As a World of Warcraft vacationer in Lord of the Rings Online, I got to thinking about the differences in the two worlds, especially with their use of humor. Seen here, one example of the subdued humor of LOTRO.
And by “subdued”, I mean there’s not a whole lot of it. WoW is stuffed full of clever wisecracks and pop culture references — LOTRO is a rather sober environment. They can’t very well have Madonna on their loading screen, can they? The Tolkien crowd, fans and The Estate alike, would sue.
I imagine that’s one of the challenges in creating an online world for a franchise you don’t own outright — remaining suitably respectful of a creator’s world. Blizzard is free to create a brothel inside Karazhan (that Maiden is no maiden, bytheway); Turbine has to maintain a certain reverence — the orgasming women in Bree, a notable exception.
Which you will want to check out before they patch it. Seriously. Bree-Town Jail, with the guardian and captain, etc. trainers inside. Stand around for a few minutes and listen — there’s a woman (or women) having sex in there. Some very good sex too, by the sounds of it.
It’s actually a quirk of the audio track for human female crits and dodges, but I like to call it home. Could be, once word gets around, the Bree-Town jail will have more players stuffed inside than Strider’s room.
So, even though I would think it hilarious to give Elrond the surname Hubbard and have him wander the streets of Rivendell muttering about a mysterious spaceship arriving at any moment to whisk the elves into the west, there’s probably more people who wouldn’t think that was funny at all.
They’d be wrong, of course.
Ok, that was darn funny…..oh, so very very wrong, but funny as heck.
This is all well and good but is the game actually worth playing?
Think you could get an audio sample of that?
As long as Tom Cruise doesn’t lock himself in Elrond’s closet, I think LOTRO will be okay.
The desire to stick to the Tolkien World will be the death of this game. There are just not enough fun elements.
@Cindy, Huh? Not enough fun elements because it sticks to the Tolkien Universe? That makes no sense. Every MMO has to stick to some idea of a Universe and what fits and what doesn’t. Just because the game sticks to the Tolkien Universe doesn’t mean that Turbine can’t extend the story in any way. Large parts of the current Epic quest line have nothing to do with the main storyline in the Lord of the Rings books and are focused more on the background story that was present in Lord of the Rings. Remember, this is (at least the initial story) about the Shadows of Angmar so it’s more about the Witch King rather than directly about Sauron in Mordor.