Lord of the Rings Online

Originally posted by solareus

www.fileplanet.com/129307/120000/fileinfo/Middle-Earth-Online-Trailer  <--- MEO , I for one am glad only some of the graphic elements carried over into LotRO cause that GAME PLAY looked horrible .

Ive followed Middle Earth / LOTR Online since the beginning.

Sierra originally owned the rights to Middle Earth Online. Development started in 1999.

Then Vivendi stepped in around 2003 and bought the game. The work that Sierra had done was scrapped. I believe they were only going to publish it and use Turbine to develop the game. There was some internal fighting over the direction of the game and Vivendi ended up selling its controlling rights to Turbine in 2005.

Turbine changed the name to LOTR and scrapped the development in 2005 and started over.

And yes the game was far different then. It was a sandbox MMO and had good vs evil factions. It was a virtual world we could live in.

Im saddened by turbine's dumbed down version. I waited 8 years for this game to get made and it turned into another wow clone

Originally posted by admriker4

From looking at your post history , I can say this

The history of MEO in a nutshell

November 1995 - December 1997 : Three Rings  by Daniel James

December 1997 - September 1999 : Middle Earth Online  by Sierra

September 1999 - September 2002 : Middle Earth Online by VU ( Vivendi)

September 2002 - March 2005 : Middle Earth Online by Turbine/VU

March 2005 - Now : Lord of The Rings Online by Turbine

As you can see several developers had the license and dropped it as impossible due to lore restrictions.. During the September 1999 - September 2002 rumor has it that 3 or 4 developers were hired and dismissed by Vivendi before Turbine took over the reins in September 2002. Then Vivendi canceled it. But for Turbine the game and the license would have never seen the light of day. The sandbox design was a sucky idea anyway. SWG meets Middle Earth...umm no thanks.

Originally posted by Jackdog

The history of MEO in a nutshell

November 1995 - December 1997 : Three Rings  by Daniel James

December 1997 - September 1999 : Middle Earth Online  by Sierra

September 1999 - September 2002 : Middle Earth Online by VU ( Vivendi)

September 2002 - March 2005 : Middle Earth Online by Turbine/VU

March 2005 - Now : Lord of The Rings Online by Turbine

As you can see several developers had the license and dropped it as impossible due to lore restrictions.. During the September 1999 - September 2002 rumor has it that 3 or 4 developers were hired and dismissed by Vivendi before Turbine took over the reins in September 2002. Then Vivendi canceled it. But for Turbine the game and the license would have never seen the light of day. The sandbox design was a sucky idea anyway. SWG meets Middle Earth...umm no thanks.

 

Actually, having had the pleasure of meeting the griefer population since UO, I can't but thank Turbine for making the most griefer unfriendly MMO out there. Yeah, I can be a carebear, but when I finally were offered a chance to totally opt out, I did and subbed LotRO. And if anything, the choice has been not a bane but a boon to the community in general, giving us one of the most mature communities in which to spend our time in carebearland :P

The level of handicraft they put into world so far has been a show of really knowing the books and loving the IP with passion - Birds nest in the stonetrolls glade anyone? And lots of similar minute details you just notice on your wanderings.

Several people on several threads have already pointed the reason out for playing evil not being feasible in ME context, and I have a strong hunch that playing Orc - as in the lore - wouldn't keep our wannabe Raistlins happy. At least I could cop out after running two weeks straight between troop camps in Udun and Morgai, having a forced game mechanic to attack any other evil players as soon the bosses are nowhere to be seen, getting instakilled by said bosses if I tried to escape... That would be the lore based evil side they have been whining for even before launch ;)

The only sad thing for me in scrapping the original MeO was the underlying mechanics which would have been Rolemaster based. All in all, I do feel that we got better game now it's out.

Originally posted by Zorvan

 

Originally posted by CaedesAstrum

Originally posted by elondor

I'm just saying, there's no real way to make an evil character unless you actually played Orcs and had a realm vs realm situation, which in this case is the freeps vs creeps, and I think both are pointless but that's just me, I can't stand MMO pvp because it can not and never will be balanced unless everyone is the same., which they are not.

you cant stand pvp because you actually care about balance, true fans of pvp could care less, we love a challenge, and the thrill of competition with other human players, not the mundane grind against terrible ai, if there is imbalance in a pvp situation you find a way to overcome that imbalance, its a huge part of the fun

Here's my view on PvP in most mmorpgs regarding balance, and it is one of the reasons I tend to not like PvP. Balance is impossible, which by itself is controllable in the right setting (grouping for realm vs.realm for example ). However, PvPers themselves make balance a nightmare issue if the game is also intended to have PvE. Why? Because you have people who choose to be a medic or preist ( which should not be really suited for comparable solo combat ability, compared to a soldier/warrior for example ) but demand that they have the same ability to PvP effectively against combat type characters.

 

If game devs would put their foot down and say "Hey, you can do massive damage in PvP as a soldier/warrior one on one, but if you are a priest/medic, you will need to be in a team setting, as medics/proests are "support" professions".

Everyone thinks their character should be a damage dealer, and that support classes should have the same ability as combat classes. I see this in the Anarchy Online all the time. Doctors, beurocrats, and other "support classes" whining, bitching, and groaning because they can't compete in PvP until the devs end up making them PvP adequate. The constant balancing not only afects PvP, but it also affects PvE. Balancing and nerfing/buffing  classes constantly gets to the point where everyone ends up so powerful in order to compete in PvP, that PvE becomes so easy it's a joke.

The only way PvP can be done right in an mmorpg is to either have only PvP, or make it clear that the classes will have to compete in PvP in the manner in which they were designed for the PvE game.  If you wanna play a priest, you should have to team in PvP. If you want to play a combatant, you should be able to handle one on one PvP. Because if their is PvE, the greater percentage of players ( PvE players always outnumber PvP players in a game which has both ) end up getting screwed because every buff/nerf that happens to balance PvP affects the PvErs game as well. So people who want nothing at all to do with PvP get their characters changed to fit the PvPers demands, which is not fair.

There needs to be a purely PvP oriented game, with different classes forced to play their classes the way they were meant to be played, instead of everyone demanding to be equal to everyone else. A healing class should not be equal against a combat class. A soldier should be able to rip through a support class with no problem in a one on one battle. Two or three support classes teamed together should be able to tear up one soldier by himself.

So when players can get over their egos and start playing a game the way it's meant to be played, there will no longer be balancing issues. A big problem is that many PvPers come in with a Counterstrike/FPS mindset instead of an RPG mindset.

Anyway, a little rambly, but hopefully you guys get the point I'm trying to make.

/agree 100%. Very well said.

I've said for a while that many players come to MMORPGs with a console gamer mindset - that is.. they expect to get to end game and "win" the MMO in a short time; and I say that in a general/PvE context. I think that sits well as a counterpart to your take on PvP'ers having the FPS mindset.

 But isn't that so often the mindset of people - expecting others to accomodate their whims/decisions, no matter how unreasonable or irrational they might be under objective scrutiny. They want their cake and eat it, too.

"I rolled a healer so I would be more popular for PvE parties, but now I can't be a good DPS'er. I don't have enough offensive power and my Def sucks against most melee/range attacks, so I can't  "pwn noobs" in PvP. Since that doesn't suit my personal wants in the game, I'm calling it an obvious design flaw that should have been fixed during beta. So, Developers... I demand you fix this glaring, game-breaking flaw. Give healers more DPS and Def for PvP, or I'm canceling my account and the game will die!"

(sad thing is, that could almost be a direct copy-and-paste from some such posts I've read)

The common-sense answer (to me) would be "Not going to "fix" anything, as nothing here is broken. Healers do exactly what they're designed to do - keep others alive. You want to DPS... roll a DPS class. That's why they're there."

There's a saying that I believe suits that well: "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine". Or in this case, "A poor class choice on  your part..." In other words: A player wanting to DPS after rolling a non-DPS class is not the devs' problem.

But so often people don't want that. They want to be everything in every situation.

Interestingly enough, Warhammer is going to try to do that. There will be no back-line healers. Every single character, regardless of class, will be a front-line combatant. We'll see how that  pans out, since as the saying goes "everything works on paper".

Originally posted by Sovrath

I think it's also important to note that no matter what the early devs of MEO "said" it would have, it doesn't mean they would have stuck with it, been successful with their concepts, or design, etc.

One really can't say that a game would have been great if that game never came to being.

So people can say that MEO would have been the best thing since sliced bread but who knows what it would have turned out to be.

"Everything works on paper" :)

Yeah, the way MEO would have been sounds awesome were released with all those ideals intact (of course, were it released at all :-p) - the open/sandbox nature of it, etc. However, I don't know... seems alot of games are going for the more linear approach - the "fighting and questing your way through" as someone well put it earlier.

Reading the changes from MEO to the LoTRO we have now, it almost sounds like a very "SWG NGE" type thing happened to it. A much more open game with a more "sandbox" playstyle being stripped down to a more linear one with fewer options. Only for MEO/LoTRO it all happened before the game was released and, so, none of the public outrage took place. I think if they'd released MEO and then changed it to what LoTRO is now post-release, you'd have seen very NGE type reactions. At least that's my thinking and it's all hypothetical at best. We'll never know.

Originally posted by WSIMike

 

Originally posted by Sovrath

I think it's also important to note that no matter what the early devs of MEO "said" it would have, it doesn't mean they would have stuck with it, been successful with their concepts, or design, etc.

One really can't say that a game would have been great if that game never came to being.

So people can say that MEO would have been the best thing since sliced bread but who knows what it would have turned out to be.

 

"Everything works on paper" :)

Yeah, the way MEO would have been sounds awesome were released with all those ideals intact (of course, were it released at all :-p) - the open/sandbox nature of it, etc. However, I don't know... seems alot of games are going for the more linear approach - the "fighting and questing your way through" as someone well put it earlier.

Reading the changes from MEO to the LoTRO we have now, it almost sounds like a very "SWG NGE" type thing happened to it. A much more open game with a more "sandbox" playstyle being stripped down to a more linear one with fewer options. Only for MEO/LoTRO it all happened before the game was released and, so, none of the public outrage took place. I think if they'd released MEO and then changed it to what LoTRO is now post-release, you'd have seen very NGE type reactions. At least that's my thinking and it's all hypothetical at best. We'll never know.

 

Oh, there was outrage alright. The forums the day after the name change was full of speculation, and then once we realized what had happened we lost a great deal many veterans. Most of the people playing LotRO now never heard of MEO, and most of those that did never touched LotRO, or never played it long.