The world is rife with properties ideal for the MMO treatment, but few are as suited to this style of game as Middle-earth. With enough built in lore to often rival humanity's own storied history, any MMO developer working on a Tolkien-inspired game should consider itself lucky. Popular wisdom would dictate that, anyway.
But if you talk to the developers of Turbine -- who are currently busy cobbling away at Lord of the Rings Online -- you'll hear a different story. They'll quickly tell you that working with the Tolkien license is a bit like a double-edged sword. Dipped in poison. With an Icy Crusader enchantment thrown on it. Such is the fury of Tolkien's fanbase, if properly stoked, and, they assured us, woe to anyone who they perceive as doing it wrong.
In any case, the last time anyone saw Lord of the Rings Online, it was under a different moniker: Middle-Earth Online. To spare you the details of this uncommonly lucrative license, suffice it to say that, after Vivendi Universal relinquished interactive rights to Tolkien's literary works, Turbine was quick to snatch them up. The fact that the game is now called Lord of the Rings Online might be a clue as to how (and whom) will eventually publish it. But that's pure speculation for now, and not really what's important at the moment, anyway.
The short of it is that Lord of the Rings Online has changed a great deal since we last saw it. Rather than attempt to present a two-sided look into the War of the Ring, Turbine has, perhaps wisely, chosen to play on the book's most pervasive themes: heroism, and lineage. Your character will be a member of one of Middle-earth's good races -- Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits -- and you'll steadfastly fight against the legions of Sauron. This isn't to say that you'll be completely free from the corruptive influences of the Dark Enemy and all that. The developers hinted that these elements might come into play, in fact. You just won't be able to be play as an orc, Uruk-hai, Nazgul, or what have you.
While all this talk of legendary lands might have your head in the clouds, the version of the game that was demoed during our recent visit to Turbine took a much more narrow focus. It took place mainly in the small hamlet of Archet, which to those familiar with Middle-earth's geography, lies right outside of Bree. Archet is where new players belonging to the Race of Man (Tolkien for "humans") will learn the ins and outs of adventuring, and Lord of the Rings Online's take on the "n00b" zone is quite interesting. Rather than throwing you into a common area along with dozens of other new players, LotRO's designers are planning to create heavily scripted, instanced introductory sequences for each race, tailored to each one's tone.
The one for Men involved a prison break near Archet, with the player acting in a pivotal role. I was walked through the entire sequence, and it seemed to go off without a hitch. Triggered events gave the scenario a dynamic, and all the writing seemed very much in keeping with the Tolkien vibe. It wasn't a terribly complex scenario: the player jumped some of the bandits that were keeping him in bondage, dispatched them, rescued a young Hobbit girl (with the surname Brandybuck), battled the bandit chief (after he was taunted by young Brandybuck), and made his way off. So no, it was terribly complex, but it seemed like it would be fun nonetheless.
Once our hero was safely out of the bandit's clutches, he found himself in Archet. Though it is a small town besieged by all manner of tragedy, after his period of abject imprisonment, things could only get better. Soon enough, he had collected the expected allotment of quests, and was busy at work for the betterment of his community. Many of these tasks involved the sorts of things you'd expect from a game like this: slaying animals, collecting their sundry parts, and returning with them to town. But at their most exciting, they suggested just how radically different Lord of the Rings Online's quests could differ from those of existing games.
If there's one thing that the developers seemed to want me to leave their studio with, it's that LOTRO gives players the ability to impact their surroundings. For players' actions to directly effect the nature of their surrounds is probably the holy grail of MMOs, at this point, and the men and women at Turbine are pretty sure that they've nailed it.
The way that it works in Lord of the Rings Online is best expressed by describing a series of quests. The bandits that held the player captive throughout the game's introductory sequence have far from stopped harassing the inhabitants of Archet. After completing a few quests for the high-ups in town, the player is offered a chance to delivery a decisive blow against the brigands. This offensive proves successful, but during its course, one key event takes place: unbeknownst to its inhabitants, Archet's wall suffers a breach, and unfortunately, no one finds out until it's too late. The player returns to town to find it under siege, and must then fight off wave after wave of bandits. When their boss is finally slain, not much remains is Archet, and from this point forward, every time the player visits the town, it'll be in a ruined state.
Turbine promises that, throughout the game, tons of world-impacting events like these will happen, their purpose being to help instill in players a sense that their actions, far from existing in a vacuum, have ramifications on the environments that they inhabit. Regardless of whether its designers succeed, it's good to know that they realize just how important the passage of an epic narrative is, to a game set in Middle-earth. They know the fans are watching, and if there's anything scarier than a disgruntled Tolkien fan, then I don't want to see it.
Lord of the Rings Online is due out sometime in 2006. We'll have more for you as soon as we're allowed a new look.