MEO Update

[stray]

I think making a career as a good or bad guy in Middle Earth without being directly involved in the ring quest would be more than tilting at windmills.

"A" good or bad guy, yes. That could probably be interesting. A "few" good or bad guys, yes. That could work as well. Stories of a few side characters, subplots, and "lesser" hero's can be fun. But hundreds (or rather, thousands) of "bakers" taking a heroic task upon themselves? It deadens the overall plot -- Most bakers, as a rule, have to be Sauron's bitches. Else, Frodo's story and the very reason why the ring must be destroyed means jack.

[Tale]

Most bakers, as a rule, have to be Sauron's bitches. Else, Frodo's story and the very reason why the ring must be destroyed means jack.

NPC bakers can be Sauron's bitches en masse. If you can play good or evil, some PC bakers will also be Sauron's bitches. But most of Middle Earth's inhabitants don't know what is unfolding down south, so it doesn't have to involve Sauron at all. LFM for Barrow Downs, baker preferred.

[Sky]

The lure of living the endgame keeps people baking happily.

Wow. EQ design school 101. The game doesn't have to be fun, just promise fun at some point in the future.

Someone's been baking something, and it's not bread.

[Furiously]

Bruce - why not do it up as WOW 1.1? Make Orcs, goblins and such player races?

It has been years since I have read the books, but isn't middle earth about huge battles between armies and the players who hard large roles? Why not make something called "battlegrounds" where the two sides can face off against each other...

I know plenty of people that can't stand WOW's artwork. Perhaps this could be the game for them?

[HaemishM]

The idea of Tolkien's worlds being turned into WoW 1.1 makes my fucking stomach turn. Not that it couldn't be fun, or anything, but really.

What end game is there going to be? Dragon raids? In the time between Hobbit and LotR, there is exactly 1 dragon mentioned, unless you count the Nazgul mounts. Not to say that there aren't other dragons, but where are they? Both the Fellowship and Bilbo's party of dwarves traveled a great distance across the width and breadth of Middle-Earth, and nothing was ever mentioned.

Planes raids? No extra-planar entities in Middle-Earth, though you could make a case that the Grey Havens was in another plane. Battlegrounds sounds fun, but again, unless you are allowed to play the evil races, or swear an oath of allengiance such as the Haradrim (?) did to Sauraman, what's the point? There's plenty of factions to play, but the things we think of for typical, traditional, WoW-esque MMOG's are totally fucked if you put them in the Tolkien story.

In short, this is the worst license since Star Wars for making a traditional MMOG.

[Murgos]

There was more magic in The Lord of The Rings than most people think.  Not as much as in a standard game of D&D but a pretty fair amount all together.  The Mouth of Sauron, for instance, is described as a powerful sorcerer.  All the ring wraiths were were described as having magical skill before they fell to the rings, all the Numenorean kings had some ability, mostly focused on necromany and probably many of the better educated Numenoreans would too.

All the barrow wights would have been sorcerers in life, you don't become a wight without some magical involvement somewhere.

Tolkien's version of magic is very low key though, it is stuff that would be really powerful in real life but not quite so flashy as what we expect from magic.  Creating the chair that Frodo sits on and Aragorn sits on that allows the person sitting there to see far distances would not be trivial and it would be a VERY powerful artifact in a time where vision is usually limited to well short of the horizon.  Great works of construction, the walls of Gondor were indestructable in the books; the engines of the enemy had to hurl thier destruction at the houses inside the walls, vastly extended life spans (800 to 1000 years for the better Numenorean sorcerers), devices that grant the ability to affect the minds of large groups of people, alter the weather, etc...  There is a lot of magic in the books, most of it is just vastly understated.

The Palantir alone could make an Empire if used correctly.

[kaid]

It will be interesting to see what they can do but frankly I just cannot picture what they can really do for a mmrpg with the LOTR time frame.

There are fantastic creatures in LOTR but they are VERY VERY VERY rare. There is magic but it is something that is talked about alot but rarely if ever seen. Oh well I will deffinatly take a peek at it but I don't hold out much hope that it will turn out any better than SWG.

kaid

[sinij]

In short, this is the worst license since Star Wars for making a traditional MMOG.

I disagree. MMORPG does not need, I'd go as far as to say should not, to follow 'main story' of franchise it built on. SWG was excellent franchise to build on with defined conflict and rich universe, its implementation that is lacking. MEO should not build itself around ring quest – its just one event that happened at one point in that universe, who to say there couldn’t be anything else going on. Dragon or plane raids? Bah you have EQs/WoW for that, why make more of the same? Very few people get to go on raids, most players never get to 'raid' content until it trivialized by many consequent expansions. Build your game around things that average players can participate in - rich and non-liner character building with strong diminishing returns, complex and all encompassing crafting system that works on gathering rather than drop resource system and meaningful PvP revolving around controlling desirable but optional elements of the game.

[SirBruce]

Bruce - why not do it up as WOW 1.1? Make Orcs, goblins and such player races?

It has been years since I have read the books, but isn't middle earth about huge battles between armies and the players who hard large roles? Why not make something called "battlegrounds" where the two sides can face off against each other...

Ick.  See other people's comments.

I know plenty of people that can't stand WOW's artwork. Perhaps this could be the game for them?

Yeah, and Turbine has a game for them, called D&DO.

Bruce

[sinij]

Yeah, and Turbine has a game for them, called D&DO.

I just don't see how D&D combat can work in mmorpg. Failing save roll in D&D is often mean death, using any ability is often means it spent. D&D system is choke-full instakills and down-time.

[Furiously]

I thought DDO was more like planetside?

[HaemishM]

Bah you have EQs/WoW for that, why make more of the same?

Ask the pigfuckers who keep churning that shit out, as well as the pigfuckers who invest the money to make another cash mill as subscription service. Why make more of the same? Because businesses like to make money.

Very few people get to go on raids, most players never get to 'raid' content until it trivialized by many consequent expansions. Build your game around things that average players can participate in - rich and non-liner character building with strong diminishing returns, complex and all encompassing crafting system that works on gathering rather than drop resource system and meaningful PvP revolving around controlling desirable but optional elements of the game.

Now you know good and goddamn well that these things don't get built around the average player and if any of the things you are talking about get put in there, I'll be very surprised.

[Viin]

Too bad they can't use the time before LotR. There were tons of civil unrest before the kingdoms were established.

I could also see a game right after Frodo and the high elves hit the sea, there's still plenty of orcs and goblins around who want to stake a claim and plenty of "good guys" who want to clear them out. Heck, have one of the kingdoms ally with the orcs for some reason, then we can have the defacto bad humans too.

Of course, what I really want is a more RPish game than the hack-n-slash stuff we have now, but that really only works in smaller community settings. Maybe these guys will do something cool and make a bunch of smaller worlds instead of a few large worlds? As long as I can play with my friends and few other random people, screw the public.  :mrgreen:

[Roac]

The Mouth of Sauron, for instance, is described as a powerful sorcerer.

The Mouth was able to study under Sauron, who himself was a god.  We're also talking about the mouthpiece of Tolkien's Devil, for Heaven sake, it's not like there were aremies of them.  Aside from that, there is nothing about Black Numenoreans that gave them any particular control over magic - at most long life, since they were similar to the Dunedain.  After the Last Alliance this race (BNs) mostly ceased to exist, and did so completely soon after the War of the Ring.

All the ring wraiths were were described as having magical skill before they fell to the rings, all the Numenorean kings had some ability, mostly focused on necromany and probably many of the better educated Numenoreans would too.

One was described as magical, the Witch-King, and even that title wasn't taken until AFTER he been a Nazgul for a few millenia.  Otherwise they were simply mentioned as "kings of men".  At most, only a few of them had direct Numenorean descent, but even that doesn't make them magical.

All the barrow wights would have been sorcerers in life, you don't become a wight without some magical involvement somewhere.

The wights were created by the Witch-King.

The Palantir alone could make an Empire if used correctly.

They are mostly gone.  At most, three survive into the 4th age (there were only 7 to start with).  One of them is cursed, since the regent burned himself alive while holding it.  The one in Minas Ithil may have survived, and lastly there's Sauruman's stone, which was recovered by Gandalf and also (I think) given to Gondor.

As far as what cannonical references there are to existing magic items to be found, the best bet is that there are mention of "lesser rings".  That is, not one of the nine, seven, or three; but ones much lesser in power made by the Mirdain.  Still, even the weakest of these are incredibly valuable, and not something you loot off mobs to sell to an NPC.  They are all artifacts of a very dead, very ancient, elven kingdom.

And this is the problem with incorporating any sort of magic into the game.  It's all either elvish, or from the gods; and elvish magic was entirely crafting in nature.  Only the gods (Gandalf, Sauruman, Sauron) walked around casting anything approaching a spell, and even there we have only a handful of references.  Gandalf used swords more than spells, and he was a wizard.

Edit: Oh, and then there are the Blue Wizards, which is why I mentioned them in my first post.  Supposedly they went into the far east and weren't heard from again in the west, but Tolkien speculates that they formed magic cults that lasted into the fourth age.  But again the problem; both the Blue Wizards and the Mirdain weren't mentioned /at all/ in the LotR/Hobbit books, so they can't be used.  Nor can the bit about cults, which was in Letters.

[Furiously]

Shire Farmer: The pig wars!

[sinij]

Why do we need 'magic' with flashy spells in all games? It isn't magical if it is mundane.

As to designing involved combat system that does not revolves around spell – substitute abilities for spells. If you have in-depth combat system with multiple disciplines that provide access to forms that are in turn provide access to feats and abilities you have you magic and spells, just in more coherent and suspend-your-disbelieve kind of way.

Example:

You have multiple disciplines, one of them is Jiyu (Freedom of Movement) that allows you to train few forms(active) and abilities(passive). One of these forms is Mobility that increases movement speed and makes it harder to hit you but also slows down your attacks. Mobility form also provides access to number of feats (active) but allows only certain abilities (passive) to be used. While using Mobility form you can use Bleeding Strike, Sprint, Retreat and few others feats but only can use some of your abilities like Doge that increases chance to avoid attack and Retaliate that increases attack speed after being hit but not Battle Rage that adds damage to all of your attacks.

So here you have a system with buffs, debuffs, DoTs and DD abilities that does not revolve around spells.

[MaceVanHoffen]

Edit: Oh, and then there are the Blue Wizards ...

Let's not forget the Ents and the Ent-wives!  None of the books ever explains what happened to the Ent-wives, merely that Sauron was implicated in their disappearance and that the Ents had looked for them for centuries.

Just to underscore the point though:  magic wrought like this was very rare in Tolkien's world.  It might seem more common simply because the main LotR story was (1) set in a snapshot in time that was the climax of a centuries-long struggle between epic beings, and (2) focused on characters who were either epic beings themselves or were in the right place at just the right time.

Using the contents of the main storyarc to argue that magic was common in Middle Earth is a bit like using a photgraph of a basketball star leaping for a slam dunk to claim that all basketball stars fly instead of run.  If you really examine things, Tolkien's world is really a version of our world with just a sprinkle of magic, really fairy tales and legends, thrown in.

[HaemishM]

Why do we need 'magic' with flashy spells in all games?

How else do you justify the particle effects engine for all those cool sparklies!?! And how else could you claim to allow the player to "adventure in a world of magic and mystery!"?!?!?!

[shiznitz]

Here's an idea: give the monsters magic and let the players go without. Imagine the howls!

[Evangolis]

Actually, in the Hobbit, Gandalf did toss about a few spells in a D&D-like manner.  But mostly he was clever.

For Tolkien, particularly in the Ring trilogy, magic was something a creature was, not something it did.  If you can get that right, MEO would take a big step forward, and a big step beyond other MMOs.

[Nija]

Yeah, and Turbine has a game for them, called D&DO.

I just don't see how D&D combat can work in mmorpg. Failing save roll in D&D is often mean death, using any ability is often means it spent. D&D system is choke-full instakills and down-time.

Ever play Neverwinter Nights on a 64 player server? Ever play DSO back on TEN?

It works a lot better than you'd think.

[Roac]

Yeah, and Turbine has a game for them, called D&DO.

I just don't see how D&D combat can work in mmorpg. Failing save roll in D&D is often mean death, using any ability is often means it spent. D&D system is choke-full instakills and down-time.

Ever play Neverwinter Nights on a 64 player server? Ever play DSO back on TEN?

It works a lot better than you'd think.

Yeah, D&D works perfect for a MMOG.  I mean, it was designed to be a MMOG; the whole world is covered with roaving groups of adventurers looking to fix or screw things up, and the only purpose for everything else in existance is to support them.  I wonder... do any of the world-speciic licenses come into play?  I would love to see a Ravenloft MMOG.

[Hoax]

I'm going to put my ass firmly in the "make something original and cool designed for the game instead of f'ing up perfectly good scifi/fantasy settings" camp.

Oh but I would love to see a Deadlands mmog.  They would have to know from the start that it was a pvp game and therefore design a pvp system that didn't suck.  Right?

[stray]

Oh but I would love to see a Deadlands mmog.  They would have to know from the start that it was a pvp game and therefore design a pvp system that didn't suck.  Right?

Definitely.

It seems our LotR geek quotient is quite high here. Higher than many of us expected. Due to that fact, the first person who types IN Elvish will be banned. Thank you.

Shockeye, is that you in the avatar? I can't tell if it's someone I haven't seen before or that guy from "Party of Five".

[Rasix]

Die infidel!  Behold the power of the Creek and despair!!!!!!

[stray]

Die infidel! Behold the power of the Creek and despair!!!!!!

I had to look it up. Yeah, Joshua Jackson.

Kinda glad I had it wrong. 

[MrHat]

Die infidel!  Behold the power of the Creek and despair!!!!!!

Love that fucking movie.

[MaceVanHoffen]

It seems our LotR geek quotient is quite high here. Higher than many of us expected. Due to that fact, the first person who types IN Elvish will be banned. Thank you.

I (re)read several books on a yearly basis, and The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings are three of them.  So yeah, I'm a freaking Tolkien geek.

My wife used to never curse.  But that changed when I showed her the 1998 announcement for the movies and she was confronted with one of my obsessions becoming mainstream, with all the future money I would be spending on DVDs, games, and other merchandise generally deemed unworthy of female attention.  As I was jumping up and down, peeing my pants and pointing at the computer screen, I distinctly heard her mutter under her breath, "Oh shit."  The years since have been a veritable cornucopia of epithets, mostly in response my Tolkien fanboi status.

I do not, however, know anything in Elvish.  Now, the Black Speech is another matter ...

[Alkiera]

Yeah, and Turbine has a game for them, called D&DO.

I just don't see how D&D combat can work in mmorpg. Failing save roll in D&D is often mean death, using any ability is often means it spent. D&D system is choke-full instakills and down-time.

Ever play Neverwinter Nights on a 64 player server? Ever play DSO back on TEN?

It works a lot better than you'd think.

Yeah, D&D works perfect for a MMOG.  I mean, it was designed to be a MMOG; the whole world is covered with roaving groups of adventurers looking to fix or screw things up, and the only purpose for everything else in existance is to support them.  I wonder... do any of the world-speciic licenses come into play?  I would love to see a Ravenloft MMOG.

DDO is using the Eberron setting, which is fairly new, and pretty cool, imho.  It was the winner of a setting design contest, the author was just a DM somewhere, and beat out other settings from professional pnp game designers.

Alkiera

[SirBruce]

Are all of you getting banned, or just sidereal?

Bruce

[AcidCat]

Having been a Tolkien fan since I was about 10 years old, I'm not really interested in a MMORPG set in that world. I think the story means too much to me to really be able to enjoy partaking in your typical mundane MMO mechanics in Middle Earth. "Oh, I just killed my 10,000th Orc, time to level up!" ... "Oh, here we are outside Minas Tirith, here's a group of naked Elves jumping around emoting repeatedly" ... "General Chat: dOOd Moria suxxors, the leet lewts are in Mordor noob"

I have no desire for that cherished mythology and story to be reduced to that.

[Mesozoic]

I have no desire for that cherished mythology and story to be reduced to that.

Your nostalgia will be ground into a fine powder, spiced with the salt from Tolkien's tears, and consumed wholesale by The Bottom Line.  The resulting fecal material will be pressed into pancakes, dried over the burning rage of literary men, boxed and sold as the Collector's Edition for $69.99 with a $15.99 monthly fee.

Enjoy.

[HaemishM]

I have no desire for that cherished mythology and story to be reduced to that.

Your nostalgia will be ground into a fine powder, spiced with the salt from Tolkien's tears, and consumed wholesale by The Bottom Line.  The resulting fecal material will be pressed into pancakes, dried over the burning rage of literary men, boxed and sold as the Collector's Edition for $69.99 with a $15.99 monthly fee.

Enjoy.

/sniff

It's like I just shit out a son.

[sidereal]

Are all of you getting banned, or just sidereal?

Bruce, you cad.  As Shockeye well knows, I was communicating in the Tongue of Men in the Tengwar script, not 'Elvish' (which I took to preclude both Quenya and Sindarin).  Unless 'mangina' is, in fact, an Elvish word, in which case I apologize.

[Paelos]

I seems we both enjoy the nerdy loopholes.