Posts with tag lord of the rings online

Recently we talked about what kind of quest you would make if Blizzard gave you the opportunity, and since reading Tobold's suggestion yesterday about a new woodworking profession, it got me wondering about what new professions would work well with the existing system. Like jewelcrafting, any new profession should cover items or functions in the game that are not currently craftable. I know many people are just dying to have your current profession improved, but think for a moment if you could start over with a clean slate: what kind of profession would you design?

To give you an example to get you thinking, I did some searching and found this suggestion for a music profession which would let players create their own instruments and play their own music -- something I hear Lord of the Rings Online implements very well. (The clip above features a LotRO player using his keyboard to play "Dust in the Wind.") In addition to this, "song-spells" or enchanted instruments of some kind could give a benefit for anyone in range to hear them played, such as a short-term buff or heal-over-time, or else a debuff for enemies within range, such as a short charm or a lullaby. Some have suggested that a "Bard" class would be able to do this, but to me it seems that the "singing" mechanic suits a secondary skillset better than a full-fledged class and also opens it up for more people to learn and use in different ways. What's your opinion?

No, this isn't something Blizzard is telling us -- they're still out there fighting with the issue of people buying and selling gold. However, Jeffrey Steefel, executive producer of Lord of the Rings Online, who seems to think that in the future, how MMO's handle the secondary market of gold, item, and character sales is going to have to change. In an interview with Eurogamer, he says:

But, we all know that something will happen in the next two to five years to business models in general, so we're paying attention to what's going on [with the secondary market]; watching what's going on with Sony Station whose servers support and manage this.

Does Steefel have a point? In the long run, is the only way to fight the secondary market to legalize it and integrate it with our games? But even if you look at Everquest II, where Sony provides an official method for selling gold, items, and characters for real cash, there's still a secondary market. And I've got to say, if Sony's method doesn't stop secondary market gold sales, I've got to wonder if any method of legitimizing the trade will. And while we wait to see what Steefel decides to do with Lord of the Rings Online, we can watch Blizzard approach the problem in their own way -- in the courts.

[Via Joystiq]

Slashdot is linking this morning to an article that BBC has posted today which gathers views from several game developers as they talk about what comes next when you have a behemoth such as the World of Warcraft dominating the MMO-verse. While somewhat light on new perspectives, it's just further showing that developers really do have to account for WoW when considering their existing and future software offerings.

Though the article talks with people behind Star Wars Galaxies, Lord of the Rings Online, and the upcoming Age of Conan, I find that Slashdot commenter JanusFury sums it up best with, "Instead of complaining about the lack of a strong competitor to WoW, how about making one?"

What's on your MMO horizon as a WoW-killer? Does anything coming up, or existing on the market now, have a powerful enough hook to pull you away from the World of Warcraft? Obviously, if you look at the included image, you know what I'm waiting for.

[via Slashdot]

With usage statistics showing World of Warcraft so far above any potential competition, you've got to whether any game could challenge the top spot.  The last major MMO release, Dungeons & Dragons Online, saw a slight drop in my guild's raid attendance for a week or so, but then everyone lost interest, and was playing again.  (More recently the single-player game Oblivion seems to have caused a heavier attendance drop across the realms - though that may eventually play itself out as well.)  While a true test of Warcraft's dominance of the market is bound to come eventually, questions remain - when and from where?  Well, the developers of Lord of the Rings Online are aiming high - with a target of a million subscribers.  Though this is still significantly less than WoW's six million subscribers, it's a big jump over the next nearest competition (Final Fantasy XI, with an estimated 650,000 active subscribers).  With continued technical problems plaguing Azeroth, how many people are simply waiting for the next big MMO to hit?  And is Lord of the Rings Online going to be the one, or yet another passing fad?