Chris Taylor on Middle Earth Online

Recently, GameSpy's Andrew Bub caught up with Vivendi Univeral's Chris Taylor (of Fallout and Starfleet Command) at GenCon to talk about their Middle Earth Online MMORPG which is in the works. A lot of ground is covered, from which parts of middle earth will be in the game, to how they manage to keep track of all of Tolkien's lore, to Tom Bombadil's poetry.

Comments

An unfortunate built in limit

[MBraynard]

MMORPG's require constant updates to add new quests/content. Given how limited the liscence is for this game - "We're only allowed to use the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and parts of the appendices, which are not in the Silmarillion" - how are they going to grow beyong the licence of the game in those books?

This compares to the Star Wars games, where Lucas has approved an entire expanded lore, as has Paramount with Star Trek.

Ultimatly, this game will force the creation of non-Tolkien, expanded lore or it will fail.

Re:An unfortunate built in limit

[gl4ss]

they don't really have to. if they just slap up a world with all the cities described in lotr&hobbit, it's really enough.

basically, if it's set around the war of the ring or near those times, there's no need to poke into silmarillion described parts of the world.

besides, it's an mmorpg, my belief is that most of the game is going to end up killing the rats in some big woods with most of the other players doing the same, so it doesn't really matter if you can't 'go west' so to speak. now, if it had same aspects of freedom as morrowind it might be fun.

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