Red Eagle Entertainment gets Wheel of Time; announces MMO *spoilers in here*

[schild]

The days of limited MMO developers are over at least for the eastern markets.

More like, will never be over. Anywhere. Ever.

[Famine]

There are a lot of MMO devs out there, this is true. Expecting any of them to pull this off without it being a great big pile of broken, derivative DIKU shit is as fruitless as making a prophecy for when Noltor the God of Moon Pies will come down and destroy the earth with his mighty marshmallow filling.

Aye, well that's the terminology for pulling it off for you. Developing it; sure! Many developers can develop a MMO over time and with the right funding or tech. The question is quality. Will it meet your standards? Define standards... It's no win regardless because everyone has their opinions on what defines the standard.

[Pennilenko]

I am highly interested in more information regarding the moon pie deity.

[Redgiant]

The story is great the first 3 books. Still good and back-story-filled in books 4-6. Ridiculously drawn out in the rest.

That said, the concepts and class potential map really good to a more-than-two-sided PvP game (think DAoC). It is a very busy and rich world that Jordan populated, regardless of whether he went long in the tooth in the telling (which he did).

Some ideas...

There are good and evil versions of the following 3 playable realms:

Seanchan
- winged riders
- fighters and very strange pet classes
- Sul'Dam and Damane (your pet is the caster, you are melee/ranged, and you can "leash" other casters as your pet for a time)
- good: do not want to invade (freed damane is playable directly , not a pet), evil: convert everyone to The Blood

Aes Sedai/Ashaman
- different Ajahs have different elemental strengths (but pare down to red-blue-green-yellow, with others turned into crafting concepts)
- warder pets for some melee protection
- multiple warders if Green Ajah, none if Red
- add some drawbacks to being female (Three Oaths) or male (insanity)
- good: White Tower / Black Tower, evil: Black Ajah, turncoat Ashaman

Aiel
- more monk/scout/shaman/mystical/indigenous orientation of classes and abilities
- wise women are the casters
- choose a sept/clan give simlar to choosing a deity when you start; give "set bonuses" when like septs/clans group together
- societies are their classes, mainly hand-to-hand, ranged, very skilled and agile

NPCs to throw into mix

Children of the Light (make them really annoying to encounter)
- big melee or ranged with high magic resists against Aes Sedai
- no casters

Major bosses and lieutenants
- Foresaken and Dreadlords
- Shadar Haran
- Moridin
- Golems
- Snakes and Foxes
- Padan Fain
- Mashadar

Major cultures and races
- Sea Folk
- blight-border defenders
- Camelyn, Tear, Ilian, Mayene, etc

Main characters

[HaemishM]

Define standards... It's no win regardless because everyone has their opinions on what defines the standard.

The market has defined the standards. They've rewarded Blizzard with the success of WoW and everyone else with the "scraping by and maybe can put out an expansion" status of AoC, WAR, CO, etc.

[Famine]

Define standards... It's no win regardless because everyone has their opinions on what defines the standard.

The market has defined the standards. They've rewarded Blizzard with the success of WoW and everyone else with the "scraping by and maybe can put out an expansion" status of AoC, WAR, CO, etc.

It's a logical and correct argument to make. The argument really falls on the standard among the developers. Developers would have to raise the bar in order to meet the commanding force of course. That's the most debated topic on the interwebs regarding new MMO games coming into the market. It's very understandable from a consumer point of view but you also have to consider the developer too.

But that's another thread topic on it's own.  

[Lantyssa]

The market only has to consider the consumers.  Developers can do whatever they believe or make whatever excuses they want.  In the end though, if the consumers aren't buying, it doesn't matter what standards the developer wants to follow.

[Merusk]

I want to release a buggy, half-finished piece of spaghetti code and charge $9 a month for it.  That's my standard.  Think I'll make money?

Lessons remain unlearned.

Anywho, Red Eagle seems to own the distro rights to all WOT products, they didn't just buy this game.

And you're right A WoT game will never get off the ground, it's just not popular enough.
 

F13: Applying our ever-narrowing range of tastes and declaring failure since 2006.

[HaemishM]

MMOG developers have to raise their current standards about 6 light years to even approach the level of a Downs Syndrome sufferer.

[naum]

Actually, there was a WoT PC release a while back, I think it was a FPS but I never played it…

Have you been waiting to experience the power of Aes Sedai, fight with the strength of a Ter'angreal, and search for the everlasting cuendillar seals? The Wheel of Time--with a storyline that's a prequel to the series--holds a combination of action and strategy that mirrors Robert Jordan's bestselling books.

Similar to the series, the Dark One has broken out of his prison--this time held by four seals--and you must find a way to seal him away again. Play as Elayna--in single player mode--and fight to find the missing seals. (You might find this mode slightly limiting, though, since Elayna only moves by foot.) Multiplayer allows the use of the Portal Stones and Ter'angreal and introduces more intricate character development.

The graphics are good, and you get the chance to personally explore the White Tower, Shadar Logoth, the Fortress of the Forsaken, and the Outpost of the Children of the Light--four locations that determine your success in the game. You will not be able to play as Rand, or fight Padon Fain, although there are some surprise appearances by certain characters! The game is almost as engrossing as the series itself; but don't worry if you're a newcomer, the experience of the The Wheel of Time won't be lost on you--you will be lost in it.

[Sheepherder]

They butchered the setting pretty bad to make it shooter-y.  The game itself was okay for something based on an Unreal Tournament era engine, though weapon ter'angreal selection was a pain in the ass.  Probably the best thing that came out of it was an odd trap laying metagame which got far more use in multiplayer than in the campaign.

[Threash]

They butchered the setting pretty bad to make it shooter-y.  The game itself was okay for something based on an Unreal Tournament era engine, though weapon ter'angreal selection was a pain in the ass.  Probably the best thing that came out of it was an odd trap laying metagame which got far more use in multiplayer than in the campaign.

No the best thing in that game was the level were you are in that evil city and the mist sneaks up behind you and whispers your name.  Scared the fuck out of me years ago.  Its been too long since i read the books but i remember it captured the feel of that place perfectly.

[raydeen]

It was a pretty good game as I recall. Seemed like Thief, Tomb Raider and UT rolled into one. I enjoyed it but didn't (and still don't) know anything about the books.

[Venkman]

WTF, I thought this was covered last page. Take every WoT MUD ever made and combine all their playerbases at their peak. You'd end up with a few WoW servers maybe.

If that's you're market, set your sites on a freemium Flash MMO and have at it. If you want to do the books justice though, first you target everyone who HASN'T read them (which after book 4 is most people) and then you ape WoW with the free marketing the movie will grant you.

Otherwise you won't get anywhere near the budget yo need to do it right.

[Trippy]

WTF, I thought this was covered last page. Take every WoT MUD ever made and combine all their playerbases at their peak. You'd end up with a few WoW servers maybe.

If that's you're market, set your sites on a freemium Flash MMO and have at it. If you want to do the books justice though, first you target everyone who HASN'T read them (which after book 4 is most people) and then you ape WoW with the free marketing the movie will grant you.

Otherwise you won't get anywhere near the budget yo need to do it right.

If you used the population of DikuMUDs at their peak to predict the success of EQ you would've been very very very wrong. Not sure why you want to do the same with a WoT MMO.

[UnSub]

I've little doubt that this MMO wouldn't exist without the IP - to the extent that I doubt the ink was dry on the licensing contract before they announced the MMO.

If this title ever launches, I don't think we will be looking at a quality product, even by MMO standards.

[Khaldun]

"The Wolfbrother class seems terribly unfinished. All I do is sit around doing nothing".

[Pennilenko]

But that's another thread topic on it's own.  

I would like to hear your expanded thoughts in another thread, please create one. It would be interesting to hear your side.

[Bzalthek]

You've gotten better at Braid Tugging (102)!

[Velorath]

I've little doubt that this MMO wouldn't exist without the IP - to the extent that I doubt the ink was dry on the licensing contract before they announced the MMO.

If this title ever launches, I don't think we will be looking at a quality product, even by MMO standards.

For the time being, the MMO still doesn't exist.  Really it's not like the initial press release from 2008 was dedicated to Red Eagle announcing that they had pick up the WoT license so they could do an MMO.  It was "Hey we just got this license, and we're doing some movies, and we're forming a game development company, and we're gonna do some movie tie-in games, and we're doing stuff for PC's, and Consoles, and Portables, and cell phones, and we're planning an MMO...".

I'm fairly sure Obsidian doesn't have the means to do an MMO at the moment, and Red Eagle certainly doesn't, nor does it sound like the plan to any time soon.  Apparently, Red Eagle's CEO, Larry Mondragon posted this up on Dragonmount (the WoT community site):

Hello Everyone!

Thanks to Jason for posting the announcement of our relationship with Obsidian. However, I would like to set the record straight about two important aspects of our development plan.

First, you will all be happy to hear that we are not planning to make a traditional “movie” game that merely recasts the picture we are currently making with Universal. Instead, we want to concentrate our development efforts on telling the other facets of The Wheel of Time story. And as you know, we have a lot to choose from– literally thousands of years of history and scores of major characters, nations, geographies and critical moments in the history of the world since the beginning of the Third Age.

Thus, we have been vetting many creative ideas for game formats, including games derived from the Age of Legends, The Breaking of the World, the War of the Shadow, and even a game concept that focuses on the battle among the Forsaken to become the one and only Nae’blis. We are also looking at skill-based games that are based on the testing of the Aes Sedai for the shawl and the wielding of the many intricate sword forms that are second nature to an experienced Warder. All of this is to simply say that we are critically thinking about game design for an entire family of WOT games that are consistent and supportive of the story portrayed in the movies, but that do far more that merely retell the plotlines, characters and scenes from the films. Trust me when I say that we intend to build games that will excite the imagination of every WOT fan. We just ask that the Wheel of Time community wait to see the fruits of our labor before passing judgement on whether we have been successful in our efforts.

I would also like to make one additional clarification. We are not licensing our WOT development rights and stepping back from the process of building these video games. Quite to the contrary, Red Eagle Games will have an internal development team of its own. However, rather than staffing up a 200 person studio from scratch, we decided some time ago that for our first games it would be far more prudent to hire a small in-house team (e.g. positions such as Art Director, Game Designer, Story Writer, Software Architect, Quality Assurance Director, etc.) and rely on a third party developer to provide the majority of developers and their associated overhead and infrastructure. In this way, we will be providing technical and creative direction to our external developer.

Obsidian Entertainment is a highly-respected game developer with a well-deserved industry reputation for building quality action/role-playing games. By eliminating the need to recruit and manage a large internal workforce within Red Eagle Games, we expect that this new relationship with Obsidian will enable the Company to achieve substantially lower development costs, a shorter production cycle, and improve the quality of our initial video game releases.

We follow the message boards here on Dragonmount closely. We will always give careful consideration to your thoughtful comments and suggestions.

Right now it sounds like they still don't even have a solid idea of what kind of games they want to make, and they don't have a much of an in-house development team yet, so they're using Obsidian to just get some WoT RPG's out there.

[Stabs]

The story is great the first 3 books.

Were he still alive I'm sure JRRT would be glad you liked it.

Honestly apart from changing Gandalf's gender and making the Hobbits taller the start of WOT is exactly Lord of the Rings. Dark Riders, the Wizard's sidekick being secretly King of a kingdom that was lost, even Frodo being wounded on Weathertop is copied. Merry and Pippin barely even had their names changed.

WOT's so derivative it may be a shaky IP to use for copyright reasons especially if the game design is similar to Lotro as well as the book being similar to Lotr.

[Reg]

Over the course of a dozen books I really haven't noticed that much resemblance to LOTR other than that it's a fantasy series. Jordan definitely uses a lot of classic fantasy themes but they seem to be mostly stolen from old myths like King Arthur that have been in the public domain forever.

[Threash]

Over the course of a dozen books I really haven't noticed that much resemblance to LOTR other than that it's a fantasy series. Jordan definitely uses a lot of classic fantasy themes but they seem to be mostly stolen from old myths like King Arthur that have been in the public domain forever.

He was talking about the first book though. 

[Grimwell]

It's worth noting that there was an official run of WoT resources for the D20 paper system. They didn't do all that many books, and I only bought the very first one to see how they would translate the books into a game - but I think they did a good job of it. I didn't agree with every decision the author(s) made in the transition from book to game, but it was good enough that I could see how a campaign could work - even in a world where Rand was walking the land at the very same time.

That's the core challenge with this IP - creating compelling play/stories in a land where the largest hero and most important plotline isn't available for the players. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Star Trek have all dealt with this, each in their own ways, and I don't think the top complaints about any of those games is "The IP just sucked balls because I couldn't be <insert specific character here>!"

I'm interested enough in seeing how it could translate. I'm a big fan of the world Jordan made, even if his stories in that world drag.

[GenVec]

The story is great the first 3 books.

Honestly apart from changing Gandalf's gender and making the Hobbits taller the start of WOT is exactly Lord of the Rings. Dark Riders, the Wizard's sidekick being secretly King of a kingdom that was lost, even Frodo being wounded on Weathertop is copied. Merry and Pippin barely even had their names changed.

WOT's so derivative it may be a shaky IP to use for copyright reasons especially if the game design is similar to Lotro as well as the book being similar to Lotr.

Evil men on horses = dark riders? That's a hard fantasy cliche to shake; perhaps they should have taken the train to the Two Rivers.
I don't even know where you're getting the "tall Hobbits" from, unless you mean Ogier, but the only resemblance I see there is that they're peace loving and have pointed ears.
As for "a characters gets wounded so it's just like Weathertop", are you talking about Mat and his cursed dagger? He was never actually wounded. You might make a far better case for Rand's wound outside of Falme, but a number of the characters have some sort of lingering wound, from Thom's limp to Mat's scars from being hung.

Assuming you've read some other fantasy in the last decade, you might want to reconsider whether WoT is really that derivative. Unlike 90% of the rest of the genre, there are no elves, no orcs, no hobbits, and a lot of gray moral areas. If you want to say that Trollocs are Orcs and Fades are Dark Riders and Morgaine is Gandalf you're only giving the books a very superficial reading.

[Rendakor]

Rand's wound (as well as his markings, crown, etc.) is more of a parallel to Jesus than anything from LOTR.

[Merusk]

WOT's so derivative it may be a shaky IP to use for copyright reasons especially if the game design is similar to Lotro as well as the book being similar to Lotr.

If the Tolkien estate had a problem with it, they would have sued sometime in the last 20 years, considering book 1 was released in 1990.

 

A MUCH stronger case could have been made by Jordan's estate against Goodkind if you've read both of those series.

[Reg]

Rand's unhealing wound is taken right from the Fisher King out of Arthurian legend I think. I expect the Holy Grail to show up any time now.

[dusematic]

Everyone steals from everyone. Originality is a myth.


Anyway, if you're going to criticize anyone for ripping off Tolkien, no one did it more transparently than Terry Brooks in the Shannara series.

[Stabs]

I meant no criticism of Robert Jordan for ripping off Tolkien. Good luck to him and his estate.

What I was getting at that $100m or however much a triple A MMO costs to produce is a lot to invest on something that might be open to a copyright claim.

For those who don't see what I'm getting at read volume 1, The Eye of the World, replacing the following names.

Shai'tan - Sauron
Moiraine - Gandalf
Lan - Aragorn
Rand - Frodo
Tam - Bilbo
Matrim - Merry
Perrin - Pippin

The similarities are astonishing. In fact just having Lan/Aragorn also being the mysteriously secretive rightful heir of a kingdom that was broken is probably grounds for a copyright case. That's a pretty specific detail copied very closely.

The Eye of the World is a product of its historical context. There was a huge demand for fantasy doorstop type books in the late 70s and early 80s and almost no recognised authors writing them before Sword of Shannara. Anyone who could get a fantasy epic out was welcome and Robert Jordan had apprenticed by writing Conan pastiches that were authorised by the R E Howard estate.

I have no idea why the Tolkien estate has made no move against WOT in the last 20 years. I'm just pointing out it is possibly a gamble to spend a lot of money on this franchise. I actually rather enjoy the books, especially the parts describing Matt's generalship. I wouldn't want to bet my business on their originality though.

[Venkman]

If you used the population of DikuMUDs at their peak to predict the success of EQ you would've been very very very wrong. Not sure why you want to do the same with a WoT MMO.

Confused. Were the population of Diku-style MUDs a lot greater than EQ1 hit or were they a lot less? I had been assuming the latter but don't have anything but hearsay and a relative few sources to go by.

[dusematic]

The similarities are astonishing. In fact just having Lan/Aragorn also being the mysteriously secretive rightful heir of a kingdom that was broken is probably grounds for a copyright case. That's a pretty specific detail copied very closely...

...I have no idea why the Tolkien estate has made no move against WOT in the last 20 years.

lol are you high?

[Famine]

If you used the population of DikuMUDs at their peak to predict the success of EQ you would've been very very very wrong. Not sure why you want to do the same with a WoT MMO.

Confused. Were the population of Diku-style MUDs a lot greater than EQ1 hit or were they a lot less? I had been assuming the latter but don't have anything but hearsay and a relative few sources to go by.

Depends on how you calculate it. I would say, "yes" on their being more during those times if you combine all of the MUD's together. It's still not fair simply because it's free-to-play versus pay-to-play. It's also many different style of MUD's that may all be fantasy but have different mechanics and or designs. The point however, is how many were WoT's and how popular they were in a time when online gaming was not as popular as it is today.

For example, I played on a PKILL MUD based on Diku/Rom/RoT. It was fantasy based but had super fast leveling. PvE supported PvP thus the popular PvE grinding was nullified for instant action balanced game play around killing each other with full looting mechanics. Something that's very rare and the reason many of us took so long to jump into the MMO genre after Realm, Ultma, EQ and etc. It's basically 2 different games and wouldn't be fair to combine them unless you're making a point on how popular online games were in the 90's compared to today.

Taking a look at WoT MUD's on the other hand is a different story. They seemed to be widely popular even by those who didn't know anything about it.

[GenVec]

For those who don't see what I'm getting at read volume 1, The Eye of the World, replacing the following names.

Shai'tan - Sauron
Moiraine - Gandalf
Lan - Aragorn
Rand - Frodo
Tam - Bilbo
Matrim - Merry
Perrin - Pippin

"Bilbo was talking again, he realized, sometimes only murmuring, sometimes loud enough to understand. "Battles are always hot, even in the snow. Sweat heat. Blood heat. Only death is cool."

"Merry bared his teeth in a silent, snarling rictus, and pulled himself into an ever tighter knot, but he never took his eyes from her. A convulsion shook him at her touch, and abruptly he pulled one hand out, slashing at her face with the ruby-hilted dagger."

"The wind roared with Frodo's voice down the pass, whipping the wall of flames into a wall of fire that sped away from him and toward the Trolloc host faster than a horse could run. Fire burned into the Trollocs and the mountains trembled with their screams."

Now if you want to argue that the Wheel of Time is merely a classic retelling of the hero's journey, as in Hero with a Thousand Faces, you'd probably be right. But there's a level of character complexity that WoT has that Lord of the Rings just doesn't get into, with the possible exception of Boromir. That's not a critique of LOTRO, it's just emblematic of our modern taste for more ambiguous characters. So yes, WoT is filled with certain archetypes, as many stories are... but there's a lot of flavor and nuance that is sitting there waiting to be appreciated.

[Draegan]

This game should have only two classes.  Aes Sedai and Warder.  No more holy trinity shit anymore!

Also, this will be released on the Wii to allow the use of the Wii-mote for weaving the source.