MEO: Chaining Yourself to the Lore

[Malathor]

Just had to bring this up:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/446/446583p1.html?fromint=1

Middle-Earth Online drops you smack-dab in the middle of the Third Age. Timeline wise, The Fellowship has just escaped Moria and is continuing their journey toward Mordor. Though players will never come face-to-face with any members of The Fellowship, rumors of the heroes' actions will filter into the game world through stories relayed by famous NPCs. For instance, exploring The Shire would never turn up a personal meeting with Frodo, Sam, Merry or Pippin, but Farmer Maggot might relay a story of chasing a certain group of mischievous hobbits off his land. Similarly, though you could explore Rivendell for days and never find Legolas Greenleaf, Elrond might speak with you if you could gain an audience with him.

Did SWG vs. KOTOR teach them nothing about chaining your game to a lore that everyone knows in detail, and that your players can't interact with meaningfully or change in any way? Why couldn't this be set in the second age, or anytime at all except in the very middle of the time period covered by the books? What is the point of developing the storyline when everyone knows every detail of the story? What happens a couple of years down the line, will Frodo and Sam be climbing up Mt. Doom forever? This makes zero sense for a MMORPG.

[TrodKnee]

It may make zero sense, but it will make lots of cents.

[Mark Asher]

I'm sure they considered setting it in an alternate time period, but don't you think most players will want to play during the time the books take place in?

It will be odd and perhaps a bit frustrating to hear of the Fellowship but never actually see them in the game.

[Menzo]

Perhaps you instead should unchain yourself from what you assume our game to be about. We are not relegated to a note-by-note retelling of the books. Our license gives us the ability to flesh out areas that are only very briefly touched on in the novels, or even areas/people/things that are only referenced in footnotes.

For example, do you know what happened in Hobbiton after Frodo and Sam left on the Ring Quest? If you play MEO you'll learn.

[Malathor]

For example, do you know what happened in Hobbiton after Frodo and Sam left on the Ring Quest? If you play MEO you'll learn.

The Scouring of the Shire provides quite a lot of detail on this. As players, I take it that we won't be able to change any of it, no? Or are you going to let the players off Lotho?

[Ergo]

This will be a challenging thing to pull off--didn't the three novels occur over a time period of about thirteen months?

[Menzo]

For example, do you know what happened in Hobbiton after Frodo and Sam left on the Ring Quest? If you play MEO you'll learn.

The Scouring of the Shire provides quite a lot of detail on this. As players, I take it that we won't be able to change any of it, no? Or are you going to let the players off Lotho?

Ok, so you know that AFTER Saruman was overthrown at some point he made his way to Hobbiton and set up camp. That's pretty much it. No details and absolutely nothing about what happened first or why he decided that Hobbiton was the place to hang out.

There are a lot of people who consider themselves experts after reading The Lord of the Rings a few times. There are still others who think that they are practically elders if they've read some of Tolkien's lesser-known works, but we have people working for us who are quite literally Tolkien scholars. These people have studied The Lord of the Rings academically for more than ten years. We're not just winging it over here.

[Mark Asher]

These people have studied The Lord of the Rings academically for more than ten years.

I bet they're fluent in Klingon too!

[TheWombat]

Adam has a point. Back in the days of pen and paper Middle Earth RPGs, when Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) had the license for Tolkien roleplaying games, they created a wealth of material set in and around the time of the Fellowship, as well I think as some from earlier periods. There was a ton of stuff that was hinted at, alluded to, or briefly mentioned in the books (trilogy and others) but which was never fleshed out. ICE fleshed it out and while it's obviously a different experience (pen and paper RPGing versus MMORPGing) players of those modules didn't get ticked that they couldn't see Frodo or what not.

OTOH, temporal sanity will take a hit even if, as Adam says (and I have no reason to doubt him) they have a whole Shire-ful of fleshed out stuff that's not part of the main quest. As has been noted, after a couple of years of life the game will seem even more like a treadmill than EQ becauase everyone playing will know that the whole journey from Hobbiton to Mt. Doom and back again was what, 13 months or something? Whether that will be a problem is doubtful, however; given the Groundhog Day nature of MMORPGs, no one will care probably.

[Malathor]

Ok, so you know that AFTER Saruman was overthrown at some point he made his way to Hobbiton and set up camp. That's pretty much it. No details and absolutely nothing about what happened first or why he decided that Hobbiton was the place to hang out.

Ummm...no. Totally false. It's been 20 odd years since I've read through the book, but even still I know this is way off base. To begin with, start from the line "It all began with Pimple" from the Scouring chapter, and go through the next couple pages.

Back in the days of pen and paper Middle Earth RPGs, when Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) had the license for Tolkien roleplaying games, they created a wealth of material set in and around the time of the Fellowship, as well I think as some from earlier periods.

Indeed, they did come out with a lot of 3rd age material IIRC. However, how many GMs would set their campaigns in the middle of the events of the book itself, without allowing the players to be able to impact or change anything that occurs within it? PnP RPGs are a different breed from MMORPGs, they don't have the constraint of making sure that what happens in the book happens in the game as well.

[TheWombat]

Agreed, I noted the differences between the genres. But I'm pretty sure a lot of GMs set up games with no interaction with major plot events or persons--more room for individuals, etc. But I agree it's an issue. Given the nature of MMOs, though, I don't think it'll be crucial. Why? MMO'ers are used to nothing they do affecting anything but their own stats....

[Mark Asher]

OTOH, temporal sanity will take a hit even if, as Adam says (and I have no reason to doubt him) they have a whole Shire-ful of fleshed out stuff that's not part of the main quest. As has been noted, after a couple of years of life the game will seem even more like a treadmill than EQ becauase everyone playing will know that the whole journey from Hobbiton to Mt. Doom and back again was what, 13 months or something? Whether that will be a problem is doubtful, however; given the Groundhog Day nature of MMORPGs, no one will care probably.

Turbine is making the game so if it's at all like their previous products, they will have good world editing tools at their disposal. It's possible they can create new story arcs, change the landscape, etc.

[Rollory]

Perhaps you instead should unchain yourself from what you assume our game to be about. We are not relegated to a note-by-note retelling of the books. Our license gives us the ability to flesh out areas that are only very briefly touched on in the novels, or even areas/people/things that are only referenced in footnotes.

For example, do you know what happened in Hobbiton after Frodo and Sam left on the Ring Quest? If you play MEO you'll learn.

Ok, as a thought experiment, let's look at what exactly is going on in Middle-Earth at the time that is "interesting".

The Shire. Covered adequately by other posters; the whole Lotho story. Nothing for players to do here; move along.

The Lonely Mountain. Covered in an Appendix; the dwarf-king (Thorin Stonehelm I believe) rejects overtures by an emissary of Sauron, and later dies fighting at the gates of Erebor, as does the king of Dale, when Sauron sends his armies off everywhere. Room for players to put their own spin on events? Not hardly.

Lorien/Mirkwood/Dol Guldur. Galadriel, Celeborn, &co join forces with Thranduil and take out Dol Guldur. Some scope for players in actually getting there, but the ultimate outcome of events, even in just this campaign, is fixed. Players affecting their world? Fuhgeddaboutit.

Moria. So the Fellowship has just left. Maybe players catch a glimpse of Gandalf's fight with the Balrog. Then what? The dwarves aren't coming back here anytime soon. Players can farm orc loot here for a while, but WTF is the point in that? What is there to do here that can't be done in EQ with exactly the same significance and effect on the gameworld?

The Iron Hills and Grey Mountains up north. Maybe a few dragons here, still. Say, a half-dozen missions at most to prevent them being used by Sauron. Then what?

The Grey Havens. Cirdan's here. Nothing's going to happen that won't feel contrived and forced.

The wilds of Arnor. Adventures with Dunedain could happen. But when the Grey Company rides south, well, there were good reasons for that: the action was elsewhere. Players could be hired to take their place and defend against crap like trolls or what few orcs there are in the region, but that's exactly the wrong kind of thing to ask a player to do: "Hey, the action's over there, so you need to go exactly the opposite direction" Yeah, that'll go over well.

Forochel. I could imagine players going looking for Arvedui's Palantir (one of the most powerful of the Seven). And maybe kill some wolves. Aside from that, not much going on here.

What other locations are there? Rohan, Isengard, Entwood, Ithilien, Gondor, the havens of Umbar ... all of this is where the story is taking place. You can't go to those places and _do_ things without tripping over the requirements of the storyline, and forcing players to conform to an absolute plotline that they would otherwise be doing things to shake up.

In other words, picking that particular time period is indeed the worst possible, most restrictive, poorest gameplay experience you could possibly have selected out of the entire breadth of history of Middle-Earth.

This is a STUPID IDEA. And it's going to make for a bad game.

Maybe this post belongs on waterthread.org. Anyway, while I'm lecturing:

Don't ever, ever, ever say "We developers have studied this more than you fans and know more about it than you do". Because you are GUARANTEED to be wrong.

[Dave Long]

So the game will be over within 13 months then? Like the time it took Frodo and Sam to get from Hobbiton to Mount Doom and throw in the Ring?

--Dave

[Doug Erickson]

As someone said, why didn't they go for the Second Age?

BTW, was it Morgoth that was slain at the end of the Second Age, or Sauron Part One, or both? My ME history is a bit rusty.

[Doug Erickson]

For example, do you know what happened in Hobbiton after Frodo and Sam left on the Ring Quest? If you play MEO you'll learn.

Several hobbits got together, levelled up by fighting rats until they could dual-class ranger/paladin, and then camped a local Balrog for Boots of Smiting +10?

[Menzo]

Edit: nevermind. It's clear that there are some fans so clouded by their own knowledge that they think Middle-earth belongs to them.

Play the game or don't play the game, it's your choice. I only expect you to actually look at what we're really offering and make an informed decision based on reality, not what you think you know.

Edit2: We haven't given a single detail about the actual storyling about the game, so continue to diss us based on zero knowledge if you'd like. What you are not understanding, though, is that we can invent new fiction in Middle-earth. Our license gives us the ability to create new stories that are consistent with the works and that help round out areas of the books that were only briefly discussed or only alluded to. Though you think you know everything about Middle-earth, you can't, because we're creating new content that you can not possibly know because you haven't seen it yet.

[Rollory]

As someone said, why didn't they go for the Second Age?

BTW, was it Morgoth that was slain at the end of the Second Age, or Sauron Part One, or both? My ME history is a bit rusty.

Morgoth was slain at the end of the First Age. The Second Age was the age of Numenor; all the "better" humans were off living on their island-continent. Sauron had a somewhat free hand in Middle Earth, although Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor (elves) opposed him for a while, and then the Numenoreans took an interest in Middle Earth again and made him submit to sheer force. The Second Age ends when Sauron corrupts Numenor and causes it to sink beneath the waves, with only Elendil, Isildur, and their people escaping to found Gondor and Arnor.

There's TONS of scope in the Second Age for anything you care to do. There's room for kingdoms to rise and fall, there's Gil-Galad, the last of the great elven-kings, there's Sauron but in a somewhat beatable and mortal form, there's all sorts of wild human tribes living in fear of the Shadow ... there's anything and everything. The Five Wizards also show up for the first time in the Second Age. It's the plain-as-day obvious choice for any kind of game that can't be restricted to one specific narrow plotline.

Edit: The Rings of Power show up for the first time in the Second Age. By the end of the Third Age, they're all either destroyed or unattainable. What player wouldn't want a Ring of Power? What griefer wouldn't _want_ to become a Nazgul by taking one of the Nine? What crafter wouldn't _want_ to be a dwarf and get one of the Seven? What achiever wouldn't want a Ring for its own sake? This is about as perfect a player reward/ultimate goal as you can imagine in an MMOG. Enough Rings for a playerbase of a few thousand per server, not so rare that they're completely unimaginably unattainable but rare enough to be real prizes. And they make for great in-game politics! You want a Ring? You've got to get it away from the current owner somehow. The histories of the Rings is probably the single biggest undetailed area of Middle-Earth.

Great god in heaven, just what are the designers _thinking_ to pass on opportunities like this?

[Lunch of Kong]

... we're creating new content

And some new songs too, I hope. Tolkien might have done a good job translating Beowulf, but he wasn't much of a songwriter.

[Doug Erickson]

Our license gives us the ability to create new stories that are consistent with the works and that help round out areas of the books that were only briefly discussed or only alluded to. Though you think you know everything about Middle-earth, you can't, because we're creating new content that you can not possibly know because you haven't seen it yet.

Oh man. Cue Desslock, and this thread dies a horrible, fiery death.

[Dr Fear]

So the game will be over within 13 months then? Like the time it took Frodo and Sam to get from Hobbiton to Mount Doom and throw in the Ring?

GAH! SPOILERS!!!

[Malathor]

Not sure where this 13 month figure came from. The article stated that the game begins with the fellowship having just escaped from Moria. Glancing at my ancient copy of ROTK, Gandalf falls in the abyss and the fellowship escapes Moria on Jan 15, 3019; the ring is destroyed on March 25, 3019. Two and a half months to play with.

I guess the game will be running on bullet time.

[Rollory]

We haven't given a single detail about the actual storyling about the game

So is the IGN article wrong?

Until strong evidence to the contrary, I'll go with the premise that it's right, which means that we _do_ know the basic storyline already.

What you are not understanding, though, is that we can invent new fiction in Middle-earth. Our license gives us the ability to create new stories that are consistent with the works and that help round out areas of the books that were only briefly discussed or only alluded to. Though you think you know everything about Middle-earth, you can't, because we're creating new content that you can not possibly know because you haven't seen it yet.

In other words, you're a bunch of hack writers making fanfic.

Fanfic is not a problem when it doesn't intrude on quality writing. Fanfic set in great empty voids of plot or background can do great things. By picking the time you have, however, you have also picked the places that everyone is going to want to be, and thus also guaranteed that your fanfic _will_ intrude. And that will cause trouble; you're lying to yourself if you claim otherwise.

(I've ignored the possibility that you mean to rewrite events from the books so they happen differently - that isn't even worth discussing)

It sounds like what you're planning on is SWG in Middle-Earth. Fine; 200K people did indeed go for space-EQ because it was labeled "Star Wars", you can probably do something similar. But don't expect anybody to tell you that you made a good game.

[John Reynolds]

To show my geekiness I'm going to clear up a few mistakes in this thread.

1) the Istari, the wizards, arrive in Middle-earth in the Third Age, roughly the year 1050. Scary thing is that I didn't have to look that up.

2) The original dark lord Morgoth, to whom Sauron was but a captain, was not slain at the end of the First Age. He was defeated and imprisoned by the Valar.

3) I have little faith in Turbine, though I certainly hope they prove me wrong. Hell, their PR reps at E3 kept mispronouncing Tolkien's name, and while that is hardly a crime against humanity it isn't reassuring that they do so all the while insisting on the expertise that's being brought to MEO.

Edit: My personal choice chronologically would be early Third Age. Since the initial release of the game limits players mostly to Eriador, why not fight the Witch-King of Angmar, explore the ruins of Moria (get high enough level to challenge the Balrog, instead of getting to 'hear' about its fight with Gandalf), deal with the wild men to the south, interact with the politics among the divided realms of the Dunedain, etc.? Either the above or the backdrop of the First Age's almost constant war against Morgoth.

[Menzo]

Proof that Comic Book Guy doesn't hold a candle to Tolkien fanatics.

[John Reynolds]

Proof that Comic Book Guy doesn't hold a candle to Tolkien fanatics.

This thread or just my post? I didn't write that you guys have locked yourselves into making a bad game. . .I just would've chosen a different time period. Personally as a player I wouldn't mind seeing AC2's episodes taken further, so that once a timeline is completed the server is 'reset'. Using my Angmar idea, this would allow gamers to possibly play a pivotal role in overthrowing the Witch-king, and the reset (once a year?) could allow turning points in the episodes to be played through again by new players, perhaps differently by old players. I would even flush the characters, but allow players who had reached higher levels to start new characters after the reset at say 10-20th level instead of at 1.

I mean, as it is you now have around three months until Sauron is overthrown and King Elessar cleans up Eriador and surrounding regions. Hardcore gamers are going to spend more real hours playing your game than Tolkien's story will allow for. Unless of course this is planned for and players get to participate in the 'reborn' kingdom. Though I doubt this is planned since running around with an elven character in the Fourth Age would be a tad incongruent.

[TheWombat]

The level of invective is rather amusing. Folks, this is an MMORPG. It might be a great one. It might be abysmal. It might be mediocre or just ok. Can't say without playing it really. But, unless they're doing something radical with the genre, it's still going to be an MMORPG.

How many of those allow players to actually change anything whatsoever? Few. How many actually allow meaningful player-directed change? Um, can't think of one off hand. Without going into whether this state of affairs is good or ill, it seems that it doesn't matter much what time period they set this game in. It's quality will not be determined by its chronology, because it's all (to use a phrase again) Groundhog Day. Without teleology and an end-state, MMORPGs all consist of repetition and no one can really do something that changes the world because everyone has to have a shot at doing everything, again and again.

So best wishes to Turbine and Sierra, and let's hope it's a fun MMORPG. Until someone tells me it's going to severely and radically change the MMORPG paradigm, though, I'm not even going to consider getting worked up about its time setting. It simply doesn't matter given the dynamics of these sorts of games.

Now, if it was a solo game, like KOTOR, yeah, it'd matter. And don't say SWG is an example of setting hurting a game. Whatever the problems with that game--and they are legion, perhaps--they run far deeper and are more complex than any simple move to KOTOR's time frame could solve.

[Miramon]

You know, in just about every story-based MMORPG out there, players do the same quests over and over, and the same "story" events occur and recur for at least a month, oftentimes a quarter or even longer. There is obviously no need for one-to-one correspondence with real time in a game, any more than you must read a book that covers a period of a year in a year of real time.

Feel free to read Ulysses in a day, though....

[Menzo]

I mean, as it is you now have around three months until Sauron is overthrown and King Elessar cleans up Eriador and surrounding regions. Hardcore gamers are going to spend more real hours playing your game than Tolkien's story will allow for. Unless of course this is planned for and players get to participate in the 'reborn' kingdom. Though I doubt this is planned since running around with an elven character in the Fourth Age would be a tad incongruent.

I will report this immediately to our game designers since I'm sure they didn't think this through.

Sorry to be a minor jackass about it, but your level of certainty about your knowledge of our game and our plans suggests that you know more about Middle-Earth Online than we do.

[Mark Asher]

You know, in just about every story-based MMORPG out there, players do the same quests over and over, and the same "story" events occur and recur for at least a month, oftentimes a quarter or even longer. There is obviously no need for one-to-one correspondence with real time in a game, any more than you must read a book that covers a period of a year in a year of real time.

Feel free to read Ulysses in a day, though....

Yeah, but I think it's a valid issue if you're using a well-known fictional work and your game is frozen in time by that fictional work. The players will be constantly reminded that the game is frozen in time and that the plot isn't being advanced or concluded. Even though in a game like DAoC time doesn't really advance, there isn't much in the game to remind you of that. It's easy enough to imagine yourself in the middle of a fantasy version of a hundred years war between three rival realms.