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Chris Taylor on Middle Earth Online

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the hobbits-and-orcs dept.

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.

6 of 34 comments (clear)

  1. Tolken's rolling in his grave.... by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Mass media's doing to Tolken's fine works as they do to everything else that's "popular". They're Over-saturizing his books.

    I wouldnt be surprised in 2 years, most people will hate the "Lord Of the Rings" series of books. In a way, It's kind of sad.

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    1. Re:Tolken's rolling in his grave.... by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You're probably right, though Tolkien was rolling (his eyes) when he saw people dressing up as elves in the 60's, IIRC, so I doubt this would surprise him.

      It will be kinda sad when leet games are all bragging about the phat lewt they got camping the Shelob spawn...

      In any case, at least with the media saturation, many new people are exposed to Tolkiens work - hell, some of em may make it through the Silmarillion :)

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      Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
  2. Be glad you weren't named after a character.... by quinkin · · Score: 3, Interesting
    As someone who was named after a character of the LOTR (blame my whacked out parents not me) I can tell you I have had more than enough...

    I'm glad it is a pretty obscure character. Any Aragorn's or Bilbo's out there?

    Q.

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    Insert Signature Here
  3. An unfortunate built in limit by MBraynard · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    1. Re:An unfortunate built in limit by gl4ss · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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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      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  4. Re:What about Total Annihilation 2? by mayns · · Score: 3, Informative

    Um, wrong Chris Taylor. This is the one that worked on Fallout, not the one that did Dungeon Siege.