Lord of the Rings Online - The target is WoW

[Murgos]

That wasn't the example given.  The example was one sees an intact building and the other one sees a burnt out building.

That is NOT the same as existance and non-existance.  Having different content is a whole nother barrel of fish.

True, but I'm inferring that the different states of the building are temporal. If Player A sees the whole building before it's burnt, while Player B sees it after, that's not that different from existance/non-existance experientially. The building and its meaning to both players is almost as fundamentally different (ie, Player A needs the building for a quest NPC inside while Player B needs to pick through the ruins for a slip of paper the NPC dropped when fleeing the fire).

There is no reason the quest NPC, walls, boundaries and rough detail of the building cannot exist in both frames of reference with the only difference being that of textures.

[Venkman]

Also true. Technically. Because it already happens (with the simplest example being those games that load different texture libraries based on software settings).

But experientially, there needs to be a reason for this or the players will just be confused. It either doesn't happen often enough to be noticed (your WoW example), or there's a clear justification for it. Otherwise, why bother doing so in the first place? After all, they're only talking about progressive dungeons here (they're "dungeons" to me whether rendered indoors or out). There's plenty of examples rip off for something that simple.

[Murgos]

They are talking about a specific circumstance.  That of a very high level player grouping with a lowbie.  If the highbie is a dick sure he can mess with the lowbie but since he has already done this content and is, theoretically, helping out - I don't see why he should fuck it up for the lowbie any more than normal quest spoilers in any MMOG.

[Bstaz]

Can you go in the buildings?

[Margalis]

Zing! You win.

[Murgos]

Can you go in the buildings?

Who cares?  I don't post here because I'm concerned with reality.

[Hoax]

You know we really need to stop talking about these terrible games, I would almost rather be working then reading anything more about SWG.  Turbines second steaming pile of shit/puke cocktail doesn't really rev my engines either.

Too bad there is nothing with promise to talk about.
*le sigh*

GoGo Conan Beta!?

[Khaldun]

The layered instance thing is potentially interesting. I've been trying to think about models for time-dynamical quests where the perceived world state changes as each leg of the quest is completed. WoW has some limited examples--that quest in Searing Gorge, for example, where the NPC giving you the quest turns out to be a dragon and changes during the completion of the arc.

Otherwise, though, I'm all the more certain that LoTRO is going to be hobbled rather than enabled by its license. In fact, one of the things said in that interview removes one of the few alibis I thought Turbine had to offer for screwing up, namely that I thought perhaps the conditions of the license prohibit them from setting the game in the Fourth Age. The dev says that someday maybe they could go into the Fourth Age if the expansions advance the plot enough. So obviously that's not off limits in any fixed way. If so, putting the game during the events of LoTR is just plain dumb.

The folks who play this game because they're seriously into LoTR are going to hate some of it. There is no way in hell that anybody besides Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel or possibly one or two other high elves should be able to face up to a balrog given the Tolkien lore, for example. They're sticking a lot of standard MMOG conventions on top of an intellectual property that doesn't support those conventions very well. So the serious Tolkien fans will gripe constantly about the gap between the gameplay and their understanding of the source fiction. The serious MMOG players will probably just say, "Meh, it's just WoW with new skins", and maybe play for the new shiny for a while, but not for a long time. That's assuming Turbine doesn't have serious functionality or technical issues when they go live.

[HaemishM]

The folks who play this game because they're seriously into LoTR are going to hate some of it. There is no way in hell that anybody besides Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel or possibly one or two other high elves should be able to face up to a balrog given the Tolkien lore, for example.

That was my take on it as well. A Balrog! WOOT, RAID INSTANCE. Only Gandalf didn't tell Frodo and Aragon to go get 32 more people, he told them to run because he was the only one who even had a chance of stopping or delaying it. And the inference is certainly that while he banished the Balrog, the Balrog banished him too.

Shit like that being in the game is only going to infuriate Tolkinerds, which is the target audience.

[Khaldun]

The folks who play this game because they're seriously into LoTR are going to hate some of it. There is no way in hell that anybody besides Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel or possibly one or two other high elves should be able to face up to a balrog given the Tolkien lore, for example.

That was my take on it as well. A Balrog! WOOT, RAID INSTANCE. Only Gandalf didn't tell Frodo and Aragon to go get 32 more people, he told them to run because he was the only one who even had a chance of stopping or delaying it. And the inference is certainly that while he banished the Balrog, the Balrog banished him too.

Shit like that being in the game is only going to infuriate Tolkinerds, which is the target audience.

Yup. Remember the tag line for SWG? "You'll get to live in the Star Wars universe". That probably really did sell some boxes. And it lit a smoldering fire in the coal seams of fan-oriented players from that point on, because whatever pre-CU SWG was, it wasn't like living in the universe depicted in the films and other licensed products. It wasn't even like playing KOTOR or Dark Forces.

The license is not an asset unless it is also a constraint that directs the work of the developer. In this market, if you go off the DikuMUD road, you're probably making a canny choice as far as drawing the MMOG audience (they're sick of it) and also potentially letting yourself have the freedom to design something appropriate to the license. That's a win-win choice: design something appropriate to the fiction, and you'll have something novel enough to attract the MMOG audience as well.

Instead LOTRO is trying to be the "new Warcraft". Game over, man, game over.

[Margalis]

Can you go in the buildings?

Who cares?  I don't post here because I'm concerned with reality.

It's an AC2 joke. Buildings you couldn't enter = dead world.

[Anoq]

Shit like that being in the game is only going to infuriate Tolkinerds, which is the target audience.

Sooner or later there will be a screenshot of a Balrog and half the Tolkinerds will quit anyhow because the Balrog will have wings, or because it doesn't have wings.

The audience isnt Tolkinerds, LotR is probably the only fantasy franchise that has some sort of a toehold outside the sci-fi / fantasy geeksquad.

[Samwise]

As one of the aforementioned Tolkienerds, I agree completely that this game will have a very hard time not sucking balls.  Some of what they're doing appeals to me, like not making "real wizards" (like Gandalf) a playable character class.  But if they're trying to emulate WoW, they can't help but do a lot of stuff that will irritate me.

[Lt.Dan]

I'm willing to give them a shot ('till I hear a beta write up anyway).  I don't really care about the canon.  They sound like they're doing some interesting stuff (even if it may not pan out).  And maybe, just maybe this will be a game that's not some ding-gratz inspired catass fest.  But who knows, they're still in the talking-out-of-their-arse" stage of development.

[WayAbvPar]

Is there PvP? A Shire killing spree might be fun. Nasty hobbitses!

[Trippy]

That wasn't the example given.  The example was one sees an intact building and the other one sees a burnt out building.

That is NOT the same as existance and non-existance.  Having different content is a whole nother barrel of fish.

True, but I'm inferring that the different states of the building are temporal. If Player A sees the whole building before it's burnt, while Player B sees it after, that's not that different from existance/non-existance experientially. The building and its meaning to both players is almost as fundamentally different (ie, Player A needs the building for a quest NPC inside while Player B needs to pick through the ruins for a slip of paper the NPC dropped when fleeing the fire).

The original example from the article and the one that I quoted is building/!building:

So the only inconsistency will happen if you and I are very different levels and on a different story level and we decide to party together and want to meet at one place. You´re gonna be standing in front of a building and me not.

[Venkman]

The original example from the article and the one that I quoted is building/!building:

Yea, that's where the DQ/Murgo instant-message spree began. But really, it doesn't matter whether it's building/!building or different textures or any of that. The thing that does matter is that there's a difference at all.

Why bother? Why have the same content look very different for two different people, whether they're grouped or not? Slight stuff like WoW does is fine. But removing buildings? Changing the landscape? Have Player A see a gorge when Player B sees a geyser? This would all work in some sort of psychedelic/multi-threaded timeline like game, maybe a Myst redux or whatever. But for the plodding linearity of this license? Not a chance.

It feels over thought for little reason. If they want epic, just make epic content. There's a zillion ways to do it that don't involve arbitrary confusion where none is needed.

That was my take on it as well. A Balrog! WOOT, RAID INSTANCE

Unless the game isn't about raids or loot or XP or levels or, err, what were we talking about again? Yea, basically they've got the same problems as SWG did, MxO did, and Star Trek will. Conan probably not though. I doubt enough people read the books to really have a super-deep impression of the Conan-world.

[Lantyssa]

It feels over thought for little reason. If they want epic, just make epic content. There's a zillion ways to do it that don't involve arbitrary confusion where none is needed.

Such as?  Raids?  I'm not sure MMOs are able to produce both epic and good content all that well yet.

[Arthur_Parker]

Codemasters have a couple of exclusives on DDO and LOTRO.  Satine (Codemasters community rep) interviews David Eckelberry here, 3rd item down 270 meg video file.  Satine is a bit of a hottie, to clarify that statement, I mean she seems nice, she's female and actually knows what DDO means. 

If anyone is mad enough to download that video, Satine asks some tough questions, David gives little real information while speaking a lot, I suspect he doesn't get to speak to attractive women that often.  It's worth watching the end as David solo explores (while exploiting) the Dragon Vault to show off a game you cannot solo in (to be fair he does mention more solo content briefly in the interview).

The LOTRO exclusive is here, click the link for pics, you have to register to get the audio file so here's my very biased summary.

Satine interviews Jeffrey Steefel

First and thankfully, Jeffrey seems a lot more comfortable speaking to females.
Tolkien lore is important.   Relax, we give good lore, one of our guys speaks 2 elvish dialects (yes we are scared of him)
Group combat- Groups will have synchronised attack options
Exploring and finding rare places or finding lore gives traits, these are medals your character can wear that boast your skills
Expansion packs planned once a year or less, content updates maybe 4 times a year
Layered instances will be for epic quests, not many of them, characters of different levels will be able to step forward or back to meet each other though so it won't stop you meeting a friend.
85-90% of the world is not instanced.
Worried about too many players being elves? - Dunno maybe it will happen in beta, hope it's ok, but we have tools to deal with it (only time I actually thought he was talking complete bollocks)
Solo play - yes, higher levels more likely to be grouped, but quick to say 40-50% of content still able to be soloed at almost cap
Numbers of players per server - 1000's (i.e. more than DDO)
Is every piece of armour visible on your avatar? Yup.
Can you dye item - nope but lots of different colours available
guilds - called kinships, kinship very important for elder game, details of which we are not releasing, we believe elder game is very important (That's interesting, he probably just means raids though).
Other stuff I wasn't interested in.

[Triforcer]

How do I get in the layered instance that shows a game that doesn't suck?

[Soln]

[Arthur_Parker]

Note that the idiot who said it was going to take on WoW is not from Turbine, but from the Euro publishers. These are the same assheads who think ArchonlordsofCatass is going to be a worthwhile endeavor.

He's doing that to get retailers in Europe to stock the game. It's marketing, it doesn't need to have any connection with reality.

All that's true, however today there's a new eurogamer preview with Turbine's Jeff Steefel, the game's executive producer.  I bolded the bit I like. 

Linky

There are many reasons to hate Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies. There's the dwarf-tossing. Alone, that's unforgivable. There are the myriad, meaningless plot changes. They're far too numerous to mention. But worst, worse than even randomly altering the flow of Tolkien's epic, is the omission of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry. For that, Jackson, you go to Hell.

Bombadil, for those who've never read the Trilogy, is a random, wood-dwelling idiot who also happens to be God. Or a god, at least. Goldberry, his wife, is what you'd expect from someone called "Goldberry" who's married to "God". They're both mentalists. They're also two of the most enigmatic characters in the entire book, a pair of oddities that truly cast insight into Tolkien's mind when taken in context with the rest of the story. Obviously, then, Jackson dropped them like a rock. Fool. Thankfully, though, Turbine Entertainment, developer of Lord of the Rings Online, could never be so cruel. We see him rescuing a player from the Great Barrow. He even skips.

"He's completely goofy," laughs Jeff Steefel, the game's executive producer, at the title's unveiling in Warwick. "He's the most powerful ancient guy in the forest and he's completely daft."

Bombadil hopping over the demo screen should bring warmth to the coldest heart, but The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (LOTRO) has a great deal more on its plate than sticking to Tolkien's original vision. For a start, it's the first and only MMO based on the world's most prolific fantasy franchise. For a thousand reasons, it can't be "bad". Secondly, both Turbine and European publisher Codemasters are banking on LOTRO far exceeding cult status among the online hardcore. And to achieve that end, everyone involved is going to have to climb over the WoW-shaped oliphant in the room.

"People are expecting me to provide a big player game, and that this is supposed to be the next significantly large MMO in the market," says Steefel. "It's not a niche game. It's not supposed to appeal to a small segment of the market. We're going to launch this game globally. It has a tremendous potential if we look at the audience that's available to us."

Jeff reckons his team and his game are up to the job. The online RPG is based on the book licence, not the movies, and while EA owns the New Line Cinema rights, the publisher will never be able to use them to make an MMO, for reasons everyone seems to brush away with a confused scowl and a wave of a hand. In addition, anticipation for LOTRO is high, says Steefel - more than 110,000 people have already signed up to the beta despite the code currently being at the pre-alpha stage - and Turbine's online game heritage is deep. Two full Asheron's Call releases and the recent Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach make the US developer one of the most experienced in the west when it comes to online goblin action.

He plays in front of us for an hour (no touching, no photography, no filming, pain of death), full spiel included. The original release is based squarely on the content of the first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. Steefel shows us that Gandalf and a Nazgul are seen in the first five minutes of play, both in the hub town of Bree, sightings included as that's what players will "expect". The game's art instantly impresses, a graphical style somewhere between WoW's overblown cartoon and Guild's War's clipped realism. We see some of the colourful town, populated only with NPCs, before being transported away by the magic of dev codes to an assault on Weathertop.

Four races (Human, Elf, Hobbit and Dwarf) are available in seven classes (Loremaster, Hunter, Guardian, Champion, Captain, Minstrel and Burglar), and Steefel's playing an elf. The group would normally be a lot larger for this particular instance, says Steefel. A ranger hobbles up, injured, asks for an escort to the summit which has been overrun by orcs. The first taste of combat arrives in a scuffle with a goblin Conscript. A coloured, rune-ridden ring around the green monster's feet denotes the target and aside from Lord of the Rings styling it looks like an immediately familiar encounter to anyone with an MMO habit.

Steefel uses the words "straightforward MMO combat" as we're scanning the screen. One thing's for certain: it looks fantastic. As he moves on to a larger encounter with multiple enemies, the goblins' armour and weapons show painful detail up close. Orc Archers, Warriors and Reavers appear and the pace picks up. Steefel's hot bar is a plain-looking affair with 12 (ish) skill slots and he's playing using hotkeys in time-honoured fashion. All standard stuff.

Jeff's elf is on his own throughout the whole encounter and he's using cheats to walk through bigger fights. He shows us arching enemy sentries from massive distances as he moves through the instance, his character's breath visible in the air. New threats arrive in the shape of wargs, orcs retreating and blowing horns to call reinforcements. The player's constantly required to set fire to torches to "call down" orcs thus avoiding being overwhelmed, the flame device also being used to open gates. A couple of camps along the way need clearing, each progressively tougher, the first belonging to orc "Bob Hosk" (thanks), the second to a "Muz the Warg Keeper". The enemies speak throughout - "I've got a little surprise for you!" etc - and the ambience is generally faithful to the books. It really is what you'd expect.

In fact, there's nothing especially shocking about the game at all. It looks competent, attractive: Lord of the Rings. "I guess the way we're trying to craft the game is that it's got a broader spectrum of gameplay, so it's certainly a good game for a new player to take on because we're trying to make is accessible from the very beginning," Steefel explains. "On the other hand, for the hardcore player, it will provide them with all the high end stuff that they're going to want to have."

A first taste of "high end stuff" arrives when Jeff's elf reaches Weathertop's summit. He fights an Uruk Hai, followed by an awesome encounter with a mountain troll daubed with Saruman's white hands. It all fits, it all works and it looks bloody hard. But will it really be enough to span the hilarious gulf between those who've never picked up an online game before and a glass-eyed wraith with a bunch of level 60 WoW characters? Can such an obviously "down the line" MMO satisfy the hardcore?

I think so," says Steefel. "Well, let me rephrase that, and I say this with tremendous respect. We can never satisfy those people. Blizzard can never satisfy those people. They're not satisfiable. Again, all power to them: they're so ferocious at consuming. We have a number of people on the team who have five, six, seven level 60 characters who've announced they won't play with anyone who has any less than three, four, five characters at level 60 or above. But in terms of the challenge level, in terms of being able to work in groups, being able to do raids, you know, high level content, there's just no way you could get through it unless you're in there with a bunch of real badass guys."

After Weathertop, Steefel goes to the Great Barrow for some dungeoneering. Again, the environments and the enemies are beautiful. The first sighting of the Witch King of Angmar is made here, although you don't get to take him on until you're reaching the top levels ("There's a 45-50 level cap," according to Jeff). The instance ends in combat with a particularly nasty wraith, after which Bombadil saves the day. He even skips. We're kind of loving the game at this point, to be honest.

Speaking to us in private after the showing, Steefel tells us he was contractually obliged to read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings at least three times. He doesn't seem to mind. From the sound of it, that level of research was essential to the job.

"It's a huge place," he says, smiling. "For my designers and artists it's very cool for them to work on one of the most well-known properties on the planet. You know, it's like, 'What did you do today?' 'Oh I've been modelling Rivendell.' That's pretty cool. On the other hand, artists are really creative people, and that means that the amount of things they can create totally from scratch is unlimited. So when Angmar comes along and we said, 'Look, here's a whole part of Middle Earth that Tolkien only talked about. Here's everything we know about it, here's where it is geographically and we know what the rest of the world is like in terms of biology and topography: make Angmar.' And then we come up with a basic idea and we talk it over with Tolkien [Tolkien Estate, the owner of the book rights - Ed], come to a place where we're comfortable and that becomes Angmar. So you'll be exploring the realm of the Witch King. And there'll be many other places like that throughout Middle Earth that we get to do."

The Fellowship never goes to Angmar in the books. This is uncharted territory. To a Tolkien geek, it's wet dream material. And it's not going to stop any time soon. Turbine has very big plans for LOTRO. Get sucked in and you're going to be playing it for a long time yet.

"I think of this as a franchise that starts at launch and goes on for years and years and years," he adds. "It's such an evergreen piece of material there's no reason why it shouldn't. We're going to do an expansion roughly every nine to 12 months, and the expansions are likely to have significant functionality changes as opposed to just content. We're going to do quarterly content updates. Will other types of functionality come online in some of those? Sure. But it all depends on the technology involved. I'm going to have a content team, an art team and also a fairly substantial technology team to improve our game and add functionality.

"I think this is the beginning of an evolution. I've been preaching this to my team a lot. I think the MMO market is at a more mature place now. I think of it like the Betamax era. We ship the machine at launch and then just keep feeding it with tape? That doesn't work any more. The fundamental way that the experience exists is going to change and evolve. It's going to have to. The community's going to change and mature."

Some of the features to be included are obvious. PvP doesn't make it into the original release - currently scheduled for Q4 in Europe - although Steefel tells us to watch for an announcement on being able to play "darkside" soon.

Others are less so. The initial game includes 250 hours of play, but he tells us that all the content from The Two Towers and The Return of the King will be added in content updates. As an example of how this will affect the core game, the Rohirim make an appearance in the second book, so horse-riding and horse combat will have to be included. Add the unknown quantity of Angmar onto the three original books and you have an epic prospect. Turbine's in it for the long haul and it has massive plans. You should get into publishing, we joke.

"It's all part of the possibility space," says Steefel seriously. "It really depends on how many things we want to take on all at once. We're pretty clear that sales and distribution isn't a business that we'll ever want to get into."

He pauses.

"Unless we become the next EA."

They don't have over 110,000 people signed up for Beta as they haven't opened signups.  They have had 112,339 users signup for the forums at http://forums.lotro.turbine.com/ over the past three years.  Love the EA comment at the end, oooh scary.

[Venkman]

Strange Hobbitsess.

In fact, there's nothing especially shocking about the game at all.

That's enough right there. As many of us have been saying since LoTRO/MEO/whatever was first announced: a generic fantasy MMO with an off-the-shelf combat system is not going to Shock & Awe enough people to be worth the additional fees incurred by licensing.

The license will attract. But only the game can keep. The latter will make the story relevant, but the story alone won't carry an iteration of yesterday's game mechanics.

[Trippy]

Codemasters have a couple of exclusives on DDO and LOTRO.  Satine (Codemasters community rep) interviews David Eckelberry here, 3rd item down 270 meg video file.  Satine is a bit of a hottie, to clarify that statement, I mean she seems nice, she's female and actually knows what DDO means. 

If anyone is mad enough to download that video, Satine asks some tough questions, David gives little real information while speaking a lot, I suspect he doesn't get to speak to attractive women that often.

I thought his answers were pretty good except for a few places where he had to hedge because of marketing concerns and one question which he didn't answer completely about the possibility of adding more emotes and stuff for better roleplaying. He actually made the game sound pretty interesting, if I didn't know better. Maybe the game would've been better if David was the Lead Designer instead of Ken.

[Lantyssa]

For a start, it's the first and only MMO based on the world's most prolific fantasy franchise. For a thousand reasons, it can't be "bad".

Yet it only needs a few to BE bad.

[stray]

For a start, it's the first and only MMO based on the world's most prolific fantasy franchise. For a thousand reasons, it can't be "bad".

Yet it only needs a few to BE bad.

While I think the franchise might cover some of their mistakes, is there really that big of a difference in sci fi and fantasy to be THAT confident about it? I mean, if LotRO has a thousand reasons that it can't be bad, then what did SWG have? Why the hell would fantasy be more immune to shittyness?

[Venkman]

It's not fantasy vs sci-fi, it's license vs not. LoTR will not cover any sins in game mechanic, starting from the second day of Live. Licenses generally involve strong stories about strong individuals. What place is there for that in persistent static worlds where everyone's basically the same except for their place in a fate-based game mechanic?

I'd have made LoTRO not MMO at all. Make it a 20-player game, with a persistent world, where each player can choose a good-guy protagnist. They occasionally have to be together, but otherwise largely are off doing their separate tasks as part of the cumulative goal of getting the ring to the mountain.

Instead we're going to get EQ with some modifiable zones of optional participation.

[Arthur_Parker]

Total Video Games Lord Of The Rings Online: Shadows Of Angmar Q&A

Total Video Games Lord Of The Rings Online: Shadows Of Angmar - First Look Preview

Eventually the launch game will end with players in the Elven city of Rivendell, which is where the expansion packs will start off

Voice chat is something that we're going to start with at launch and see how people get on with that, which would be an answer for role-playing on a console.

Tolkien + MMO + Voice Chat = Comedy

[Broughden]

Eventually the launch game will end with players in the Elven city of Rivendell, which is where the expansion packs will start off

Translation: Hi! Are new game LOTRO is going to have just as little content at launch as our current game DDO does! But once again we are hoping you mindless consumers all buy it because it has cute wittle hobbits!


Anderson, Turbine CEO, is either the biggest idiot in the MMO business or is an evil genius simply bilking investors out of millions prior to declaring bankruptcy and moving to the Cayman Islands.

[stray]

Anderson, Turbine CEO, is either the biggest idiot in the MMO business or is an evil genius simply bilking investors out of millions prior to declaring bankruptcy and moving to the Cayman Islands.

I don't know about investors (thought Turbine was funding the bulk of DDO and LotRO?), but I don't think he's an idiot. It's typical behavior with these guys to only do what they have to. The real idiots are the gamers who give the message that they prefer half assed products (which they will do in this case, just like any other)

[Trippy]

Anderson, Turbine CEO, is either the biggest idiot in the MMO business or is an evil genius simply bilking investors out of millions prior to declaring bankruptcy and moving to the Cayman Islands.

I don't know about investors (thought Turbine was funding the bulk of DDO and LotRO?), but I don't think he's an idiot.

No, Turbine has taken in $48 million in VC money to date.

[Arthur_Parker]

Eventually the launch game will end with players in the Elven city of Rivendell, which is where the expansion packs will start off

Translation: Hi! Are new game LOTRO is going to have just as little content at launch as our current game DDO does! But once again we are hoping you mindless consumers all buy it because it has cute wittle hobbits!

Although I suspect you might be right, it's just too early to say that.

At release LOTRO is meant to be 60% the land size of WoW, with no factions that means you have approx the same size land area to explore as WoW (Horde can't get to jumpy Elf land etc).  It was also stated in the yahoo preview that "there are some 600 quests and subquests to work through".

The official lotro forums are being erased in the next few days, I suspect a lot of new information is going to be released at E3 and they want to remove previous dev posts from the past few years that contradict the new info.

Edit found a link for the quest info.

[Broughden]

Anderson, Turbine CEO, is either the biggest idiot in the MMO business or is an evil genius simply bilking investors out of millions prior to declaring bankruptcy and moving to the Cayman Islands.

I don't know about investors (thought Turbine was funding the bulk of DDO and LotRO?), but I don't think he's an idiot.

No, Turbine has taken in $48 million in VC money to date.

Yep, and like I said in another thread....he gives himself a huge salary, buys real estate, puts it in his kids' names, declares bankruptcy and laughs as the VC's fall over themselves trying to figure out how to sue him.

[Broughden]

Eventually the launch game will end with players in the Elven city of Rivendell, which is where the expansion packs will start off

Translation: Hi! Are new game LOTRO is going to have just as little content at launch as our current game DDO does! But once again we are hoping you mindless consumers all buy it because it has cute wittle hobbits!

Although I suspect you might be right, it's just too early to say that.

At release LOTRO is meant to be 60% the land size of WoW, with no factions that means you have approx the same size land area to explore as WoW (Horde can't get to jumpy Elf land etc).  It was also stated in the yahoo preview that "there are some 600 quests and subquests to work through".

The official lotro forums are being erased in the next few days, I suspect a lot of new information is going to be released at E3 and they want to remove previous dev posts from the past few years that contradict the new info.

Edit found a link for the quest info.

Yes and DDO was going to have 400+ quests and 20 levels at release. We all know how well that turned out.
They have stated so far for release that you will start in Bree at the Prancing Pony and stop in Rivendell. To me that doesnt seem like a whole lot of area for launch.

[Arthur_Parker]

he gives himself a huge salary, buys real estate, puts it in his kids' names
..

DDO was going to have 400+ quests
..

you will start in Bree at the Prancing Pony

I'd like to see you provide links for the your claims quoted above.