Mae govannen! And presently , Lord Of the Rings Online , MMORPG of Tolkien , Game of The Year 2007 , was freed by Turbine from the shackles of cost that held it back so long.
And so it came to pass that The Lord Of the Rings Online preview email was sent out to all the races of Middle Earth , offering participants 500 points for turning up , a beginning or end to the only real challenger to the unstoppable Blizzard hurled by the Dark Lord and his 11 Million strong army?
Here fell all resistance to not playing the game as a fellowship of gamers signed up and presently it came to pass in the minds and hearts of mortal men and their kin that they have had almost 30 years of Middle Earth gaming.
Growing up in Tolkien country , NO NOT NEW ZEALAND , I could walk past landmarks that inspired the great man himself , NO NOT PETER JACKSON , Anyhoo after finishing the books at too early an age , disappointed with The Silmarilion apart from you know the old Beren and Luthien Tinuviel chestnut, I was left with a thirst for all things Middle Earth , second only to my thirst for all things Sith and Vulcan...
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| Ahh the good olde days Smaug greeting you as you started the game that yellow stuff is colour clash ! |
Naturally the video game medium came to my rescue . And 1982 was a great time for Middle Earth gaming . Well ok I exaggerate , but there is a limit to what games developers could do with a 48K colour clashing ZX Spectrum ... on which Melbourne House produced the Adventure gaming milestone The Hobbit , a graphical text adventure , with fiendish puzzles and the finest Inglish parser to ever grace a 48k Z80 based machine , it was most impressive to type words on the rubber keyboard , and see the results , the coolest aspect of which was the way the graphics actually drew each scene , complete with impressive colour filling routines
You can play The Hobbit now from your browser
here is technology not wonderful ? 28 years later no loading times and you can play with a real keyboard![HIT ENTER TO PLAY , and update your Java if you have any problems , NB the ZX Spectrum keyboard incidentally Steve is one of the first examples of Chiclet keyboards now beloved of Macbooks which you and Mr Wozniak would have looked down on from your Apple Macintosh and Lisa at the time..... so play from a Macbook for maximum retro effect..oh the irony !]
Melbourne House also gave us the first real Lord Of The Rings Game One /The Fellowship of the Ring , and later The Shadows Of Mordor , but The Hobbit is the one that influenced a generation , the others had ambitions that exceeded the technology at that time .
The next great Middle Earth gaming milestone for me was to be from Mike Singleton , he of Lords Of Midnight ,Carrier Command and Midwinter fame , coding hero to the first generation of games fans ...The game? The game was War in Middle Earth and by this time I had progressed to the Commodore Amiga , Mike Singleton also worked on the earlier 1982 C64 Shadowfax yes a game of Gandalf's horse !
Then we take a Scott Bakula leap forwards in time to EAs combat and RTS oriented games coinciding with Peter Jackson movie adaptations. And finally to Turbines Shadows Of Angmar , now why namedrop these games [leaving out the dregs] , because each has something that is needed by The Lord Of the Rings Online as it about to be Free to play in 2010 , almost 30 years after the first Tolkien games fans loaded up The Hobbit!
No one game can capture the greatness of Tolkien ,but one master games forger could bring the best of these classics together in one game to r... no I am not going there...
Many of those playing LOTRO will have experienced the original Middle Earth games , what would be interesting is if Turbine could turn the MMO away from dungeon crawling grindfests and multiple choice dialogues and incorporate the joy of fiendish puzzles of a seminal Adventure game like The Hobbit , the land capturing RTS elements of War In Middle Earth, or Battle For Middle Earth . So that your Orc . Dwarf ,Elf or Ranger can direct armies including 1000s of NPCS, and the game is no longer simply about levelling up after quests ,but for seizing , controlling, holding and losing territory that in the books creates that wonderful alternate chapter ending cliffhanger where your heroes seem utterly doomed and in the next chapter the story jumps to another thread which ends on its own cliffhanger with more of your heroes utterly utterly doomed!
Turbine could have parts of their game playing at the level of the EA LOTR combat games with hand to hand combat ,that is not just click based mouse frenzy, so if your inclined you can take on armies of Orcs individually with skill and not just casting x on y with z after dressing your character up with the care a child takes over their prized Barbie Doll .
To increase longevity and maintain interest more emphasis needs to be placed on actual events and battles from the lore . If Turbine can take from the great heritage of Middle Earth based games , then may be ,may be they will have something that differentiates them from Warcraft.
What eventually turns people off Lord Of the Rings Online is the traditional MMO,remember most people are playing it because after the EA games this is the only place left to go for Lord Of the Rings , that it happens to be an MMO is an afterthought , the people who play are so well versed in the lore , that seeing the greatest fantasy world created turned into a grind fest level up dungeon crawl is after a while insulting . The length of time people will devote to it is limited , unless Turbine can hook people into actual events , battles , wars and plot which they can influence . Nothing as drastic as having Thorin sitting round the fire singing about gold is required , but until Turbine evolves LOTRO beyond World of Warcraft with Tolkien the potential of its's great setting remains unfulfilled ...
So presently it has come to pass that in the 7th Age of Man , I find myself preparing to enter a virtual Middle Earth as I did 28 years ago sitting waiting for Thorin to stop singing about gold after waiting 20 minutes for the game to load . 28 years of Middle Earth games , and just like the Hobbit , Lord Of the Rings is about to be FREE to play .... the more things change...
Belain na le.......
sign up for Lord Of The Rings Online here
still in the wild
