http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?loadNews=2974


Lame :/ stay away from the WOW graphics.. they are Craptastic

Though i thought the movies were boring 90 percent of the time (Fight scenes are all I want to watch) and the Books and I cant even get pass the first pages without getting bored...I am looking at this game with hopes of being some great.. I hope though with games like Matrix coming out I know its going to flop.. Theres just to many MMO's out these days.

Though i thought the movies were boring 90 percent of the time (Fight scenes are all I want to watch) and the Books and I cant even get pass the first pages without getting bored....


By the time you said that i beleive most people stopped caring what you had to say.....you are dead to me.

I looking forward to the game. Read some things about it, very promising.

I'm sorry but I guess I just didnt feel like jumping on the Band Wagon, you know when it was "cool" to like everything and anything to do with LOTR.

No PvP = Teh Bad.
Nuff' said.

And I guess you're called a dumbass because it's interesting that you didn't like the books and movies but yet you are having hopes for this one because... it has good graphics.

Damnit even writing it still doesn't make sense to me... :(

So because I wasnt oowing and awwing about the LOTR story means i cant like the look of the game? I like the look of the game because like its been said for many years, LOTR's idea has been somehwat of a basis of what everquest is. I like the idea of Elves, wizards, dwarves and talking trees and such. I lose my self in my Jerle Shannarra books everytime I read them cause I love this setting. So I am looking forward to this game cause 1. the graphics do look good and graphics help the fantasy so much more, and two cause im hoping for a new everquest game :(.

yeah no pvp could suck maybe.

It's been said that LoTR is the basis for most modern fantasy works.

LoTR was/is great, it's an awesome story written years before even I was born. /chuckle

Read it first in 1978, oman still one of the most influencial works I've ever read.

So if you found it boring Shamzy, I find it hard to believe you ever found gaming in this genre remotely interesting...

Fandros

Believe what ya want, but my life/gaminglife evolves around this Genre and I am not a huge fan of LOTR.

I agree with Fandros, though he's even older than I first thought ;) j/k

If you like Terri Brooks, thank Tolkien. If you like Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, Salvatore, EverQuest, etc.....thank Tolkien. He is the master.

My question is, if you enjoy reading The Shannara series how can you not enjoy reading LoTR? I'm a book-aholic and it's one of the only things I do more than play MMOs. I have read all of Brook's books up to Tanequil b/c while I love to read I never pay $ for hardbacks. But anyway, the common themes I find in nearly all fantasy series/novels can be found in Tolkien's. I'm boggled that you find him boring.

Having said all this however....I did play the RTS game Battle for Middle Earth and just really didn't like it. The concept was sweet, the graphics were groovy for a RTS but I hated the interface :(

/shrug ,, maybe its the fact that everyone are all about Tolkien atm so subconciously I dont want to jump on the bandwagon so I am not a fan like half the free world. but guess what I AM NOT A FAN.. besides half tolkiens fans will die down in couple years once the bandwagon moves on :(

ehh well I don't consider myself a bandwagon fan. The Hobbit was the first fantasy novel I ever read....and I read it in 5th grade. It's been down hill since then. Tolkien is to fantasy as Einstien is to physics.

hey schmuck, read the Hobbit,LotR, and a couple otther JRR works in 5th grade, which was about 1989, WELL before the movie. And thinking the bandwagon will die down is absurd. You do realize, except for the bible its like the most published book in the world right. This was BEFORE the movies came out.

I was also making a joke so calm down a little, step away form the keyboard.

Back to the game anways, Im kinda looking forward to the game also because it might be a easier game to play in a Roleplaying kind of way.. something I've longed to do for awhile.. with no pvp that will stop any of the kiddies from buying the game which will make it easier.. like the role playing servers on eq were harder to do it for because of the fact you have little kids playing who didnt care about roleplaying even on the Roleplaying server.. so hoping that changes here.

I wasnt talking about you guys as being bandwagon jumpers.. I dont even know what you like im talking about the public in general :(

hey schmuck, read the Hobbit,LotR, and a couple otther JRR works in 5th grade, which was about 1989, WELL before the movie. And thinking the bandwagon will die down is absurd. You do realize, except for the bible its like the most published book in the world right. This was BEFORE the movies came out.

I was also making a joke so calm down a little, step away form the keyboard.

Jeeeeeeez I feel old now. I read the Hobbit and LoTR when I was in 5th grade too. I graduated highschool in 85... So I'm far far removed from the bandwagon. As far as fantasy is concerned Tolkien was the creater. He was the god to all us Elves, Ogres, Halflings.. wizards, mages, warriors etc. He created the entire world we live today. The people who gave us Everquest were just fans and adapted something they liked. Fantasy wasn't around in it's form today before Tolkien. If you enjoy reading fantasy. Struggle thru the first chapters of a Tolkien book. Trust me it gets good. He was such a creative writer and like I've said he is the god of the world we live in online basically...

Now back to the game. I will probably look at it. Like before and until someone gets it right. Everquest is the 900lb gorrilla who sits and eats where ever and whatever it likes. No one, I mean no other game company period can touch the content we have in Everquest. Ya we all bitch and complain about SOE and this or that etc.. etc.. but you notice were all still sitting on an EQ board complaining about it. There has been entire companies (ones I can't stand) that revolve around this genre now that weren't there before Everquest.

Some may think they have the magic... I say nay.. No one will ever be able to take on Everquest.

I'm deffinetly not a EQ Fanboi but I have to say it's the best still.. graphics are only pretty for alittle while. Then they become repetative and boring. Content is what makes these games click. You have to be able to take the grinders (me I hate questing) the questers, the power gamers, the soloers and casuals etc.. and give them all something they can do for hours on end. You can only go collect so many hides in the woods for mister_dorf_craftsman_01 so many times.

Yes..not liking it makes you a dumbass

one of the many great negative feedbacks I have gotten because I evidently commited blasphemy for not likeing LOTR.

Gods, I agree with Twink...the world might implode now.

Grad in 84 myself..../groan

Fandros

*whew* Not as old as Fandros. For a minute there, I thought my life was, like, totally over. :devil

Dear Twinked: More than a handful of the regulars here are older than you are, btw :).

As for the contention that it's not possible to be enamored of 'fantasy' gaming worlds while eschewing Tolkien, I'd have to say that I kind of fit into that category myself. 'Beautiful but tedious' is how I'd describe the LOTR books, which I first read while a junior in High school (1979 ;) ), and while I think he did an incredible job of outlining the contours of an alternate reality, the fact is, at least in my mind, that the stories themselves suffer under the weight of all that pomp and descriptive repetitiveness in the narrative style. The world itself is compelling, but the story, while certainly epic, was not something I felt compelled to read over and over like I did with, say, Gene Wolfe's 'New Sun' series (although I sit down and make an effort to reread them every so many years to see if my opinion has changed as I have matured and still come away disappointed, and end up 'fast forwarding' through much of them).

Reading Tolkien, for example, I did not yearn to get inside the heads of, or identify with, any of the characters; the level of distance created by the formality, elevated language, (and you can't just blame this, Wolfe, Le Guin, et al, use a lot of elevated/archaic language, Tolkien's characters really do seem 'flat') renders them all symbols, ciphers, and not, at least to me, flesh and blood. In other words, I could not really *care* about the characters, despite all of Frodo and Sam's suffering on the way to Mount Doom, and they were the characters whose stories I enjoyed the most. Perhaps it was his intent that the characters remain idealized symbols, but being so, they become abstract concepts and difficult to remain interested in. Also, despite all the verbage, the stories have very little psychological breadth; this vast world of description is crushed to two-dimensionality by its total fixation on the 'good'/'evil' conflict. All of the assorted humans' trials and tribulations were a tedious blur to me, and while I can appreciate the 'reality', the weight, that all those descriptions, references to the ages and lineages, appendices, and geneaologies, give to the world, it still doesn't make them (the LOTR books) an engrossing read for many.

I'll give Tolkien his considerable due for being the 'father' of modern fantasy writing (he wasn't the first, but his level of detail surpasses A. Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and other predecessors), and a primary influence on Dungeons and Dragons, many of the fantasy RPGs that followed, and many of the online games that followed them. Heck, he made me enough of a believer in 'elves' that my EQ last name was cobbled out of the roots in the appendices of The Return of the King. But to say it's not possible to be a fan of fantasy gaming or some fantasy writing and also not care for Tolkien is just silly. Reading Tolkien to me always feels like taking medicine (I know it's supposed to be 'good' for me, so I do it), while reading Wolfe, or Julian May, or a few other authors (more a science fiction than pure fantasy fan myself) is an engrossing, thought provoking, trip into another reality, so much more 'alive' than Middle Earth, which always seems dusty, inaccessable, and despite its legacy of providing a common symbolic vocabulary to thousands upon thousands of readers and gamers, curiously irrelevant...

Regards,
Nydia

P.S. As far as the game goes, the screenshots look perfectly adequate (I like WoW's cartoony graphics, while they have their weaknessess, Azeroth does come off feeling like a contiguous world), but that doesn't say anything about the gameplay, of course. As far as 'what makes a good online game', that might take a while ;), but in short I'd say it's less about graphics, or 'content' (I watched a group of folks play a text MUD with relatively little content intensely for four years straight) than its 'fun', or replay factor, and whether it promotes the formation of social interactions/bonds that give folks a reason to keep coming back - smaller is sometimes actually better :). Are there any alpha or beta reports on how this game actually *feels* yet?

Nydia Ywalmoriel /kneel very engaging post.

Remember Tolkien was also not a trained writer. He was major scholar of the English language, specialising in Old and Middle English. He was also a professor of Old English at Oxford. So his writing style is somewhat dry and drawn out. He had so much detail he was trying to show the readers. He even invented the languages, they are actual societies (fringes) that communicate in them.

I am just a fan of fantasy in general.

Another one of my favorite writers is Steven Donaldson. Author of "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever" a three book series. Very very tedious to read but what a compelling story.

bah off topic again.. Anyways.. umm go LoTR the game.

Give it time Thormir getting old is the curse that binds us all.
heh 85 grad here too. what is it with the 5th grade teachers of america exposing our young children to this most paganic of literature?
I smell a heathen conspiriacy! but i beat them too it and have already bought my kid a copy of the hobbit in the 4th grade.

Nydia, you've reminded me that I need to reread those Books of the New Sun; it's been many years.

Twinked, I've heard rumor that 1) a new Thomas Covenant book is out; and 2) there's talk of a movie. I'm sure both are easily confirmable, but I've been too lazy to go about it.

I'm betting Shamzy made it about halfway through Nydia's first sentence before his eyes glazed over and his face went numb. ;)

Thormir you are correct it is out now. There is actually many books since the first series. I've never read them. I've only read the first series of 3.

Gawd, these threads make me feel old.

Well, I first picked up the Hobbit in '67 or '68 as part of school reading assignment. Because the assignment involved the analysis of the writing it did not interest me much.

In the early 70's when I picked the LOTR and Hobbit up again for something to read while convalescing, I was blown away. It was strange, seeing that I now had the information in the back of my mind of how Tolkien was commenting on the industrialization of Europe and the Nazi movement that was spreading, and I myself had just come out of a war, I still was able to see it more for the engrossing fantasy it was at this time than when I was when in school and still a wide eyed innocent, for the most part. This reading, and then the Sylmarillion (sp) and The Book of Lost Tales, became standard items in my bookshelves from then on; Tolkein and Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" have never been out of reach these past thirty-odd years since reading them the first time from cover to cover.

BUT, I fully understand Shamzy not being able to be interested. I have met many who were unable to maintain a sense of wonder when confronted with some of the more dry elements of Tolkein's writing style. These same folks could never get past the first two chapters of a Donaldson book either (/nods to Twinked), and I really enjoyed the Thomas Covenant series. Terry Brooks on the other hand is a more engaging writer, and the Shanarra series is easier to jump into as a newcomer.

BTW, Ralph Bashki also made a Hobbit movie back in the days when he was experimenting with film and it's possibilities. It was an ok movie, but it left you hanging without any ending, much like the Fellowship of the Ring would have without the next two episodes being done.

Ummm, I guess this long post is just to say I understand Shamzy. And, also to say that Twinked has now said something I can applaud and agree with, and that being his comments on Stephen Donaldson.

I have to agree with Nydia's assessment. Most of the characters in LoTR lacked attachement for me. All except Aragorn, I've modeled my character of Fandros after him in all games I play since I finished LoTR the first time. Heckfires as with Nydia the last name of Fandros Finglaflin is a mutated derivative of Fingolflin. A last name I stole from the family trees layed out in the Simillrion ( a drrrrrrrrrryyyyyy read if I ever seen one). Was a great source for names and histories for all my gaming needs for nigh unto 27 years.

Fandros

Actually, those screenshots look a bit better than WoW's graphics. (Actually, WoW's graphics aren't that bad as long as you don't look at them too closely for too long. Heaven forbid you do something like look at a tree from directly above or below!)

I wonder what draconian name filter they will have to implement in this game to keep all the wannabe Frod0, Froodoo, Frohdoh, Legolass, Leggolla5s, Leggomyass names at bay.

leggomyass

ROFL!

Twinked, I highly recommend the second trilogy (The Wounded Land, The One Tree, White Gold Wielder). The changes to The Land aren't pretty (a lot of time has passed since The Power that Preserves, and Lord Foul is still about), but the series conclusion is very cool.

I recommend all the books to fantasy afficionadoes. While Lord Foul's Bane is dry at the start, it has a rewarding conclusion, and the rest of the books from the first trilogy are extremely good. And it does seem that a movie is in pre-production with a script to be written by John Orloff, who did HBO's Band of Brothers.

Negative Feedback 10

you shouldn't assume i's a bandwagon thing. 90% of us read the books way back when.

Once again if you read the books before the movies came out and before LOTR was a huge hype then my bandwagon comment has nothing to do with you! I'm talking about the burst of Popularity AFTER the movies came out. jeesh come on.

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There we go right place

I have picked up Lord of the Rings trilogy during high school as English language practice. English as a second language that is.
It was a slap on the face and I lost the fight with the book at the part of the Ents.
I will freely admit that I was defeated by Tolkien's English when I was a teenager.

I have capitulated and gone back to reading stuff like Discworld, Star Wars Expanded Universe, Wheel of Time and etc.

My love and hate relationship with Tolkien peaked at the LotR movies, I loved the whole thing except for the hobbits, man I hate the hobbits....the hobbits in the movies that is.

Shamzy, you'll find when you give people 2x the amount of anonymous power that they do in real life (internet + rep. system), they'll defend their personal beliefs without real forethought. Sort of like politics, I can always goad just about any person who considers themself a democrat, by picking on part of a major belief with that party.

I tried reading the LoTR trilogy in high school, but it was real slow going. Then they became due at the town's library, so I turned them in and never got back around to trying to read them again....

Negative Feedback 10


Once again if you read the books before the movies came out and before LOTR was a huge hype then my bandwagon comment has nothing to do with you! I'm talking about the burst of Popularity AFTER the movies came out. jeesh come on.

So anyone that read the books because they got interested due to the movies is a bandwagon jumper?

wow really? You guys are acting like you dont know what a bandwagon jumper is.

I mean come on every new hype has a bandwagon.. One minute these people are all about LOTR, Once the next hype is up and coming they wont even remember LOTR.. ya know what NM im letting this die.

Strange....this has got to be one of the longest running hypes ever. The first movie came out what in 2001? And here it's 2005....

Actually no that would belong to the Chicago Bulls and the Jordan Era but close. ;)

It was a serious question to see if thats what you were saying shamzy. Since I know many people,myself included, that were never really into LoTR until the movies came along, and whom won't be forgetting it for a long time.

I am my own person! I will be an individual! I don't want to like what everyone else likes! I will rebel! fuckshitfuckbeelzubub! Take THAT, man!

Not liking something and listing the fact that other people like it as a reason for you to not like it is the stupidest and most sad reason that i've heard in quite a time. Heaven forbid they actually had a reason to like them.

I believe it was New zealand's fifth grade equivalent during which i read LOTR for the first time as well, freaky.