The MMO's to challenge Warcraft

Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar

What’s the concept? An MMORPG set in the Lord of the Rings universe, based at the moment when the dark lord is rising. What this means is that there is a need for plenty of adventurous souls, so once you have chosen your race (dwarves, elves and humans - the usual suspects) there will be plenty of things that need to be done as the whole of middle earth prepares for judgement day.

Interesting features? The developers of Lord of the Rings Online are quite open and honest when they say that the game has been made for people who already love MMORPG's. The game hasn't tried to revolutionise the genre, instead it borrows heavily from what is already there in terms of interface and functionality.

Despite that, some areas have received special attention. The main aim is to keep the game's missions feeling worthwhile, to try and avoid making the player do repetitive tasks that seem meaningless. How they plan to get round this problem still remains a mystery.

The second most interesting feature is an attempt at changing PvP. The developers didn't want a world where an elf could start stabbing a hobbit randomly, yet wanted to integrate PvP into the game. They have done this by allowing players to go into 'Monster' areas, where they can become goblins and orcs and fight against other people's characters. If you're able to succeed in killing their characters you will be given points, which you can then spend on your evil character or alternatively on your good character. It's an ingenious way of allowing everyone to play on both sides.


When is it coming out? The scheduled release date is Spring '07 but the game is also going into beta stages at the moment.

Will it be better than WoW? The idea of letting a player be both good and evil may sound like a clever way of dealing with PvP battles but it may unfortunately be flawed. Unlike a game like Counter-strike, where half the players have to be terrorists and the other half have to be Counter-Terrorists, chances are either playing as a monster or as your regular character will be more fun. As a result more people will end up on one side than the other creating an imbalance. The inevitable solution would be to bung in a load of NPC's on the side with fewer players, so that everyone can fight someone but of course, this takes away the whole point of PvP combat in the first place.

It will certainly be interesting to see how the developers solve that problem, but the second may be slightly trickier. Lord of the Rings obviously has a massive fan base, but then so did Star Wars, and unfortunately that can also work against you. Gamers who are jumping into their favourite world of fantasy can end up feeling a bit cold when they find that they never actually get to see any of the characters they grew to love. Things can get even worse when the world doesn't conform to their ideas of how things should be, a task made all the more difficult by Tolkein's extremely descriptive writing style and hugely variable landscapes - not to mention the fact that the game isn't based on the hugely successful and iconic films. The developer's ability to overcome this problem will be the biggest factor on the games success.

Check out the official site for the Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar here.