While play­ing LotRO (or read­ing about it online) you’ve likely come across dis­cus­sions on what things really “fit” into the world of Mid­dle Earth. Maybe you’ve even thought about this yourself.

While a lot of cur­rent MMORPGs are based on already exist­ing prop­er­ties, it’s arguable that none of these prop­er­ties is as heav­ily guarded by the par­ent com­pa­nies as The Lord of the Rings. I find it pretty safe to say that Star Wars Galax­ies and Age of Conan both take heav­ier lib­er­ties with their respec­tive uni­verses. In some ways, they’re arguably encour­aged to; even just in the lit­er­ary world, a mul­ti­tude of writ­ers have made new and  offi­cial con­tri­bu­tions to both Star Wars and Conan the Barbarian.

The Lord of the Rings is another story entirely, really. While Christo­pher Tolkien has expanded upon some of what is out there (largely through edit­ing), J.R.R. Tolkien essen­tially is The Lord of the Rings. I think this is part of the rea­son why fans, at least from my per­spec­tive, seem to be far more crit­i­cal of recre­ations of the orig­i­nal works. LotRO has taken this a lot more seri­ously than other game rep­re­sen­ta­tions have in the past, which seems to up the ante (and thus, poten­tial vit­riol) even more. All of this comes together and, I believe, con­tributes heav­ily to why some of the more “ques­tion­able” addi­tions to LotRO can get such emo­tional or spir­ited reactions.

A good exam­ple of this was the addi­tion of the Rune-keeper, not too long back. While I felt Turbine’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion was fine, cer­tainly many did not. At the same time, I will be the first to admit that I am in no way a hard­core Tolkien fan. These things don’t feel like an attack on my being and I’m able to look past a lot of it to what is just “fun”. That’s not to say I’d like to see air­ships and guns in the game at some point, but I think you get my gen­eral point.

I’m reminded of a lot of this due to the release of images related to the upcom­ing update, Book 8: Scourge of Khazad-dûm:

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen some­thing like this in the game, at least not within Moria. Tur­bine isn’t shy­ing away from show­ing these crea­tures off either: the screens are easy to find and a vari­a­tion of one of them is even on the front page of the offi­cial site.

I remem­ber this quote from the book and it’s some­thing I see oth­ers cite from time to time, orig­i­nally said by Gan­dalf:

“Far, far below the deep­est delv­ing of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by name­less things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day.”

Tur­bine had ref­er­enced this at some point in the past and I was hon­estly quite excited by that. It implied an inter­est in design­ing crea­tures that were more unusual or even hor­ri­fy­ing than what could real­is­ti­cally run around the on the exte­rior areas of Mid­dle Earth.

At the very least it’s clear these things aren’t really com­pa­ra­ble to orcs and wargs and gob­lins. Obvi­ously this is the point. The argu­ment largely seems to be is do these types of designs stray too heav­ily from the world of Mid­dle Earth. Do they work or do they just come off as com­par­a­tively ridiculous?

My opin­ion is that they do work, despite know­ing how many may dis­agree with me . Yes, in the past, some of these odd­i­ties have had oddly Geiger-like influ­ences. I couldn’t tell you what the heck that pink-toothy guy is based upon. I def­i­nitely do agree that there seems to be a strong sci-fi influ­ence on some of these, although I sup­pose you could just as eas­ily argue that they’re almost sur­re­al­is­tic. Either way, my first expo­sure to some of the weirder crea­tures in the game has always been a pleas­ant expe­ri­ence. There’s always a small rush from see­ing some­thing new in this game for me, but it’s height­ened when it’s com­pletely unex­pected.

Either way, this is def­i­nitely one of those things where I feel play­ers will just have to agree to dis­agree. Some peo­ple will never accept these designs and I feel that’s both under­stand­able and fair. Even so, I do enjoy that Tur­bine has made an effort to show us some­thing unusual in the game and specif­i­cally placed them in the only real area of Mid­dle Earth where they’d be the most believable.

Where do you side?

Related posts

• Why LotRO?: Story, Lore and Those Less Fanatic (2)
• Thoughts on the Preliminary Book 8 Patch Notes (5)
• Return to Moria: Day 2 (1)
• Return to Moria: Day 1 (5)
• Middle Earth Online: Then and Now (0)