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Lord of the Rings - Please save it EA.
pingo
Member UncommonPosts: 608
Starwars and Matrix has gone to waste.
Final Fantasy managed to do the jump with medium succes, and Warcraft shined through it.
But let's face it. In current state, allot of more people are intrested in DnD online and it does in fact look much better.
God... Im listening to the LOTR soundtrack right now. It's so incredible lame that they wont use the art or music from the movies... That is so much to so many people. Its great they got the book licens aswell so they can expand on other things like with the parts that didnt made it into the movies.
Its just so sad to see something with such incredible potential. The trailer is not immersive at all, the art looks more generic than EQ2... It looks stale and nothing like tolkiens world.
Presentation seems lame and they seem to try to go on the cookie cutter stupid quest design. no pvp? right.. talk about killing the fun.
Looks like so much the same. I hate Dungeons and dragons and love lord of the rings, but even I have to admit how much LOTR:O sucks compared to turbines game.
Please EA.. Save it. You got licens to both movies and games. combine them. I w
Comments
The graphics, I'd have to agree to a certain extent...
The quests...after reading that dev diary...Oh man, they better have better stuff than that...
No pvp...I see something unique here... What I was thinking was that, they would beable to do more with quests and events without pvp... Example: Sauron has taken over so and so castle and is advancing to "some other castle", Help defend it! ...That could be an entire server event and it could stay along with the storyline...(pvp would ruin that)...If they could do something like this, then this game would be unique and diff than what's already out there...
For starter DDO is closer to launch so yes it looks better than a pre alpha game. Second peter jackson did an okay job protraying Tolkiens lord of the rings, But fell way short of doing it justice. The trailer and the game demo that they have showed at E3 and recently at PAx are over 5 months old, which meens that the acutally game that they have been working on looks nothing at this point in time like what we have seen.
EA is a single player game maker, they do not make MMORPG's to my knowledge, and this game if based of the movies would not do justice to the books that is why the movies are being left out of the process cause they are a interpitation of the books that don't fit or do the books justice. Anyone who thinks peter jackson is a god because he produced the movies needs to read the books.
LOTRO Is a Turbine game.
Hence the website: http://lotro.turbine.com/
Or did you mistype something?
As for not drawing from the movie, look at it from this perspective (something I argued elsewhere):
If they were banking on just the movie generating interest in the game, they'd be sunk. It's been too long to really profit off that. With all the delays that have built up, the only way to make this profittable is to appeal to the HUGE market of fans who have loved the novels for decades.
Also consider the cost issue:
the special effects used for the movies were the majority of the massive budgets. Any attempt to scale those down to a level an MMORPG server and multi-thousand end-user PC's could handle would result in either such poor quality or such high lag/RAM-load that the game would be either distasteful to look at or impossible to play. It just doesn't make sense.
Tolkein, in his inimmitable way, left very few visual cues in his work. There are in fact no physical or visual descriptions of the Balrog beyond it being "big", "really big." The representations used for the movie were one set of interpretations. They worked for someviewers, not so much for others. By not licensing the movie artwork (aside from cutting a huge chunk of fees out of their overhead -- and thereby YOUR cost) they open the door to new or different interpretations of Tolkien's creatures which may in fact be closer to the mental images many have had since they first read the novels.
I'm not even going to respond to the pvp comments. It's a dead horse, you can either stop riding it, or join the multiple discussions already in progress.
"Cookie-Cutter Quest Design"
I haven't seen a pleasing or attractive RPG system that didn't use quests. Without it the field is usually reduced to the random 'wander around, get attacked, fight, loot' process, which offers little immersion and no long-term holding power -- no reason to keep wandering attacking and looting, beyond grinding levels. If you have a system that doesn't use quests that has immersion and staying power offer it. That would be what some call "Constructive Criticism".
The movies were... good.
I doubt there is a way to provide a singular visual interpretation of Tolkein's work that could compare to the beauty of the original work. The evocative power of his words far surpass the capabilities of any passively-received medium such as film or even MMORPG graphics.
Yes the movies were good, I liked and owne the movies, My point was even though they were good they did the books no justice. I made this comment in reply to EA being able to make a better game based on the books. I am sorry i should of clarified that in my previous post.
As for the balrog, tolkien does give a vauge description of it. He like most writers did this on purpose in order for the reader to finalize the way the balrog looks in his or her mind thus drawing them into the book.
Page 321 of the LOTR tells us this about the balrog.
it was like a great shadowm, in the middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape maybe, yet bigger; and a power and terror seemed to be in it and to go before it.
This of course is not all it says about the balrog but is the main jist on what one would look like adding your imagination into the mix.
Tolkien kind of half describes certain things in the books, We finish the descriptions in our minds thus the attraction of the books. In a round about way they play out in our minds as we read thus drawing us further into the books and the world that he wrote about.
This to me is the appeal of LOTR, and IMO the reason why so many people love it and are so critical of anything be it a movie, MMORPG that is based on the movie. We all have a certain personal view of what Middle earth would look like and the beings that inhabit it. So Turbine is faced with a daunting task of pleaseing millions of fans in completeing this game to a satisfy them. For it is us, be the long time fans or new fans of the movies who will play this game. I understand that this game will never be able to do complete justice to the books, There is no way any movie or game could. But the dev team are trying too to the best of there abilities. What I have seen of the game so far and read about it in the recent info releases I am happy with there work.
For the record Grindalyx, I just wanted to make sure you understood I was agreeing with you completely. Thanks for the direct quote on the balrog.
You explained exactly what I meant re: descriptions and movie interp differing from both game and personal mental images.
I'm still trying to figure out where the OP got EA into this at all.
/scratchhead
/shrug
Who knows.
[OT: considering the general trend of EA re-releasing the same game each year with a new box and title graphic along with their slave-driving employment practices, I'm glad EA has nothing to do with LOTRO]
Yes I know you were agreeing with me, I just wanted to make it clear were i was coming from. I am not sure how anyone could compare EA to turbine or any other MMORPG game maker. Single game player prodducers like EA have no clue what it takes to make a interactive Multi player online game since they are making games for a video game console.
For the record i can get kind of long winded on subjects and come across the wrong ways sometimes even though I don't meen too and I am just wanting to further explain myself. So if i did this with you I am sorry.
The OP of this thread needs to read the latest article on the arda post and look watch the videos from pax and read the o gaming interview wit floon beatle. This game hasn't even gotten to the point that it can be called a game yet. The demo's they are using are in there owne words outdated to what the current version of the game they are pre alpha testing, they might be in alpha testing now i am not sure but to say EA could do a better job, this guy is smoking some good stuff he should share it with the rest of us
.
I read every scrap of info on this game that I can. I have not agreed with everything that they are doing but hey I not the one being payed to develope this game. I am impressed with how much the energy the devs put into following the lore of the books. The graphics will just get better as we get closer to release and they start nailing down the system requirements.
I'm not sure either where the OP got the idea that EA has anything to do with LOTRO. Now if he's saying that EA SHOULD step in and, um 'save' the game.....
No way, not ever. Over the years I've come to equate EA with Typhoid Mary. Damn near everything they touch turns to crapola.
As for the graphics, have any of you seen the new screenies of the Old Forest? Beee-uteee-full. Not to mention the 'Halloween themed' screens over on the official site. Those spirit thingies on the Fornost Field, awesome
The visualizations Turbine are using are all they're own. They bought rights from the Tolkien Estate, and are basing things off of the books, NOT the movies. Which is the best way to go, IMHO. Sure the Art Director for the movies did a brilliant job. But I'd rather know that the game development was influenced by the books and not the movies.
I still do a little forlorn shake of my head when ever I read of someone equating all of their knowledge of Middle Earth with what was portrayed in the movies. Sad I tell ya. But then, I grew up with the books. So I guess I have a different POV.
"First you wanna kill me, now you wanna kiss me...Blow."--Ash, "Army of Darkness"
"First you wanna kill me, now you wanna kiss me...Blow."--Ash, "Army of Darkness"
Anyways, EA isn't putting out LOTR:O... Its Turbine Games... DURRR... get your info straight!
DnD is coming out before LOTR:O simply becaus the techs workin on LOTRO want it to be a better game than DnD O.
Also, some people wont play DnD becasue there will only be 10 lvls...with 4 sub lvls inbetween. that is the lowest lvl in any fantasy MMORPG i have ever seen....
We're well aware of who is developing LOTRO. It's just a bit of specualtion here on how some wayward programmers that are a bit respected can be picked up.
Also, I don't think the difference of release dates has anything to do with 'quality'. Ever hear of 'departments'? Different groups of artist's, programmers, etc for different games.
"First you wanna kill me, now you wanna kiss me...Blow."--Ash, "Army of Darkness"
EA is the anti-christ of gaming.
EA Challenge Everything.........Err.........Own Everything!