Way back in 1999, Sierra commenced work on a MMORPG inspired by The Lord of the Rings. Due to financial issues and other worries, development on the game slowed down significantly. Sierra’s parent company, Vivendi, still managed to secure the rights to the franchise for MMORPG use and in the process penned an agreement with Turbine sometime around 2002 (note: Wikipedia’s article claims 2003, but some of the material I have here is copyrighted by Turbine in 2002).
Expected to release in 2004, Turbine’s game was entitled The Lord of the Rings: Middle Earth Online. Eventually Turbine bought the rights to the license from Vivendi and released their own game in 2007, which we’re playing currently. (Wikipedia Entry on Shadows of Angmar)
The images below were all released between 2003 and 2004 under the guise of Middle Earth Online. Although the final version of The Lord of the Rings Online managed to look significantly different (both in terms of technology, but even just overall artistic approach), you can see a lot of early ideas forming in these images.
There’s clear parallels between the Shire now and the Shire then and some enemies are strikingly similar . . . . although I suppose there’s only so many ways to render a skeletal wight. I do have to say that I’m very, very, very happy they changed the look of the Wargs and Goblins.
Some are surprisingly nice for the time period, although there’s a strong reliance on bump and normal mapping that comes off pretty poorly. It’s also interesting to see that Turbine originally was planning to include Moria, although given how it looks I’m glad they changed their minds.
Anyway, images are divided into groups based on their contents. I dug all of these up from press sites that still happened to have the shots. I thought it was a nice way to show how far the game has come over the last few years. Click the thumbnails to view the full versions.
The Shire
Bree
The Prancing Pony
The Old Forest
The Great Barrow
General Locations
Moria
Enemies
Recent Comments