Turbine Starts The Spin For Middle-Earth Online

JC writes "It looks like Tolkien fans will get one of their biggest dreams with Turbine's Middle-Earth Online. Originally expected about November, we're now looking at a Northern Hemisphere Autumn release date. The New Zealand Herald has a good article."

Comments

I want to be a Men class.

[Tibor the Hun]

I don't mean to troll, but why is the class called Men, and not Human?
I'm not up on my Tolkien Lore, so as an outsider a Men class looks mighty odd to me.

Re:I want to be a Men class.

[Pxtl]

Now, I didn't RTFA, but I really hope that they don't make it like MERP (the Rolemaster based pnp rpg), where any player can just be a high-elf, or a half-elf, or a wizard, or an ent, or something else that's supposed to be rare as diamonds. Its a stupid world where the rare peoples outnumber the normal, common humans. Same thing for magical artifacts - and notice that Gandalf primarily fights with a sword and staff, not "lightningbolt!" and "I'm gonna cast magic missile."

But I doubt it. It'll be EverCrack with all the stuff renamed after Tolkien stuff.

Model Citizens

[Doc Ruby]

By the time these movies make it to game format, their cutting-edge digital techniques are several years old, while computers have raced along the rails of Moore's law. Why don't they just release the models and engines for PCs? They can spend the intervening time optimizing for the actual cheap hardware and OS, and coming up with new plotmaps.

Re:Model Citizens

[orasio]

I don't make movies for a living, but I believe 3d cinema has similarities to actual cinema.
They don't need to build the full middle Earth to any acceptable detail, they need just some specific sets, and some landscape.
The needs of the movie might not fulfill those of the game.

Anyway, the models used for renderman and such differ a great deal from the models you would need for a game. For example, in a recursive renderer, a good specfication of the material would be the only thing you need for an good render, in a game, you would need more specific procedural shaders, that don't need to be easily translated.

I mean that maybe the work of adapting the movie sets to game sets might end up to be a comparable effort to building the sets again, and even give sub-par results.

I hate to say it

[DevilsEngine]

But won't this game seem a little... tired?

The standard props of the Tolkien universe served for gaming fodder even before D&D (minus the A). In online play, the races and creatures here are used, in dozens of permutations. Haven't we all had a chance to be an elf or halfing? Haven't we all taken a shot at more orcs, trolls, and dragons that we could eat?

Lively story-telling and a deep sense of history set Tolkein appart from other fantasies. Unless Turbine is able to bring this world something other than the appearance of Middle Earth, it's hard to see what will make it more exciting than the possibilities offered by a City of Heroes, or even a solid middle-ages + fantasy setting universe such as Dark Age of Camelot. I certainly want something more than name recognition to make me pick up a sword again.

problem #1

[kippy]

Everyone's going to want to be a wizard. There were only five wizards in RJRT's world and three are already spoken for. There are two blue wizards who drifted out east but nothing is really said about them.

Those sound like pretty coveted characters to me.

ME better for MMORPG than SW?

[cvd6262]

When Start Wars Galaxies came out, many people worried that everyone would want to be a Jedi, because, by far, they are the coolest, most powerful individuals in that universe.

I think Middle Earth offers a better balance of civilizations. If I were a gamer, I'd wouldn't even mind being an orc.

Re:Another MMORPG??

[Cromac]

Don't worry, if it sucks anywhere near as much as Turbines last release, AC2, it won't be fun and won't be addictive at all.

After their last fiasco I'm not holding my breath for future Turbine products.

Aside from that, there's always room for yet another MMORPG. More competition means the existing companies have to constantly improve to keep their customers or sooner or later a significantly better game will come out and they'll lose their marketshare.

How long

[nizo]

How long will it be before you can basically live your entire life "inside" a game? And yeah before you guys start saying "I already do" I mean how long before you don't even leave the game at all, even to work? Picture being a wizard in middle earth, where you take several hours a day to go "cast some spells" (i.e. program so you can keep th electricity going so you can play). Or maybe you put on your "middle earth" glasses, and your every-day life looks like middle earth (instead of everyday boring people you see elves/dwarves/etc, instead of buses you see large lumbering Oliphants, etc).

Middle-Earth or generic fantasy land?

[tehanu]

One thing I want to know is if they are going to make the game world true to Middle-Earth or as a more generic D&D based game? The problems with transferring a popular franchise to MMG can be seen in Star Wars where everyone wants to be a Jedi. Hence even though the MMG is set in the time where Jedi should be rare there are tons of Jedi running around. In this case faithfulness to the original storyline is sacrificed because everyone wants to be a hero. For example one of the difficulties I can see with Middle-Earth is that lots of people will want to be a wizard (like Gandalf). However in Middle-Earth wizards are extremely rare. There are only 8 (?) of them and they are not human either but servants sent from Valor clothed in human form. And will magic spells familiar from D&D like fireball be common, because there is actually very little magic actually cast as fireball type spells in LoTR.

When will it be set (the article doesn't say this). I imagine it will be set immediately after the events of the book. But according to the novel magic is dying out in the land during this time. Lothlorien for example is in the process of being abandoned. However lots of people will want to go visit Lothlorien. Will people be able to go to Moria? If they can clean out Moria it would go against canon as Tolkien says Moria was never able to be reclaimed by the dwarves. I think this is a fundamental problem with franchise based MMGs. People will want to go to clear out Moria, they will want to be a wizard and cast fireballs, they will want to go and visit Lothlorien no matter how out-of-character or against canon it is. Will it accurately model the various tensions amongst the different groups of elves? They mention an elvin ship but how do they balance this with the fact that being invited to an elvin ship (if you are not an elf) is extremely rare. How do they balance the fact that in LoTR canon, elves are massively more powerful than humans - being created as perfect beings and thousands of years old? In a single-player game it is easy to control the actions people can take, but in a MMG where the only real aim is to explore how do you balance faithfulness to canon and fun gameplay? Star Wars Galaxies as far as I can tell decided to go "screw canon" - will this Tolkien MMG do the same? Will it really be Middle-earth or will it be Dungeons and Dragons?

Say what?

[rudeboy1]

You mean like a bunch of Hobbits whose while lifestyle revolves around a simple hedonistic society that end up travelling accross the land, joining in wars, and killing nasty beastseses? Or maybe a ranger who has abandoned his birthright, and ends up going back in the direction that would make him King? Or maybe on a shorter scale, like Boromir, who learns to trust non-humans, as well as give his life for a cause he scoffed at at the first appearance of his character? I may be a while out from high school literature class, but there sounds like there might be a touch of character development in this series.
Or did you mean physical/ability development, as it pertains to a game chracter, like a hobbit learning to wield a sword, or a wizard changing his colors and becoming more powerful?
Yeah. You're right. No development whatsoever.