Lord of the Rings online - Screenshots

OohhoO · Post by **OohhoO** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:08 pm

Xest wrote:I think you'll struggle to find a casual MMO, that's exactly why I'm playing non-MMO games on the XBox 360 again, so much more casual, play when you want, how you want. The other benefit is that you've always got something different whereas MMOs are fundamentally repetitive in the way they're produced.

Which means MMORPG programmers are programming past a potentially huge client-base...

Post by **Xest** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:42 pm

OohhoO wrote:Which means MMORPG programmers are programming past a potentially huge client-base...

It's because to do any differently is basically impossible - MMOs already require so much content that not many make it to completion, hence why the plethora of MMO cancellations.

If you look at the DAoC post mortem at Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20020 ... or_pfv.htm) you'll see that Mythic relied on an awful lot of 3rd party technologies and anyone that remembers it at release will remember even then that it was lacking a hell of a lot of content (level 30+ dungeons weren't finished in Hib/Alb iirc). Blizzard pulled of WoW because they had such a massive cash mountain from the original Warcraft Trilogy, Starcraft and so on and even then WoW wasn't particularly overflowing with impressive and innovative content - especially as it was about 4 years late also! Back to DAoC, remember how incomplete ToA was at release? They got it out the door but the problems were horrific initially and for a while after, this shows that even when Mythic had 2 years experience under their belt, plenty of cash from 2 years worth of playerbase subscriptions that getting just an expansion out was a tough task.

Even if you buy in your technologies as middleware you still have a massive amount of art to produce, a hell of a lot of quests to write, spells to design, balancing to perform and on and on. It's hard enough to get any game onto the market in the current climate of customer demands for ever increasing amounts of ever more detailed content. To produce therefore, entirely refreshing, innovative, well tested and well balanced content you'd need a team and set of technologies that frankly isn't financially feasible. If LotR doesn't have PvP for example, I'd imagine it's not a fully intended design decision but instead a choice based on the fact that achieving everything they wanted to achieve for the game was impossible, something had to give. WoW had the same issues nearing release also, PvP was a mere afterthought, something they'd decided to add in if they had time, this is why up until around 6months before release iirc there were rumours of no PvP at all in WoW.

Perhaps the ever improving indie game developer movements will have something to show a few years down the road in this area, when cost isn't an issue and development is driven entirely by a whole communities will to produce something amazing these issues tend to dissapear.

Satyn · Post by **Satyn** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 11:12 pm

OohhoO wrote:I disagree.

I know a lot of people who're looking for a MMORPG with good PvE, crafting, quests, roleplaying & character development, which offers good possibilities for solo & group play. Just good relaxing fun without the constant PvP need to prove how big your balls are.

Many of those people are currently playing 2nd Life, but aren't really happy there because of the 90% cyber-sex connotations which that game seems to have.

[Edit] What I'm trying to say is that there are MMORPGs for gankers, MMORPGs for wankers, & MMORPGs for people who like "challenging" PVE, but if there's an MMORPG for people who just want to log in after a hard days work & find some good relaxing unchallenging fun then I guess I must have missed it, & I'm sure there'd be a huge market for it. [/Edit]

dont get me wrong hun, i would love to find a game without all the pvp bullshit and without having to do this and having to do that to compete with the rest of them. But if i think about lord of the rings i think about those amazing battles they have. Its a bit weird to have a game made after books and moves and not have any battles in it. Unless its implemented in another way ofcourse.

Ovi · Post by **Ovi** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 11:42 pm

Xest wrote:I think you'll struggle to find a casual MMO, that's exactly why I'm playing non-MMO games on the XBox 360 again, so much more casual, play when you want, how you want. The other benefit is that you've always got something different whereas MMOs are fundamentally repetitive in the way they're produced.

Surely it is because MMOs are repetitive that they can be casual and relaxing? The reason I find Eve is quite good in that respect is that I can log-on, turn brain off and perform repetitive tasks to earn isk. It has the added advantage that skills progress at a fixed rate so I can play when I want and, to a certain extent, how I want.

The biggest thing against MMORPGs is the monthlies. Since I pay per month I want to get as much out of each month as possible, and end up playing too much and losing the enjoyment.

I am probably going to invest in a Xbox 360 soon, but I wouldn't say it is more casual, just different (plus I can use it in the living where the PC is banished from

)

Ovi · Post by **Ovi** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 11:44 pm

Satyn wrote:dont get me wrong hun, i would love to find a game without all the pvp bullshit and without having to do this and having to do that to compete with the rest of them. But if i think about lord of the rings i think about those amazing battles they have. Its a bit weird to have a game made after books and moves and not have any battles in it. Unless its implemented in another way ofcourse.

Why do the battles have to be PvP? If you look at the battles in Lotr most of them involve huge amounts of anonymous bad guys vs a smaller number of known good guys, sounds more tailored to PvE to me.

Post by **Xest** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 12:19 am

Ovi wrote:Surely it is because MMOs are repetitive that they can be casual and relaxing? The reason I find Eve is quite good in that respect is that I can log-on, turn brain off and perform repetitive tasks to earn isk. It has the added advantage that skills progress at a fixed rate so I can play when I want and, to a certain extent, how I want.

The biggest thing against MMORPGs is the monthlies. Since I pay per month I want to get as much out of each month as possible, and end up playing too much and losing the enjoyment.

I am probably going to invest in a Xbox 360 soon, but I wouldn't say it is more casual, just different (plus I can use it in the living where the PC is banished from )

Well the thing about single player games is that you can just save and quit

MMOs you tend to find you need to finish something off, get out of a dungeon and so forth. There's little limitation in a single player about when you play or how long you pay - raids in MMOs need a time commitment for example and I think every MMO is going to have raids of some sort in it. Probably the best thing about the 360 for casual play is the XBox live arcade, you just load up a game of Geometry wars, have a 3minute blast fest and then you can go back to what you were doing it's just a nice little breather that you can fit in here and there.

OohhoO · Post by **OohhoO** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 5:43 pm

Yay! I got a beta key

Moley:) · Post by **Moley:)** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 5:59 pm

Think it's said best in clerks 2, " 3 films walking to a f***ing volcano. "

+ looks too good graphics to ever run on my decreped comp

. And i agree with ellen, fighting would have made it infinitely better. I enjyoed the cnosle lotr but not this i don't think.

Gandelf · Post by **Gandelf** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:15 pm

Satyn wrote:no pvp? Doesnt sound right tbh. If its a game made after the movie and the books .. then it needs the big battles

Very true, but the battles are always from the point of view of the free races. Nowhere in LotR will you find a point of view from the forces of Mordor, where they are the good guys and that Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves and Humans are evil trash who deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth. It would be totally wrong for the developers to allow players to choose to play as the forces of Mordor, because in LotR they are defeated. Allowing a PvP situation where Mordor could defeat the free races would go entirely against the ethos of LotR.

It's still possible to have great battles without PvP imo. Think back to the dragon raids. They are great fun and a great battle. You don't have to have PvP to have fun.

I also think that allowing PvP between free races would be disastrous. It would go totally against the grain and would be so uncharacteristic of the LotR ethos.

Gandelf · Post by **Gandelf** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 6:24 pm

Ovi wrote:Is it worth £99 founder life subscription?!? I am certainly tempted to pre-order to get a try, and maybe look at the life-time sub. I am sure knowing that I am not paying "monthlies" will actually help the casual approach to playing.

I think so Ovi. What's 99 Quid these days? If you just paid monthly, and if it was 9 Quid, then after 11 months you'd have paid 99 Quid anyway. How many people play a mmorpg for more than a year? Probably a lot I would say. So 99 Quid is good value imo. Imagine never having to pay a subscription, it would be great! And you're right, paying monthlies always makes you want to play as much as possible, to get your money's worth, not having that stress can only be a good thing.