LOTRO Dev Talks About Bringing MMOs To Consoles

Jeffrey Steefel, executive producer for Lord of the Rings: Online recently spoke to Eurogamer about the game's upcoming expansion and its future in the MMO market. One thing he mentions is the challenge of designing an MMO for consoles, which have a larger player base than PC games. He admits that UI development would be a huge issue, but also thinks MMOs could benefit from splitting tasks between various devices. "Long term, for me, the real exciting vision is ... thinking about a game, a franchise, as this centralised content. There's this thing called Lord of the Rings that sits on a bunch of servers ... and whether you're on your PC, your console, your mobile device, those are all just access points, and they're all good at different things. ... The console is great for fast action, immediate activities. Combat, raids, things like that could be a lot of fun sitting on your couch. And some things that are necessary but slightly rote and boring, like managing your inventory or setting up for a raid, or some elements of crafting — those are things that you can do instead of playing Bejeweled when you're sitting on the train or on a break or whatever it happens to be."

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[CrazyJim1]

Turbine and Blizzard are my two favorite game development companies now. As for a community contact, Ken Troop of Turbine is a eloquent speaker. I wish I knew what happened to him. I had his email. I want to hear more from Turbine and Blizzard. I wish they'd email me directly or hire me. I can program my own games, but I'm much more deadly as a designer so my time isn't being wasted on grunt coding. If you want to see my stuff, it is at roamingdragon.com

I honestly think a solo programmer still has potential to make a MMO in the current climate. The whole action market is untapped. If you know the right coding theories, you can get 50ms ping times between players. Action games only need like a 150ms ping times to be playable.

The big thing that I am bringing to the table is a 1000 players in the same fight broadband only algorithm. I have some major back server theory that reduces the load on the server by several orders of magnitude, but no one but your accountant cares about keeping the bandwith low on the main servers.

I just finished updating my old animation maker tonight. Next week I plan on knocking off some bullet lists of things I need to do in order for my game to be fun. My game is online playable, but it is missing blocking, most of the fighters, some animations, and some small tweaks. Realistically, I can't possibly have something demoable in under 3 months, but I am also not looking past a year to be finished with beta.

You're probably wondering why I am rambling, but it is because I'm a hardcore gamer. I pay attention to the big guys because to compete, you gotta do certain things about as good as they are. I almost was the first to have a graphical MMORPG on the market back before UO came out, and I quit my game when they got into it. It was dumb because I could have had a fun game out, but I laid down my gloves because I thought I'd get hurt in the ring. Nowadays, the only action MMO that I know of is PlanetSide. And as fun as PlanetSide is, it is repetitive and lets you level too fast.

I'm trying to get in with Blizzard or Turbine as a JR Game Dev who gets paid like 25k a year. All I want is enough money to buy food, rent and get to work. The trick is that I am a wealth of information about game design. I can criticize and analyze games at all stages of the production. I'm not looking for creative control, but just some input/output on the games. Too bad Turbine doesn't remember me from when I gave them many good ideas on the game developer forums. Too bad Blizzard doesn't want to take a chance with a guy that was big with War3/SC.

I'm looking forward to being a threat in SC2. I have two routes. I could just go for the top of the ladder again like War3/SC1. Or I could make a website dedicated to strategies like the old Warcraftstrategy.com site. I have two world class players as my 3v3 allies who also have tasted #1 1v1 ladder themselves. So in 3v3, we're pretty much impossible to defeat unless they're screwing around because they're bored. If I make a strategy site, it will hurt my game play as people will know my strats. I can't make it multiplayer strategy because it is unfair to my 3v3 partners. So I am thinking of making a 1v1 strategy site and making it good just to get the attention of Blizzard.

Anyway, why am I so excited? It is because I play video games until they bore me. And when they bore me, I either get a new game, or develop my own. I have a thirst for a 1,500 player in one room fighter, so I am making one. My real thirst is for a MMOG with a fighter as its core combat system. My goal is to make a game that you can spend your entire life playing and not get bored. The thing with MMOGS is that the bigger the game is, the more important your rares are to you personally because you're going to use them longer. Anyway, I rambled enough. I just have no one in the industry to talk to about game development so I guess I just ramble here.