The Lord of the Rings Online
From Tolkien Gateway
| 'I shan't call it the end, till we've cleared up the mess,' said Sam. This article or section needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of article quality. |
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| The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar | |
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| Video game | |
| Developer(s): | Turbine, Inc |
| Publisher(s): | Turbine, Inc Midway Games Codemasters |
| Platform: | Microsoft Windows |
| Release date: | 24 April 2007 |
| Genre: | MMORPG |
The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (LotRO) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) set in Middle-earth during the time of The Lord of the Rings.
Turbine and Midway Games, Inc. officially launched The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar on April 24th, 2007 in North America for PC computers. Codemasters handles the European version of the game.
LotRO allows players to create customized characters (elves, dwarves, hobbits, or men) to explore Middle-earth as a persistant 3D world environment, undertaking trival and epic quests, and battling against a wide variety of creatures and enemies. Players can also craft equipment and consumable items (including the popular varieties of pipe-weed), as well as enjoy recreational activities such as player-generated music.
While the majority of quests in the game are original content created by Turbine based on the history and lore of Middle-earth, the quests flagged as "Epic" quests depict specific events and scenes from the Lord of the Rings storyline. While conducting Epic Quests, players interact with the main characters from the books, and assist in the advancing of the story toward the War of the Ring and the destruction of the One Ring.
Turbine has gone to great lengths to faithfully recreate the fantasy world created by J.R.R. Tolkien with a high degree of attention to detail. Essentially every character named in the books appear in the game and can be interacted with during quests and other activities.
Previously the game was called Middle-earth Online and began development in 2003 as a joint production with Vivendi Universal Games.
[edit] License
For The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, Turbine has licensed the rights to the content and lore of the books, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Turbine does not have license rights to the New Line Cinema film trilogy nor the books The Silmarillion or Children of Húrin. As a result, the characters of the game do not bear the likenesses of the actors who portrayed the characters in the films.
[edit] Awards
- LOTRO received Gaming Illustrated's Editor's Choice Award as a "Superior Product", and LOTRO is reviewed as "the definitive new MMORPG to play in 2007."
- In May 2007, LOTRO received IGN.com's IGN Editor's Choice Award.
- In October 2007, LOTRO won ComputerAndVideogames.com's Golden Joysticks PC Game of the Year 2007, beating the competition of World of Warcraft, Football Manager 2007, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
On a somewhat related note, Codemasters (the development team that handles the European version of LOTRO) won the Golden Joysticks UK Developer of the Year.
- In December 2007, LOTRO was heralded by GameSpy.com as LOTRO was awarded GameSpy's 2007 PC MMO of the Year as well as placing sixth in GameSpy's 2007 Top 10 Games of the Year.
- In early January 2008, IGN.com named LOTRO "Best Persistent World Game of 2007".
