Lord of the Rings Online Universe
Online gaming experiences tied to an intellectual property have been a bit disappointing - I was really looking forward to The Matrix on line a couple of years ago but it failed to really gain any traction. Likely that the poor sequels didn’t help! We all know about Second Life but this doesn’t really count as I am talking about immersive Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games or MMORPG’s, there are some huge ones out there but c’mon they are a bit geeky for goblins and dragons types - World of Warcraft anyone.
But the market seems to be into goblins, wizards, dragons etc. so it will be interesting to see if the Mother of all fantasy experiences - The Lord of the Rings makes a dent. Hard to succeed easy to mess up would seem to be the not inconsiderable challenge facing the developers Turbine.
Lord of the Rings Shadows of Agmar is scheduled to launch on April 24th. It is a massive challenge to turn the dense literature into a credible on line experience particulalry as most people will compare the visual experience to the movies. And because old Tolkein wasn’t that enthusiastic about having loads of wizards throwing fireballs - there are only a couple of wizards kicking about and not a fireball in site.
Be interesting to see how well it does