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The Destiny of Lord of the Rings Online
An anonymous reader writes "Julian Murdoch over at Gamers With Jobs posits that the recently released Lord of the Rings Online, for all it's flaws, is a new kind of game — the Destiny-Locked RPG: 'The reason that Story sets LOTRO apart is because you know how it ends. This is a luxury World of Warcraft simply can never have. There is no logical end to WoW, where the evil WoW faction of the Horde is victorious, and every member of the good-aligned Alliance dies. The viciously PvP nature of EVE Online means that the story can only sit on the sidelines and inform, not take center stage. But in LOTRO, the game is the story. In this, the game has far more in common with Oblivion than it does with WoW.' The argument here is that a game in which the outcome is known is fundamentally a different (and possibly better) form of gameplay than that the current rage of emergent-gameplay sandbox weak storied games. A challenging idea." It's not so much that the game's ending is already known, as that there is an ending.
I think Star Wars Galaxies qualifies, as it's set between two pre-existing movies.
I also think the fact that the story was already written was part of it's downfall. The developers had no room to work with because they would keep bumping into canon.
Unfortunately, the well-defined "end" to LOTR has resulted in the first licensed game I can think of where you can't actually go to most of the cool locations from the book (and movies, though Turbine doesn't have that particular license) because the plot hasn't advanced that far yet. They CAN'T expand into Mordor because once they do, that's Game Over. They can't expand to the White City or Rohan because that would make the game half over. They're not even adding the Mines of Moria during the game's first year of release (according to a recent dev chat), cause that would make the game 1/4 over.
The challenge for Turbine is that, with the "ending" (and so much about locations in the middle) already known, players want to actually get there sometime. That's a problem when your business model is, essentially, stalling the players for time as you continue to collect your monthly fees.
To put it another way, and to quote a very fine show -
BOOK: 'Cause how you get there is the worthier part' [Firefly]
Isn't the whole point of a company making an MMORPG to not have a ending? I mean if they want to rack in the cash, why would they ever think of making an ending to their game? Like WoW they just keep adding new areas to give more quests to make more cash. The only possible ending for WoW would be that they open up northernd and you have to kill Arthas on on the frozen throne. That is where warcraft 3 left off was evil technically winning. So knowing the end is ok but it's better to not have one if you want to make money.
Today's Tomorrow is Yesterday's Future! --- "Where Ever You Go, There You Are" -- Diablo 1
I find LOTRO to be nearly flawless when compared to other MMOs. LOTRO had about as smooth a launch as one could hope for and put other MMOs to shame in this regard. Also, allowing characters to transfer from Beta to Live, and discounted pricing for pre-orders, is a welcome "innovation."
The Epic quest series, which follows the hobbits progress in the books, is amazing. The scripted story events are highly immersive and impressive.
Sure, the economy could use some work, and other tweaks can be made. But, a more polished MMO I have not seen on launch, and the potential for expansion is huge.
As a preface, I spent some 10 years as an administrator at a LOTR based MUSH. With a time ratio of 3:1 It meant 3 years in Middle Earth (ME) went by in 1 year of real life. For you hobbits, that means that you give a birthday party every 4 months. Having started to play just a few years before the third age yr 3000, there was little real concern about what would happen in the 5 or so years when we had to actually stage the War of the Ring. Original founders had not really considered this an issue as the point was to create an environment for RP in the Tolkien world, not to play out the script of the books. However there was always some pressure from various philosophies of role play and game play in general, on whether we should in some way develop the long term story arc and whether to allow deviations from the general thread of events. This becomes pretty complicated as Tolkien had a sort of longer story arc than most, with events that occurred thousands of years before, in books some of the players had never read, having some impact. In fact, the more a player knew, and cared about Tolkien, the harder it was to play the game, knowing that on the one hand they might realisticly play their characters role, and on the other hand, they might run into situations where quality role play and story making conflicted with the actual plot in ways that only an expert might detect ahead of time.
This meant the typical uses of comic book/soap opera/RP retcon techniques (retroactive continuity...) which, ill used, creates a hostility so fierce that the term retcon in the MUSH gained the status of fighting words, i.e., if you did not intend to cause someone to freak out and begin an anti-fascist march at your home, you said things like 'we might want to adjust the outcome to match the theme a little more closely, and perhaps there is some backstory we could RP out to clarify why your character suddenly had to NOT slay Boromir as a 12 year old for kissing your pig. (That never happened... Or did it! Retcon!)
Anyway, the point is that, there were legitimate arguments to let things play out as if we got to year 3000 and let things diverge. There were others that said, lets get to year 3008 or so and then freeze until we figure things out, allowing the game clock to advance but maintaining the pre LOTR environment. Others wanted to move towards a sort of scripted version of the war, but of course focus also on the places that were not described, to explore how such a big event effected the other populations. (Places mentioned in a sentence have a whole life when you have 2000+ active players trying to play their favorite characters)
As an admin, alot of my effort was aimed towards providing guidance in resolving conflicts both operationally and thematically.
Now LOTR Online is not a MUSH. Players do not drive the content the same way. Most folks just want to see the sights and participate in the battles, and get that Tolkien feel. But the fact is that I won't be playing this game, having spent a decade of my life trying to combine fun, Tolkien, role play, and computers. I will never be real happy watching hordes of hobbits wandering around, making Frodo and Bilbo seem like homebodies, nor will Noldo elves dancing topless on mailboxes make me happy.
I prefer original works of fantasy. I love to read Tolkien. I first read the hobbit when I was 6, and was done with all the books (including Silmarilian which had just recently come out in soft cover) by the time I was 8.
I am glad more people are buying the books, and are excited by what I consider some of the greatest examples of story telling and most graceful uses of the English language. But to claim that knowing what will happen makes a game more playable, or that such an idea is new, is really quite absurd. There have been 100's of games in which we know the story. And if you really expect LOTR online to END for plot purposes, rather than because they are no longer making money, you are in the gardens of Lorien, dreaming away.
The problem with that in the setting is that the Fourth Age is the age of man. The elder elves head across the sea. The wizards are gone (although if you read the Silmarillion, some of the other wizards are still out there somewhere). The rings of power that survived are powerless.
Tolkien's books have the really cool events in the ancient past, the moderately cool events in the distant past, the last little footnotes to the story happen in [i]The Hobbit[/i] and [i]The Lord of the Rings[/i], and everything gets really boring afterwards.
I think anyone writing a Middle Earth MMORPG should toss that out the window - invent lieutenants of Melkior and new species that remained hidden. Invent new rules for regular humans to master the magic of Gandalf or Saruman. Basically Dungeons and Dragons'ify Middle Earth for the sake of making the game interesting. But I bet millions of diehard fans would call it blasphemy.
I submit to you the following for consideration, all of which can be learned by doing the quests in Ratchet and Westfall. At the end of the third war (Warcraft III), both the Alliance and Horde capitals were destroyed. The leadership of both factions paid for skilled craftsmen to build new capital cities. Thrall, leader of the Horde, hired a group of goblins from the Steamwheedle Cartel to build the orcish capital of Orgrimmar. He was very grateful for the their fine work and paid them well. The goblins were impressed enough with the orcs that they decided to start their own port town not far from Orgrimmar (Ratchet).
Meanwhile, the humans hired Edvin VanCleave and his guild of craftsmen to build the city of Stormwind. They likewise did an excellent job building the city. However, when they attempted to collect their pay after finishing, the government conveniently "forgot" that they had offered VanCleave any pay at all for his work. They threw him out on the streets of the city he built without a penny. Disillusioned with the kingdom of Stormwind, VanCleave and his guild reformed in to the Defias gang, who frequently terrorize Alliance players in the level 1 to 30 range. VanCleave himself is the last boss of Dead Mines, the first Alliance instance.
Which one of these sounds evil to you?
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
Which is why World of Warcraft's orcs, trolls, and even Forsaken, to a point, are interesting. They break the mold. You may not see it, because you assume they fit old stereotypes, but they don't. The Orcs, Tauren and Trolls are all generally honorable races. In some ways, they are more "good" than either the humans or the elves.
Humans have enslaved Orcs and humiliated them for years, they kept them in concentration camps. Not to mention that one of their faction leaders is Onyxia.
Night Elves are selfish and desperate, and they even made it possible for the Burning Legion to attack.
Dwarves are nearly as bad as the Venture Co. at destroying the environment they live in, and therefore they clash with the nature-loving Tauren.
Gnomes IRRADIATED their own city to drive out invaders, and now they sponge off the Dwarves.
The Draenei are the opposite of the Blood Elves, in that they are ostensibly the only race in the game that can be called unreservedly "good." (This kind of falls flat when you consider hints that the Naaru aren't exactly the angels they're cracked up to be, and the Draenei become simply "naive" rather than truly "chosen" or anything of the sort.)
Orcs were oppressed, put into concentration camps and simply want their own homeland where people will leave them alone now. Sound familiar?
Tauren are members of the Horde because the orcs saved them from the centaurs that were invading their home. They are extremely honorable.
The Darkspear Trolls have forsaken cannibalism and embraced the Shamanistic culture of the Orcs.
The Forsaken have a faction that wants to kill everyone, yes, but other members are described by humans near Dalaran as "possessing more humanity than my fellow humans."
The Blood Elves are, arguably, the only truly "evil" race in the game. But even they are portrayed as more or less out of control, rather than blatantly malicious.
Everyone in Azeroth is generally far more nuanced than simple "good" or "evil." If you choose to only see the races as Tolkienn portrayed them, you're missing out on a lot of the story of World of Warcraft.
Shinma
I couldn't disagree more. What is boring are simplistic labels like Good and Evil. Good is never good as seems on the surface and Evil always has its side to the story. I guess there is still room for the superficial battles between Good and Evil, but truely rich, engaging, insightful stories have a depth that is beyond good and evil. Sometimes it is more like "light" and "dark," but I think that is more a matter of personalities and not necessarily based on some religious sense of absolute good and evil. For example, someone might like morbid music and maybe prefer to spend their waking hours at nighttime. This person might have a dark personality. But it doesn't make them evil. Evil is as evil does, and Good is just as likely to do evil... in the real world, at least.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
In a lot of ways, World of Warcraft is a critique of the Tolkienesque ideas of good and evil. Tolkien might be said to combine a Christian metaphysics of good and evil with English cultural imperialism: for the most part, the heroes are the "Men of the West" while the villains are "swarthy," dark-skinned, uncivilized, etc.
Blizzard took this set-up and exposed it as being a reflection of European colonialism and imperialism. The Alliance is trying to "clean up" the land, getting rid of those cultures that don't resemble itself sufficiently. The result reveals just what the historical cultural origins of the traditional heroic fantasy categories of "good" and "evil" races really is - a veiled form of racism.
The Tauren live a peaceful existence in tune with nature. The current orc ruler Thrall was enslaved as a child by humans and forced to fight gladiator-style battles by his captors until freed. The undead are a group that freed themselves from control by the scourge and merely attempt to survive against the "Alliance" that would do them harm. The trolls ruled an empire until the Night Elves delved into destructive magic and destroyed it, luring the Burning Legion to Azeroth in the process. The high elves created a kingdom on the sacred ground of the trolls, and the trolls would have reclaimed it if not for the aid of the humans.
The original orcs that came to Azeroth (with the help of a human named Medivh) were corrupted, but what makes you call the current members of the Horde evil?
I read your post, and the simple, inescapable conclusion is that you are blatantly, by your own admission, ignoring what the Orcs and Trolls are in World of Warcraft in favor of an intertextual interpretation based on your own image of how things should be, because of your preference for the works of Tolkien.
That's fine, but arguing that the Horde is evil because you want them to be or because you disagree with Blizzard's execution or simply because you don't find it as well-written as another author's works is silly. World of Warcraft's story is Blizzard's to create. It is what it is, regardless of your preference that it were otherwise. If you don't like their choices, good on you. There are things I don't like about World of Warcraft, but I don't deny that they exist simply because I don't think that Blizzard's writers are as good as Tolkien or China Mieville or Mark Z. Danielewski, or Margaret Atwood, or Neil Gaiman, or Michael Moorcock, or any number of other wonderful writers out there.
And I've read most of Tolkien's work, including the Silmarillion. I wouldn't call them the holy gospel, but they're very good books. My biggest gripe is that Tolkien sometimes fell to digression and rambling in a way that made the story drag. But thanks for assuming.
Shinma
Good and Evil are subjective in WoW. For the most part, everyone has good reasons for their evil acts.
The Orcs, for instance, are mostly interested in cleansing themselves of their demon taint and protecting themselves from external threats. However, these societies are not monolithic. Thrall's New Horde only has about 3 clans worth of Orcs (Most of the Frostwolf, Warsong and Shattered hands exist as clans, the rest don't have clans). And there are Orcs in the horde that are double agents for the demons. Demon followers, such as the False Warchiefs Rend and Kargath Bladefist exist, but are separate from the player organizations.
Trolls, as played by the players, are a tiny tiny fraction of the total numbers. The Darkspear trolls are a remnant tribe who are closest to the oldest tribes around, the ones that never fell into total barbarism. They have embraced the light and the power of shamanism. They are also some of the oldest demon fighting lines around. The Shadowhunters will be back.
Tauren are one of the few good races. There's nearly nothing bad you can say about them. They might be a tad naive, but they honestly believe they can cure the forsaken and heal the blood elves.
Forsaken are pissed off at life and their lot. They are former zombies that often enough remember not only their deaths, but the deaths of their loved ones at their own hands. They want to be free, and lack the moral limits they had in life. They are driven by the desire for revenge, and can only clearly feel hate. When you've killed part of your family, and the rest is driven off, they hate the humans very much.
Blood elves are addicts. They have cravings for magic large enough to do nearly anything for it. But they have limits. They don't actively consort with demons, they don't blow up planets, and they know their king went insane. They are also not monolithic in culture, with some speaking against magic, encouraging the use of holy rather than arcane.
On the flip side, Humans have been beaten down again and again. Their king got kidnapped and the queen rules over the 6 year old prince. She's also an evil dragon trying to wreck their society. They are tearing apart under the outside parties.
Dwarves are digging for their past as diggers for the ancient Titans. They have their crowned princess run of with the ruler of the dark dwarves.
Gnomes are insane, radioactive, and have no home having blown it up. They also didn't ask for help to keep the war against the demons going.
Night elves are arrogant mofos whose arrogance doomed us everyone else multiple times. They are also attempting to be the guardians of the world against evil.
Dranerai have awesome accents.
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.