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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."

2 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Model Citizens by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    make install -not war

  2. I hate to say it by DevilsEngine · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.