if you know whats good for you...

Neurox1

you wont bother with this game .....

anything with a cult following will suck .. and this game will bank on the cult fiction fans to support it ... it wont  need to be a great game ... in fact .. it wont even need to be a good or decent game ....the lord of the ring junkies will support it even if it sucked as bad as star wars galaxies ...

now c'mon ... we ALL know star wars galaxies woulda been trashed if it wasnt for the star wars fanbois who wanna be jedi ...

Slaggg

I would consider the 'fiction' developed by Blizzard to describe the world, history, and charcters in the Warcraft RTS games to have a cult following, since their numbers were few and far between.  Especially when compared to the fans of a series of books, essays, and other writings that spans decades, has been translated into as many languages as the Bible (the fricking BIBLE man!  That's an ass-load!), and has inspired more people than The Cure sent into depression.

Then an MMO was made in that Universe.  And critics said it would suck because nobody knew or cared.  Seems all of those cultish fanbois proved em wrong, by signing up for accounts in the millions.

SWG was good.  It was actually great at one point.  I played it from pubs 5-10.  And I don't consider myself to be a cultish SW fanboi.  At all.  It's sad to hear that SOE dumbed it down, but after a FEW YEARS of success, sometimes the drink needs to be stirred a bit, and thats what they did.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is your 'arguement' holds no value.

Neurox1

ill tell ya why my arguments holds value ... because out of all the movie/book to game translations out there ... id say fewer than 20% actually become good games ...

if ya followed games the amount of time i have youd remember this trend .. and see it still holds true today ...

and ill disagree with you 100% about SWG ... the game ALWAYS suffered from bugs, poor planning, and shallow storylines ...

go check out the sony forums sometime.. or even the forums here and ask about how the majority of players from SWG feel ...

WOW was different because the world of warcraft was always set in a video game universe ......

it wasnt and never will have the cult fiction fan base LOTR has or star wars has .. or matrix has ... or D&D ... or star trek ...ect...

ask yourself this ... if LOTR wasnt LOTR, or star wars galaxies wasnt based on star wars ,,,,matrix online or startrek of any of em .. ... would they even be as hyped up or paid as much attention to?

whats to seperate it from the COUNTLESS other fantasy mmorpgs out there? ...

just the fact the developers are taking the franchise to an MMO shows lack of creativety within the mmo genre ...we have more than enough fantasy/knights/wizard games ...

i for one am asking for something original ...im sick of seeing translations of movies ...these will kill MMO's in that eventually the only companies who will be able to afford the license contracts will always be gluttonous super corporations like sony or the hard hitters in the game industry like turbine and such ... and eventually the would-be great companies will be weeded out because they cant afford licenses to base their mmo's on these cult fiction phenomenons, and people wont pay attention to the newly imagined worlds we COULD be centering our attention on, instead of the billion dollar commercial worlds the mmo genre seems to be fixated on  ....

nyquil

u have no clue what your talking about...

for one turbine are all fans of LOTR and tolkien's work, for 2 the tolkien license is still under strict policies.

this game will not be a DDO piece of crap, this game has very high potential... well have to wait and see at this years e3

Odysses

I would say the basis of his arguement has some merrit.   So far both SWG and The Matrix have been disappointments to the core fan base.    I have been watching this game for a long time and I definitely think it will fare better then both those games.      Where those other games failed in my opinion was not staying with the lore and really utilizing the great storylines that were available.     Instead of making a MMORPG world and putting a skin on it that matches your lore, your better of designing the game from the ground up to take advantage of what you know you can deliver with that story.    I think Turbine will make a pretty fun game for fans of Tolkien.

Slaggg

What do you suppose would happen if the players took some responsibility for their expectations and didn't buy too much into hype and went into the game by looking at it as a seperate entity, rather than endlessly making comparisons that would never stand up?