Shadowman wrote:Roadbuster wrote:Well Lord of the Rings is probably the next best thing to WoW ATM. There's plenty of content to last for several months until the first full expansion comes out, plus balanced job classes, player housing, crafting, and a pretty decent community. Then there's mini-expansions which add in more content, and areas for your character to explore every 2-3 months or so. About the only weakness of the game is PvP and the fact you can't have a main character being an Orc, Uruk-hai, Goblin, etc. there is monster play but it's rather limited and the fact you start lvl 50 kind of takes away from any sense of accomplishment of building up your own charatcer in the service of Sauron.
Actually, my dad plays that. And he absolutely HATES WoW.
Currently, you can only go between the Shire and the Misty Mountains, but to be fair, that area is HUGE! An I mean Peter Jackson huge. (Fat joke? Reference to the epicness of LotR? YOU Decide!)
But I have no doubt that they WILL at some point make everything in Middle-Earth playable (Outside Middle-Earth, while it would be awesome, is a little bit too much, considering the size of the map as it currently is), and along with that, release Orcs and variations of Orcs (Goblins, Uruk-Hai, etc) and whatever else Sauron had control of, but I can't remember because I haven't read LotR in years.
The rest of Middle Earth will be made available through seperate expansions bought through retailer. This has been stated but will come gradually. And we don't want to rush them either. We'll probably see the rest of Eariador added before the first expansion comes out. If you look at the maps you'll see there's still plenty more of Eriador to release but going no further south than Enedwaith. I'm willing to bet we won't be going any further east until all the Rhovanion content is made. My understanding is they intend to do Rohan next. Still I imagine the next expansion will most likely be dealing with the threat of Saruman.
As for the lands outside ME, it's been stated they can't do them because the Tolkien family retains exclusive rights to all those fictional lands and they aren't going to budge. So don't count on Valinor, Beriland ruins, Numenor ruins, etc, being in the game.
As for a KOTOR MMO, there have been rumors floating around said MMO could be in planning but I think everyone's on the rocks following the disaster SOE made SWG into. If they do make a Star Wars MMO based in the Sith Wars era I don't think it should be a KOTOR title but a seperate title, thus allowing more creative freedom wiht some references to past Jeid and Sith Lords even Revan and Malak. I saw some of the worst players in SWG, even the boards (Imperial players triyng to throw out suggestions that would horribly put the game out of balance in their favor and they never cared.)
If one is made, SOE should not be allowed anywhere near it. They'll rush through production, not even consider Beta (they only did it because they knew the engine would not work wihtout debugging), change the battle system several times without considering their past mistakes. Severely cut back on the worlds planned ofr release. What is it? Still 12, 13 worlds. Leave a bunch of content broken. Have lousy customer service Reps. Choose a space engine where a bullseye will not guarentee a direct hit. At best the whole thing would be a SWG clone set in another time period and hit with "fanservice" involving ships that shouldn't be there.
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