Lord of the Rings Online Nominated for Multiplayer Game of the Year at 1UP

Another addition to the growing recognition of The Lord of the Rings Online, it has been nominated as Multiplayer Game of the Year at 1UP.com; This should come as no suprise as the game has already won the Golden Joystick for being voted the PC Game of the Year (Beating out WoW if you can believe it).

Do you like the game? Head on over to 1UP and Vote Now!

Notice: I am not employed by nor affiliated with Turbine Inc., The Lord of the Rings Online, or any associated companies. My opinion is that this game is a wonderful experience that helps immerse you in Tolkiens world. My opinion is, as always, infallible to me and me alone. Get over it.

 

THE LORD OF THE RINGS ONLINE™: SHADOWS OF ANGMAR™ interactive video game © 1995-2007 Turbine, Inc. and patents pending. All rights reserved.  Turbine and the Turbine logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Turbine, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions.

Gametap Losing Titles, Lack of Communication, Community Fluster

All is not rosy in the world of GameTap; Some players recently found out that many titles from EA Games and Interplay will be leaving the service come December 11th. Now, normally this wouldn’t cause much of a stir… as long as some communication was provided. The problem is, that the user found out by just browsing games in his library – he actually paid attention to the info cards and was shocked to see that quite a few games were going to go bye bye come Dec. 11th – no announcement by GameTap preceded this discovery, and the post on the forums was met only with speculation and ‘marketing talk’ by Moderators and a few GameTap staff as well.

This smacks of just plain bad communication and Customer Service.. I mean a ton of games (many childrens games included.. in fact a large chunk of the childrens games category) are just going bye bye, and this not long after GameTap made a huge fuss over its 1,000th game. Sure, it might be that GameTap was caught unawares…. or at least the GameTap members that work with the community [Contract negotiations rarely just flop overnight, this has been going on for a while most likely]. Speculation ranges from the companies wanting more money and not being given it, to the companies wanting to expand profits by limiting themselves to.. well.. profitable systems [Lets be honest, the meager money they get back from GameTap subscriptions is outstripped by selling the games via download and whatnot]. Heck, some companies may have just given up (Atari anyone?). This sort of thing needs to be dealt with up front and honestly, this sort of crap where the customer finds out by chance is just not the way to go.

In all about 7-10% of the GameTap library will be leaving the system come December 11th; Some GT Staff have said that there is always the possibility they will come back.. but come on. It is understood (by people with half a brain) that contracts expire and have to be renegotiated.. what isn’t understood is the complete lack of giving a damn about the customer; Come on GameTap.. return some of the dedication your fans have shown you and keep them in the bloody loop will ya? I was a GameTap subscriber since right after launch, I only stopped due to personal reasons but would have continued on otherwise – the lack of communication stings worse than the loss of the games and would seriously make me reconsider paying money to a company that doesn’t keep its customers up to date. Its not like anyone is asking for trade secrets or negotiation details.. just let us know when things go south like this! Don’t make us find out for our selves!

To date, no official word has come down the pipe from GameTap.

Here is a partial list of the games being removed:

• American Deer Hunting™ 2000
  Rating: 4.2 Action Simulation Sports | Windows
• Arthur’s® 1st Grade: Bionic Bunny’s Good Deeds Contest
  Rating: 5.4 Family | Windows
• Arthur’s® Computer Adventure
  Rating: 3.9 Family | Windows
• Arthur’s® Kindergarten: Trouble in Arthur’s Treehouse
  Rating: 6.1 Family | Windows
• Arthur’s® Pet Chase
  Rating: 3.2 Family | Windows
• Arthur’s® Preschool: Arthur’s Afternoon Adventure
  Rating: 5.3 Family | Windows
• Arthur’s® Sand Castle Contest
  Rating: 6.6 Family | Windows
• Arthur’s® Teacher Trouble
  Rating: 6.2 Family | Windows
• Arthur’s® Wilderness Rescue™
  Rating: 5.2 Family | Windows
• Astro Chase®
  Rating: 3.1 Action | Commodore 64
• Battle Chess
  Rating: 3.6 Board & Card | Windows
• Championship Wrestling
  Rating: 3.5 Sports | Commodore 64
• Chip’s Challenge
  Rating: 5.9 Puzzle | Commodore 64
• Command & Conquer™
  Rating: 8.7 Strategy | Windows
• Command & Conquer Red Alert
  Rating: 8.6 Strategy | Windows

A full list of known games is being maintained by a subscriber here: http://www.gametap.com/home/profile/playlist?plid=7253506

Hopefully GameTap will see the error of their ways and come to the intelligent side by at least communicating more directly.. otherwise who knows.

GameTap™ is a Turner Broacasting Systems Company and a part of the Turner Entertainment New Media Network, ©2007 all rights reserved.

EA Games & InterPlay Logos are registered trademarks of EA Games and Interplay respectively.

Notice: I am not affiliated with GameTap™, Turner Broadcasting Systems, or any of its affiliates. The views I express in this post are the views of myself and are not subject to your opinions, concerns, or biases.

Turbine, Rumors, Wrangling, and Book 12

Well tonight was the night for the regular dev chat with Turbine Devs and CM’s for The Lord of the Rings Online, this time hosted at MMORPG.com. As usual, they managed to talk in their regular ’straightforward’ manner and tease/hint about quite a few things without actually committing to much (apparently a marketting bot was running around as a reference to Moria was gibberishized [is that a word?]). Anyhow, they talked about the upcoming cosmetic customizations (you can wear a ’skin’ of anything you want over your actual armor – thus having dress robes or whatever while wearing your full suit of armor [disabled in the Moors]). They also dabbled around the idea of new zones, new fighting features, more solo friendly content, and possible future additions; of course, they didn’t confirm nor deny anything. Transcript is below (Source: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/gameId/45/setView/features/loadFeature/1611)

Transcript:

[MMORPG]Taera: Greetings and welcome to MMORPG.com’s Live Chat on irc.coldfront.net! I’m your host, MMORPG.com’s community manager Laura Taera Genender. Joining us today is the Lord of the Rings Online dev team!

[MMORPG]Taera: Our guests will do their best to answer as many questions as possible, but due to limited time and a high volume of inquiries, they may not be able to answer every single one. Users are limited to one question [1]at a time[1], and you will be notified if your question is rejected or discarded.
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[MMORPG]Taera: To send a question, please /msg MMORPGBot Yourquestionhere

[MMORPG]Taera: If you would like to talk about LOTRO during the chat, please /join #LOTRO for open discussion

[MMORPG]Taera: Our guests will do their best to answer as many questions as possible, but due to limited time and a high volume of inquiries, they may not be able to answer every single one. Users are limited to one question [1]at a time[1], and you will be notified if your question is rejected or discarded.

[LOTRO]Annuvin: Hey all, Cardell Annuvin Kerr here… I’m the Creative Director type person for LOTRO, and my hobbies include channel surfing, and training my dogs to do horrible things to visiting relatives.

[LOTRO]Ringleader: Hey, Jeffrey STeefel here. I’m the EP for LOTRO which means I get delayed in crazy meetings instead of being here where all the fun is!!!

[LOTRO]Patience: Hi everyone! I’m Meghan Patience Rodberg, community manager at Turbine. I wrangle players and sometimes cause feature creep on their behalf. Thanks for coming tonight.