it has a multi player part too!
From the developer: "Progress Quest is the first ever 'fire and forget' RPG. Build your character from a ninety-pound level 1 teenager, to an incredibly puissant, magically imbued warrior, well able to snuff out the lives of a barnload of bugbears, all without the tedious micromanagement and other frustrations common to most online RPG's."

BUT

[Bruha]

It's DirectX that's keeping many from adopting any Linux OS as their primary operating system. Maybe it's time to sue MS to make a Linux compatible version since DirectX stifles competition.

If console games run on all 3 major consoles it makes sense that they can also code these games to run on any os just as easily. I'm pretty sure the Xbox runs DirectX in some form though I dont own one myself.

Re:BUT

[feldsteins]

You're missing the point. Even with directX on Linux no game developer has a financial interest in making a Linux version. Because they're already selling the Windows version to the same people...because they're all dual booting. There's no financial gain to them when they're just selling a Linux version and it's displacing a Windows version sale. Mac uesrs are different. You don't make a Mac version, you lose sales.

I do agree, however, that DirectX is evil. But I don't want to see DirectX on Linux or Mac. If it happened, we'd see a few new games maybe. Not many (see above). Eventually OpenGL would fade away. You'd start noticing that the DX quality on Linux was shitty. MS doesn't update it timely enough. It's not feature complete. Then one day 'we're not doing directX 12 for Linux. Our customers don't want it..."

THEN where are you? A platform with no games and no API to develop them on.

Our engergy is better spent promoting OpenGL rather wishing for DirectX to come our way.

T-O-M-E: an open source multiplayer game

[Lord Satri]

Troubles of Middle-Earth is an open source multiplayer online game based on Tolkien's work. Ok, no great graphics, but the game is quite fun and complete.

I remember that #1 reason/poll I read on PD

[Vicegrip]

This is from the old PD/Sierra days of Middle Earth. When there was endless discussions about the pros/cons of PD.

#1: No more having to see naked people running around yellling "has anyone seen my body?"

Re:WineX our only hope of playing this game in Lin

[Anonymous Coward]

Because every Linux user who gives a hoot about gaming dual boots Windows.

I'm not as much as a gamer as I used to be, but that's for two reasons: 1) I had to give it up to get the degree and 2) You're right, Linux has lousy game support.

But #2 is NOT because of the users, it's because of the game developers.

I dual boot into Windows, but not for games. The only reason I have Windows is to do development and testing on it. I build all my own computers (excluding laptops, which are, for the moment, Apple running Linux). My computers don't come with Windows. I had to go out and buy a copy of Windows 2000.

Would I boot into Windows just to play a game? No. And while there may not be a lot of games for Linux, there are enough that I like that I am currently satisfied.

Will I buy a Windows game? No, nor have I ever. I just don't see the point. I've bought plenty of Linux games, though, because it's nice to actually play in an environment where things are stable, secure, and just damn usable. Plus, it's free as in speech, and that trumps all for me.

What does any of this have to do with Shadowbane?

[Naum]

Shadowbane

But now that Mac OS X is Unix-based...

[Phantasmo]

you basically have the same API to deal with. As long as you don't go nuts with assembly (and you shouldn't have to use it at all) your Mac port could probably just recompile for GNU/Linux with minimal tweaking.

Or, write the game using SDL and have it run on all three platforms.

Or, release the source (but not the graphics, sounds, music and levels) under the GPL and have the community do all the work of porting, tracking down bugs, adding new features &c.

Re:There are three main problems with MS/Turbine g

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy Crap MS! They are crashing your servers and you dont even give them so much as a slap on the wrists!

Well, you see, it saves them the trouble of letting them crash by themselves.

Man there is very little

[Anonymous Coward]

room for religious humor here eh ?

Re:WineX our only hope of playing this game in Lin

[salimma]

Because every Linux user who gives a hoot about gaming dual boots Windows

Or dual boots to OS X, but I digress.

If the cost of porting is low enough, though (as it would be for OpenGL games), it might become handy to cultivate Linux gamers by releasing a Linux port. It does not even have to be concurrent - look at Neverwinter Nights.

A side effect might be maintaining portability; the platform-specific parts of the code would have to be clearly delineated, which is good engineering practice.