MEO Update

[Calandryll]

We updated the MEO site with a pretty big announcement today.

http://www.middle-earthonline.com/

The two biggest points are the publishing rights transition from VU to Turbine and pushing the ship date to 2006.

We've been pretty quiet about the development of MEO lately and for the time being that won't change. I'm more than happy to answer questions about the release though.

[shiznitz]

You guys should sell to EA. They are looking like tools with no modern MMOG and their stock down $9 today. Plus, you would get to move BACK to California.  :-D

[Shockeye]

How would a MMORPG of The Hobbit differ from a general Middle Earth one? Or is it more being able to use specifics from the novel The Hobbit to incorporate into the overall Middle Earth world?

[Calandryll]

How would a MMORPG of The Hobbit differ from a general Middle Earth one? Or is it more being able to use specifics from the novel The Hobbit to incorporate into the overall Middle Earth world?

The latter... It allows us to use stuff from The Hobbit in MEO.

[Shockeye]

The latter... It allows us to use stuff from The Hobbit in MEO.

Does this cover any other works, such as The Silmarillion?

[Calandryll]

The latter... It allows us to use stuff from The Hobbit in MEO.

Does this cover any other works, such as The Silmarillion?

Nope. We only own the rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Those books give us more than enough material to make the game though.

[Shockeye]

Basically you cut out the middle-man so you can directly craft the game to what Turbine and Tolkien Enterprises sees as opposed to what VU would think can sell the game. Can't see any downside there. Middle Earth should sell itself, can't see how VU really could add anything to it.

[Shockeye]

Oh sure, put up a new FAQ that answered my questions already. Thanks for humoring me instead of telling me to go read the FAQ. To everyone else, go read the FAQ.

[ahoythematey]

Wow.  Turbine must hold some awfully incriminating evidence to have this much pull over such monolithic franchises like D&D and LotR when you consider how AC2 has been received.  Either that or Vivendi doesn't want another fantasy MMO in their lineup since WoW is such a money-tree, but then you'd think they'd just go EA on the game and piss it away.

[kaid]

Sounds good having both access to stuff from the hobbit as well as lord of the rings covers a pretty healthy chunk of time line to place the game in. I am curious to see the time frame they choose to place the game in though. I would think somewhere between the hobbit and before the start of the fellowship of the rings would give them alot of options and have all the major players still around to incorporate as needed.


kaid

[WayAbvPar]

pushing the ship date to 2006

That is the best part of the announcement. Not that they will be ready in 2006 (is anyone anymore?), but I like to hear that they are actually taking time instead of releasing some shitty alpha code and starting up with the money hats.

[Roac]

I'm curious how the licensing works; a *LOT* of what was mentioned in LotR makes reference to Silmarillion and other works by Tolkien.  For example, some of the equipment came "from the West", which Sil fans know as Numenor; but details about Numenor are only in Sil and other letters. 

Then there are the game questions that bug me...

When does it occur?  The events of LotR occupy a very narrow time span, so presumably the setting is either a decade or so prior to, or soon after, those events.  For obvious reasons, the two are massively different from a lore perspective.

How are you going to handle magic?  Lore wise, almost nobody had it.  There were only 5 wizards named such, ever.  In the whole history of ME.  Going to magic use there was a bit more, but that's mostly elvish stuff, and that was more crafting than spell casting.  Magic really was just that; magic.  Very few people had any scrap of understanding of it, and those who did almost never used it.  Gandalf himself used his sword more than his staff in LotR (although I guess with Hobbit, you have him setting all sorts of things on fire, including nearly himself).

How are races being handled?  You had species differences (elf, human), but there was also tons of references to subraces (dunedain, dunlending), which for Tolkinen had more meaning than we have toward black/white/asian - witness Aragorn.  Can I be a Haradrim?

Elves... elves were the Jedi of LotR.  Everything they did was better, it's just that they had negative population growth (death + no births at this point).  Not to mention that they're all calling it quits.  At the same time, we have the same problem here as we had with SWG and Jedi; everyone wants to be one but lore-wise, they are godly and rare.

Having been a player/coder/admin for a Tolkien MUD for 5 years, I'm horribly anxious about any kind of Tolkien MMOG.  It's both a terribly popular genre, and just as terribly difficult to use as a MMOG setting, because the players have to be so insignificant.  To have a player ever get to affect anything it has to take place after the books, at which point you're in an even worse bind lore wise; the elves are all but done, the evil is rid of, and magic is even harder to find than it was before.

Oh, and I want to meet the Blue Wizards. :)

[HaemishM]

What Roac said.

Magic should be non-existent on the player's side, other than some small bits of healing using alchemy (Aragorn using "king's foil" to stem the advance of the Morgail blade on Frodo), and maybe some buffs? Frankly, if you remove the idea of buffs alto-fucking-gether, I'd be happy, as well as in battle healing. Hell, players being an elf shouldn't be allowed, but I'm sure we can't have that.

Because if we have nice things, we have to shit all over them. I expect a bazillion Lagolasses that I cannot PK.

Essentially, this is a worse license than Star Wars, except that with Star Wars, you have Lucas to shit all over good game design ideas. But in this one, all the good shit in the stories, players shouldn't be allowed to have.

[MaceVanHoffen]

I'll echo Roac and Haemish, and add a quip whose source I can't remember:  I remember reading, quite some time ago when UO was in beta, about the difference between the "literary mage" and mages that players want to be.  The literary mage was a plot device:  he had huge powers, but wielded them very seldom and only to advance the plot (thus the term literary).  Player character mages tend to focus solely on the power mages have in those stories, and want to exercise that power often in each and every play session.  It's the equivalent of having Gandalf lob fireballs on every single page of LotR, something that would vastly diminish his appeal.  A similar principle exists with lots of things in LotR.

Maybe a vain hope, but I'd like to see MEO focus more on politics and trade (and perhaps the combat that is sometimes required for each) than on magic.  There are dozens of factions in the Tolkien universe with very complicated agendas.  A game developer could use the interplay of those factions to generate a lot of fun gameplay without turning magic into the mundane.

[Calandryll]

I'm curious how the licensing works; a *LOT* of what was mentioned in LotR makes reference to Silmarillion and other works by Tolkien.  For example, some of the equipment came "from the West", which Sil fans know as Numenor; but details about Numenor are only in Sil and other letters. 

Then there are the game questions that bug me...

When does it occur?  The events of LotR occupy a very narrow time span, so presumably the setting is either a decade or so prior to, or soon after, those events.  For obvious reasons, the two are massively different from a lore perspective.

How are you going to handle magic?  Lore wise, almost nobody had it.  There were only 5 wizards named such, ever.  In the whole history of ME.  Going to magic use there was a bit more, but that's mostly elvish stuff, and that was more crafting than spell casting.  Magic really was just that; magic.  Very few people had any scrap of understanding of it, and those who did almost never used it.  Gandalf himself used his sword more than his staff in LotR (although I guess with Hobbit, you have him setting all sorts of things on fire, including nearly himself).

How are races being handled?  You had species differences (elf, human), but there was also tons of references to subraces (dunedain, dunlending), which for Tolkinen had more meaning than we have toward black/white/asian - witness Aragorn.  Can I be a Haradrim?

Elves... elves were the Jedi of LotR.  Everything they did was better, it's just that they had negative population growth (death + no births at this point).  Not to mention that they're all calling it quits.  At the same time, we have the same problem here as we had with SWG and Jedi; everyone wants to be one but lore-wise, they are godly and rare.

Having been a player/coder/admin for a Tolkien MUD for 5 years, I'm horribly anxious about any kind of Tolkien MMOG.  It's both a terribly popular genre, and just as terribly difficult to use as a MMOG setting, because the players have to be so insignificant.  To have a player ever get to affect anything it has to take place after the books, at which point you're in an even worse bind lore wise; the elves are all but done, the evil is rid of, and magic is even harder to find than it was before.

Oh, and I want to meet the Blue Wizards. :)

The license is a bit complicated. But basically we can use stuff to the extent that it is in the books. So it's sort of a case by case basis for stuff that is only eluded to in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.

As far as the design stuff, unfortunately I can't talk about that yet.

[HaemishM]

As far as the design stuff, unfortunately I can't talk about that yet.

Then this will be a short thread. 

[Paelos]

If you let people play as elves, I'm not playing this game.

[Shockeye]

If you let people play as elves, I'm not playing this game.

Maybe Elves will be an unlockable character slot that you can grind out by doing various classes... oh nevermind.

[WayAbvPar]

If you let people play as elves, I'm not playing this game.

Maybe Elves will be an unlockable character slot that you can grind out by doing various classes... oh nevermind.

What kind of moronic half-assed design is that? Like anyone would ever design a game like that...

[SirBruce]

Hah, I predicted the ship date would be pushed back to 2006. :)  DDO is still on schedule, though?

Bruce

[Calandryll]

Hah, I predicted the ship date would be pushed back to 2006. :)  DDO is still on schedule, though?

Bruce

DDO is still scheduled to ship in 2005.

[Morfiend]

SWG could have been a lot better IMO with out the restrictions of the time frame they chose. I see you guys having the exact same problem. People want to play the hero, not the bread baker the hero buys dinner from.

Last I heard this was taking place at the same time as LotR. I have a feeling this is going to really cramp your ability to have any sort of meaningful feel to the game, Ala SWG.

I also cant get past the feeling that its not a good license for a MMOG. Lets look at what the license does for you. No magic (that players could use). Very rare magic items. No impact on the story (or even percieved impact). Elves.

Convince me im wrong. I would love to know how you are going to get around this stuff.

[Nija]

It's great news that Turbine gets to do their own thing. I just spent about 10 minutes thinking about how a Tolkien mmo would work, but I can't figure it out. It's like you're trying to 1up SWG for the worst mmo basis.

Good luck with it though. I really liked the whole 'Let's start our own story and make a game' thing that Asheron's Call had. It's too bad that was lost when AC2 was shoved out of the boat.

[stray]

It's great news that Turbine gets to do their own thing. I just spent about 10 minutes thinking about how a Tolkien mmo would work, but I can't figure it out. It's like you're trying to 1up SWG for the worst mmo basis.

Good luck with it though.

I agree. Good luck and all, but....What I really want to say is "Pull out now."

Then again, I'm sure the Tolkien fanbase is large enough to make this game a success, regardless of whether the lore is suitable for mmo's or not. But is that something to aspire to?

/shrug

Maybe. Maybe not.

It's just sad because the time, money, and brainpower invested into such a project could be put to better use. Something that aspires to be great and original. Something that works and makes sense. Something that creates new fans. Not something that caters to a "fanbase".

You already have one license worth having in D&D. And it's worth having because it CAN work within an MMO context. It not only has all the perks of a large fanbase, but D&D already is a game to begin with. Par for the course. You also have less restrictions, and more wiggle room for design decisions here. At least you can still be truly creative with it.

LoTR, on the other hand, is going to feel like "work" (if it doesn't already).

With all that money, I would think a company would be itching to realize some of it's "own ideas" rather than dealing with a game that doesn't make much sense. If Turbine is able to transform the work put into MEO into something else, I'd suggest that they do just that. The sooner the better.

[Hoax]

Yeah I see this going about as well as the GamesWorkshop LOTR game, except worse because the movies will be ancient cultural memory by 2006 (love the internet generation's attention span!).

[MaceVanHoffen]

... the movies will be ancient cultural memory by 2006 (love the internet generation's attention span!).

Hardly.  The Hobbit was written in 1936, which was before almost everyone (and likely, everyone in fact) who posts on this messageboard was born.  The Lord of the Rings is also the inspiration behind almost every fantasy RPG, both PnP and electronic.  One of the reasons Peter Jackson got the funding to make the movies is because several notable scholars described Tolkien as the Author of the Century.

Internet generation or not, a game based on Middle Earth could come out after we're dead and still garner attention.  Not that the game would be good, just that it would have a receptive audience to start with.

[SirBruce]

I think an MEO MMORPG can work, but it needs to be very different in feel and mechanics from any other MMO out there.  It needs to be very much unlike DDO, for example.  There was nothing wrong with the Pen & Paper version per se, but it is an extremely difficult license to pull off.

My advice?  I wouldn't set the game contemperanous with the movies -- I don't see how can realistically handle what people will be doing that could interfere with Frodo's journey.  It does provide a natural backdrop to the narrative, but everyone knows how it's going to end, so I suspect they'll feel like what they do doesn't matter.

No, I'd set the game shortly after Sauron has been defeated and Frodo has sailed west.  There's a whole lot of clean-up to do, and who is to say there aren't a thousand ways Sauron could attempt to come back?  Or hundreds of others who will try to fill the power vacuum.  Very little is written in stone about this period so you have plenty to work with.  And Gandalf could always come back...

Bruce

[Tale]

Nope. We only own the rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Those books give us more than enough material to make the game though.

I think you should move to New Zealand for a few years and make four games, plus a special edition expansion pack for each. Then they'll let you remake Donkey Kong as a MMO.

[Tale]

People want to play the hero, not the bread baker the hero buys dinner from.

Actually, I think people want to play the bread baker who has a chance of becoming the hero. Bread baking and dinner provision should be rewarding, but there should be a chance for the baker to hit the road and become famous like Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Furor and Sean. The lure of living the endgame keeps people baking happily. SWG didn't have an endgame (jedi is simply baking with a different character).

[Trippy]

No, I'd set the game shortly after Sauron has been defeated and Frodo has sailed west.  There's a whole lot of clean-up to do, and who is to say there aren't a thousand ways Sauron could attempt to come back?  Or hundreds of others who will try to fill the power vacuum.  Very little is written in stone about this period so you have plenty to work with.  And Gandalf could always come back...

You could set it at the time after Sauron is defeated but before Frodo sails West as well. That way you can still meet up with some of them, have them give out quests, etc., but you as the player wouldn't be "intersecting" with their stories.

[stray]

People want to play the hero, not the bread baker the hero buys dinner from.

Actually, I think people want to play the bread baker who has a chance of becoming the hero.

So, in other words, people want to be Don Quixote? Because the idea of the bread bakers ever amounting to anything other than squat would only be in their heads.

In LotR, the bread baker will always be the bread baker. The destiny of that world's inhabitants are already set in stone. The only way the "lure" of the endgame would work would be in a single player game, as one of the main characters.

See: Lord of the Rings : The Third Age

Playing the bread baker sucks. Even in a single player game. I shudder at the thought of playing one online. Hell, playing a "hero" in your average MMORPG is already bad enough.

[SirBruce]

You could set it at the time after Sauron is defeated but before Frodo sails West as well. That way you can still meet up with some of them, have them give out quests, etc., but you as the player wouldn't be "intersecting" with their stories.

The problem is the same with setting it during the books -- the time period is too short, and once they are gone, you're basically eliminating content that you can no longer use.

Bruce

[Evangolis]

Hmmm, the question I have is, "The Hobbit", or "Lord of the Rings"?  They really are quite different works, and worlds, with the Hobbit being more of a childrens book, lighter in tone and smaller in scope.  Inter-species relations were also much more strained, prior to the death of Smaug and the battle at Lonely Mountain.

I'd also note that the Wood Elves of Legolas' origin are much more rustic than the High Elves that dwell with Elrond or Galadrial.  I could see those elves as a PC class.  Still, the idea of an multi-species party would be very much the exception prior to the war with Sauron.  The fiction and the characters that players will want to play seem to be very conflicted.

I'd be interested in something set in the years before Bilbo's original journey, but the problem there is that the species were so insular before the return of the King Under the Mountain.  Heck, the Battle of Five Armies started out with the Elves and Humans trying to do the Dwarves out of Smaug's Treasure.  If the Goblins hadn't shown up, things could have gone very differently. That would be a smaller world, for the most part, with travel being harder and more dangerous.  On the other hand, you could be a lot more heroic there, since evil is much more common, much less concentrated, and heros hard to find.

The problem with something set at the very end of the Third Age is that the War of the Ring happens very fast, and ends with a huge victory, leaving very little to do.  Great setting for an SP title, but hard to run an ongoing MMO in.  Once Sauron falls, everybody becomes a bit player.

One alternative might be to place the game in Gondor and/or Rohan at around Bilbo's time or a little before.  Mordor then was leaderless and merely horribly blighted, not the fortified camp of the time of the Ring War.  Not until the time of the Hobbit does Sauron return.  PLayers could then be Men of Gondor or Rohan, or perhaps far wandering Dwarves.  There were surely epic struggles in those years, though they would be overshadowed by the deeds of the Fellowship in the climax of the Third Age.

As to magic, it is true that there are few workers of magic in the Third Age, but there are many artefacts of magic, and even more creatures of magic.  Oh well, I'm sure be now you are pretty well settled on this stuff.  If you aren't, 2006 seems like a very optimistic launch.

[Tale]

So, in other words, people want to be Don Quixote?

That's a bit harsh. Sounds like you're saying any story where we know the ending (Star Wars, LotR) can't make a good game unless everyone is a main character? The Fellowship of the 1.5 million WoW Players.

Middle Earth is not linear, and Frodo's quest takes a long time - and nobody knows about it except a few insiders. The rest of the NPC world is dungeons, dragons, orcs, elves, woods and consequences of Middle Earth's history, all playing out their subpolots oblivious to the ring quest. And evil strangers are spreading across the world, gaining influence as Sauron's and Saruman's power grows. Everything changes while the quest is underway, including the Shire to the point where it needs a scouring. What does the baker do when that happens? What's going on up north with the Rangers? What's happening out at the Lonely Mountain and Mirkwood? What dungeons are in distant lands?

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.

[SirBruce]

My main issue with MEO as a consumer is that, if MEO is really "done right", it's going to be heavy on story and travel, exploration and quest dialog, but not too much combat.  And with magic limited, character diversity is also going to be limited.  And if the stories are really "done right", it will take a real Tolkein officianado to appreciate them, whereas I'm lucky if I can remember the difference between Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul.  So the game just isn't particularly appealing to me when compared to, say, DDO.  But this doesn't mean I don't think MEO shouldn't be made.  It's just important to remember that the market for such a game is not going to be quite as broad as one might expect, because you don't want to turn it into a Middle Earth version of World of Warcraft.  That would be popular, perhaps, but most definitely WRONG.  So Turbine really has to resist the urge to turn the game into a traditional MMORPG.

Bruce