I’m always on the look­out for MMORPGs to try for free. Or at least as cheaply as pos­si­ble. Recently I finally gave Van­guard: Saga of Heroes a try. I fig­ured $8 for the Collector’s Edi­tion was a fair enough entry fee.

In the last edi­tion of this col­umn, I dis­cussed Warham­mer Online’s Tome of Knowl­edge. It was, and still is, sim­ply a good idea that I felt would ben­e­fit LotRO in some spe­cific ways. Sim­i­larly, Van­guard has its prob­lems, but it does have some inter­est­ing ideas too. Many play­ers have good things to say about its craft­ing and con­ver­sa­tion sys­tems, but what caught my eye most was some­thing far more sim­ple: its inte­gra­tion with the offi­cial Web site.

Tur­bine is cur­rently work­ing on social net­work sites that link up with their games. The most recent news on the sub­ject pointed to LotRO’s own ver­sion pop­ping up some­time this year. I imag­ine we’ll be hear­ing more about it around the release of Mines of Moria.

While at this point one could only imag­ine what the site would include, I have to say that I hope Vanguard’s sys­tem is at least used for some inspi­ra­tion. Users can log into the Van­guard site and view all sorts of infor­ma­tion about their char­ac­ter with­out any work on their part. More impor­tantly, this infor­ma­tion can be shared with any­one. What’s so smart about this is that it offers points of inter­est to both hard­core play­ers that want to check out equip­ment and casual play­ers who want to see what oth­ers are doing … or what­ever else it is you’re look­ing for.

P.S.: For an exam­ple, check out one the pro­file of one of the char­ac­ters I tried.

You can show off your pro­file, your equip­ment, your home, your ships and so forth. Your rep­u­ta­tion with cer­tain groups can be dis­played, includ­ing your great­est ene­mies and allies. You can share all sorts of in-game screens you’ve taken. A sep­a­rate sec­tion shows off how long you’ve been lev­el­ing (includ­ing your craft­ing skills) and where you were when you advanced. You can also show off the titles you’ve gath­ered so far.

All of this is hon­estly more bril­liant than it prob­a­bly sounds. Sony and Sigil have come up with what I would argue is the best usage of MMORPG infor­ma­tion out­side of a game client. World of War­craft touches upon some of this, but it lacks the more per­son­al­ized touch Van­guard provides.

The game actu­ally allows you to use a com­mand to take an in-game pic­ture of your char­ac­ter and auto­mat­i­cally upload it to the site as well. A lit­tle blog is auto­mat­i­cally cre­ated and shows off any sig­nif­i­cant progress you’ve made. This includes lev­el­ing, but more inter­est­ingly it includes items you’ve discovered.

Sim­i­larly to the sys­tem in Star Wars Galax­ies, Van­guard makes note of whether your char­ac­ter was the first to defeat a major char­ac­ter or col­lect an item of note. It’s then dis­played on your character’s pro­file for all to see. This is a really nice touch and some­thing that I think LotRO could really ben­e­fit from. Imag­ine if your Guild was the first to take down a new raid boss on your server and that the LotRO Net­work dis­played this infor­ma­tion along with sta­tis­tics and screen shots.  Or what if you’re the first to find a hid­den loca­tion or a rare trea­sure? Van­guard han­dles all of this and pro­vides a shot of when it happened.

LotRO already has all of the basic com­po­nents of this. Obvi­ously there’s rep­u­ta­tion, sta­tis­tics and trait setups. There’s also guilds and houses to show off, com­posed songs that could be shared. LotRO’s use of Deeds and Titles could also make an appear­ance. Imag­ine being able to show off your unique Leg­endary Item once Mines of Moria rolls around too.

How­ever, Vanguard’s Web site doesn’t allow for sig­nif­i­cant player edit­ing of this infor­ma­tion (although you can edit view­ing per­mis­sions) and that’s where I feel Tur­bine can make a dif­fer­ence. Allow play­ers to eas­ily con­nect with oth­ers, write their own blog, show off more infor­ma­tion, com­ment on each other’s pages.

If the site is lit­tle more than MySpace with a LotRO skin I will, admit­tedly, be quite dis­ap­pointed. It’s cer­tainly more inter­est­ing than forums alone, but it wouldn’t really take advan­tage of what makes a MMORPG dif­fer­ent from other gen­res. I really do hope that Tur­bine has more ambi­tious plans than that and will use in-game data for really inter­est­ing things. Char­ac­ter sig­na­tures was a step in the right direc­tion, but it was also the small­est step humanly possible.

Hope­fully we’ll find out soon.

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• Why LotRO?: Story, Lore and Those Less Fanatic (2)
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