Obvious Diversion

There was no end to World of Warcraft clones on the show floor and although most of them looked pretty good, none looked as if they would actually make a dent in massive success that is WoW.

I did however find myself interested in checking out Lord of the Rings Online. It looked great and I spent a good hour playing the Weathertop scenario they had set up. I also spent about thirty minutes talking with one of the developers and asked him this question:

How is this game different from World of Warcraft?

What I learned made a reasonable amount of sense:

• It’s based on the books, not the movies (I checked and The Prancing Pony is in there.)
• The game play is similar to WoW, but is more skill based
• It’s designed around groups of 4-6 which are referred to as fellowships

The main difference seemed to be that by focusing on small parties, you could design for very different experiences. Is this difference plus a virtualized Middle Earth enough to pull an audience from WoW? We’ll see.

Here’s a quick video look at the graphics.