My Beta Report (spoilers)Follow

I think your attention to lore details is remarkable. It is a shame that you weren't employed by Turbine during development. At this late stage of beta testing, it doesn't seem realistic that they would be making changes in anything but serious bugs while optimizing code for better performance.

Many people read Lord of the Rings, but I would guess far fewer were able to read The Silmarillion or other works by Tolkien characterized by that type of dry historical prose. This implies that few people would notice small departures from Tolkien's lore and even if they were noticed, would probably be overlooked as a nuance and not a 'game breaker' as you imply.

I am not privy to the particulars of Turbines agreement with the Tolkien Enterprises, but common sense would tell me that small deviations, either intentional or not, must have been expected to enhance game play. Tolkien could not have created the world of Middle Earth with later game development in mind. Surely he would have been thrilled to see his world recreated for more people to enjoy despite small flaws, deviations, mistakes and omissions.

I personally hope Turbine is concentrating on making this game FUN overall while preserving as much of Middle Earth as possible. If Turbine had instead chosen to make a game as unplayable and inaccessible as The Silmarillion, no one would buy it however closely it mirrors Tolkien's lore.

The problem is, when I was Beta Testing in August/September they had more than enough time to correct some of these Lore Errors.

The majority of them are actual typographical errors which can be changed in one stupid patch. Even Quests such as Amdir's transformation can be easily rectified.

The major ones (such as Tom Bombadil's house) are ones which would require an update of the terrain, but this has been done many times by other companies (look at how Blizzard had to rush to "fix" darnassus' entire art scheme), and it would require time but they need to pay attention to this to sell it to the audience.

If there were just 2-3 errors in lore, or minor inconsistancies to make the story flow (such as the movies), that's one thing. But when you have a 22 page long letter of quotations where Turbine screwed up every single step of the way, that goes above and beyond regular "mishaps" and enters a real question of "why don't they just make up their own ****ing game-- because it has no semblance to tolkien?".


Now, my post to their messageboards was far more polite to them than the letter I sent to S.Z.C., and to be simply banned for quoting books like I was expected to do! That just really shows the quality of Turbine's work. I do want to clarify something -- I only read the books once before I joined. It was the fact that I was finding really screwed up things (like Rolo Maggot -- arsonist and murderer) that caused me to scour the indexes and books for quotations. The ***** ups may seem minor, but throughout the whole gaming experience you're asking yourself "Wtf is up with this?" if you have even read the books once.


As for overall gameplay I will say these things:

1. Questing -- fun, but repetetive. "Kill 25 of this monster" complete that quest "Kill 100 more!" complete that quest "Now let's see you kill 300!"
Fun -- kinda. I made it my business to complete every quest prior to my level before going on, why? I was testing the quests. I also have some notes on the various quests but they might not be valid anymore.

2. The titles -- most were absolutely lame. I did go after each one to just get them and see if they worked. I cannot see anyone wanting to do what I did for fun. Some of the titles are "ok." and well, you'll go ahead and get one or two just to get one or two so you can look cool with a long name.

3. Combat system -- the neuances of the system were constantly changing, they couldn't seem to find a solid system they really liked when I was testing. I thought a variety of their ideas were good. Such as auto acquire on enemies already attacking you (if you killed an enemy while still loading a bow, your new shot would automatically hit the second enemy, which cut down on time wasted by acquiring and firing again). That came and went and came back again. I have no idea if it's going to be in the final product.

4. They went Pro-Raid. They bragged about being right for casual non raiding gamers. But all of the high end gear, high end recipies, high end materials used in recipies will only be found in Raid Areas.

End game = World of Warcraft and Everquest.

It is a big drawback to the entire game.

5. They made the Minstrels and the Lore Masters (Wizards) magic intensive. You will NOT be playing a game that feels ANYTHING like LoTRO. If you want that I suggest I.C.E.'s old rpg (or buy Decipher's if you really want to support that "pro-christain" anti-other religions bigoted company).

When I say magic intensive, I mean magic intensive.


Now I've seen a lot of successful different published RPGs out there, and they COULD have used any one of those method for varying degrees of RPG goodness, but they went the Nuker/Healer/Tank holy trinity route of World of Warcraft. It is fun, a lot of fun, but only if you lobotomize yourself so you never ask the question "Didn't I just buy a LotR game? I thought I was supposed to be playing LotR."

This is going to be a bit rude, but I've read countless lore complaints and I get tired of seeing these zealots making illogical arguements and shooting themselves in the foot.



LOTRO is a medium for the events of LOTR. Sacrifices must be made. Games HAVE to work differently than stories or movies. It is impossible to completely reconcile any two different forms of medium completely. It also frustrates me how most of these Tolkien fans fail to udnerstand how the books themselves are a medium for the events in LOTR. I read a lore psot on teh official boards about someone complaining how quickly they get travel to places. They wanted a journey from the shire to the lands of the elves to take real life weeks like it was describe in the books. I rolled my eyes. Tolkien didn't make it take weeks, he wrote that it took weeks, but it didn't take you weeks to read it. Because if Tolkien described in actual time the week long journey you'd be bored to death in teh books. He converted it into a story in which he can freely skip time to make the book mroe interesting. Likewise a game can freely skip time to make it more interesting.

The game takes "short cuts" in the same way the books take "short cuts."

LOTRO is an MMORPG, not an MMORP. It's an udnerstandble mistake to make because the genre is so poorly named, but most RPGs are not really role-playing games in the way Oblivion, DnD, and LARP are. An PRG is a different genre than an RP and most modern MMOS are MMORPGs catering to gamers with some rp on the side, not MMORPs catering to RPers with a game on the side.



I also dislike the hardcore lore fans because they are saying that Turbine should tkae time away from improving the game and focus on the Lore. Time and staff are limited quantities and Turbine can't do both, if they improve the lroe they are going to have to take people away from other projects. This is an exmaple of how LOTR fans are shooting themselves in the foot. I've seen it done in other game, the company works on teh RP and the gmae doesn't improve. The RPers are happy withthe lroe, but realsie the game isn't that great and leave. And everyone loses. Even if the RPers are content you still hrt the game for many other players who end up leaving and you are left with a low popualtion game, a dying MMO.



And the final thing that urks me is how meaningless and unnoticeable msot of teh complaints are. These are thigns no one should rightfulyl care about. These are things no one will notice without explicitely looking for errors in the game.

You made mention of how the gmae lists distances in meters and not feet/yards. Seriously...








If I wasn't actually worried that if Turbine were to give mind to Lore compalints it would substantially hurt the game I wouldn't care less how accurate the game is teh book. However I do think it is somewhat funny how lorist seem to not understand how books manipulate events to make stories more interesting as most of the types of complaints being made about the game could be made about the books in describing "actual" events.

It is a balancing act for sure; no matter what the final product is there will be ires raised on both sides of the issue. Suggestions that are both reasonable and feasible will have the best chance of implementation.

Have fun, love life, and remember... it's just a game =D

Wow ... just wow.

You remind me of comic-book guy.

You say you're not a fanatic and you don't speak Elvish, but your attention to these minute details speaks volumes otherwise.



Without raiding content, the game is over too fast. That's reality. The fact that it offers solo options at every level gives everyone something to do if they don't feel like partying - but like most MMOs, there has to be a social aspect.

You are full of good ideas, but blinded by naivety. They did an excellent job of making the healing and nuking class feel less like the cookie-cutter "Wizard" and "Cleric." Renaming HP to "Morale" was a nice touch.

If you think it's such a bad representation of the LOTR world, please explain how you would have formatted the game? I mean there is a VERY solid reason why almost every MMORPG on the market revolves around the tank + DPS + heals model. It makes sense.

Please propose an alternative, or accept it.



Edited, Feb 19th 2007 3:48pm by Jordster

After thinking a bit more on this.... what is it we want from this game?

To expect to have thousands of characters running around this virtual Middle Earth universe all of whom are of epic importance is simply ridiculous. In fact, the majority of characters in Tolkien's novels were simply "noise" except for a seemingly chosen few. This game might work as single-player (and yes, it has been attempted... multiple times), but as a multi-player the best it can do is vaguely parallel the LOTR universe.

3 million ex-WoW Frodo-clone ring-bearers could rush the gates of Mordor simultaneously. I'm sure Gondor would be thrilled at the sight....

I had to go look this up, since it appears that the major issue is the Nazgul thing...

From Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter 1, "Many Meetings".. where Frodo has just woken up in Rivendell, and Elrond and Gandalf are discussing how long Frodo has been ill...


---
[I assume Gandalf replies to Frodo]
'What would it have done to me?', asked Frodo. "What were the Riders trying to do?"

"They tried to pierce your heart with a Morgul-knife which remains in the wound. If they had succeeded, you would have become like they are, only weaker and under their command. You would have become a wraith under the dominion of the Dark Lord; and he would have tormented you for trying to keep his Ring, if any greater torment were possible than being robbed of it and seeing it on his hand."

---

So, yes, it appears there is some basis for the thought that things like the Nazgul could be created.