I should probably say that I've bowed out again for now. At the onset of Summer, real life kind of took over, and after having been logged in for a total of six hours in three weeks, I figured it was time to reevaluate. I may very well be back this Autumn, but right now, there's too much else to do in this arguably less epic but wonderfully textured game-world of Reality(tm).

Yeah, I'm going to try fishing tonight or so, too.

Oh, I should probably warn you that we're not 100% canon-perfect, largely because, well, this is an MMOG, not a Tolkien novella contest. You have to assume that people aren't really that aware of the lore and find a cultural and social identity that works for everyone. This means that we fall back to some extent on the more general notion of dwarves (Forgotten Realms, Warhammer, et.c.) even, on occasion, when it's not strictly what Tolkien had in mind.

Basically, I'm looking at Darkhawk's position from the other side. I like Tolkien, but I also realise that LotrO is not the same world as the one in the books, and in being a role-player, my main focus is to make it work, not staying true to all the lore details.

Hence, the Mountain Guard is a little rougher, a little rowdier and rather less subtle than the dwarves in The Hobbit. I suppose you could say we're more like Gimli in the films than Gimli in the books. (This could of course also be partially ascribed to the fact that we're a military company.)

*brings up his shield to deflect incoming attacks from Darkhawk*

The battle system is different. It's based on movement more than key combos, which actually makes it rather daunting for me, but I'm still interested in the game.

Feel free to keep us updated, Midragar.

Oh yeah, you've all turned into saints since I left. Yeah. Believe that.

Yeah, you basically have to separate LotRO from LotR. The one is based on the other, but the premises are different. There will be a cheapening of the story and additional, outside influences. I understand your position, though I don't share it. The variation has gotten better, even though it's still a WoW-like game.

You'd be most welcome in our ranks.

Well, from what I heard, it's not directly based on Lovecraft's works, but heavily influenced by it. I've yet to see anything that describes actual gameplay, and the wire has been silent for a while. They're moving the production team fully over to TSW once AoC is rolling. Rumour has it there's a trailer coming later this year, but that's not really much of a thrill, in itself.

The Magician's Knob has the released concept art and screenshots up here.

I'll keep you posted if there are any notable developments.

On a more serious note, a Transformers MMOG could be good fun, but it would be difficult to avoid extremely generic character looks. If they could give you the power to make your character unique, I would be very impressed.

First of all, Nuala, great work.

Second, there are obviously issues with the template, some of which have probably arisen from Joomla! version upgrades and such, other that stem from lack of communication (and the fault there is likely mine.) If I could have site access and such, I could iron those out... as well as help with setting further sections up.

I'm ambivalent towards the newsflash box. It seems a bit superfluous when the news are already posted in the box beneath it, no?

Anyway, I'm going to be back on IRC from tonight on, and I'd love to discuss the further development. I've had some hardware issues (new memory that didn't behave) but I think I've fixed them.

It's all right, now - let's make it awesome.

I'm definitely interested. I'm not entirely sure I can save enough money for the trip, but, well, I can try for next year.

Good idea.
I'm pretty evenly spaced, really. Fridays and Saturdays are less likely to have me around because other things tend to be happening. Otherwise... well, my sleeping hours are irregular, so it's hard to say.

I'll try to be around, whenever the time ends up, though.

It's a little silly to post a link to a forum thread for a game that haven't even been released, yet, but I'm really amazed at the maturity and sense of the other forum haunters over at the TSW site.

This is a thread I started about RP.

First of all, Trevenni, I'm not sure when and how you played EVE. Like a few others here, I was in the beta. Back then, yes, it really was a very pretty space mining simulator. Even after launch, it took rather a long while to improve, though. Nowadays, you can mine... or you can trade, fight, manufacture... well that's the main of it, really. The point is that unlike most other games, you aren't forced into the role of a fighter.

The speck thing, I don't really understand, because in the default view and zoom level, my ship takes up a little over a third of my screen. Not much of a speck - especially when you consider that the damned thing weighs 1,1 kilotons without any load or equipment.

The interaction is a bit of a problem. They're fixing that, but it will be a while. (See other thread.) Since EVE is a fairly small game, they're more perceptive to the needs of the player base, and the desire for character-to-character interaction is great.

I don't really think that the MMOG world differs that much from single player games. What are you really comparing with, here? If you compare WoW to a single player game, it would have to be something equally popular - that is, something like Half-Life or Diablo II. Morrowind/Oblivion compare more in game-style, but they don't have the immensely wide audience-focus that WoW has. Also, Morrowind and Oblivion aren't really much in terms of gameplay innovation. It's pretty much same old with new, shiny graphics.

I have said this before: I'm seeing a fission in the MMOG industry. No doubt, there will be more games in the megaton WoW category, but I think they are unlikely to reach the player base size of WoW. Also, with middleware popping up more and more and server hosting getting cheaper, more reliable and easier to manage, it's becoming a lot more viable to create games for smaller audiences. It's happening right before our eyes. As someone at another forum pointed out, there are dancing and soccer MMOGs, now. URU takes adventure gaming online. The market is developing.

MMOGs today are mostly primitive and uniform, yes. Honestly, so are single-player games. The nature of capitalism is to exploit until you can't exploit any more, and the way games are today makes them great cash cows. We won't see the huge games getting any more interesting any time soon, but with a more stable, diversified market and cheaper hosting, it becomes possible for the people who really do want to make great games to get them published. Seed failed. We all know how tragic that was, but Seed almost made it! Think about that for a second and then look at what is happening on the MMOG market again.

Personally, I actually have more hope for the MMOG scene than for single-player games. The latter have barely developed at all in the last eight years.