Lord of the Rings Online has been getting good positive buzz lately, and I've actually been pretty excited to see it launch (disclosure: my company, Conduit, includes some folks who worked on this title). The highlight for me recently was seeing Steve DiGregorio's dynamic music system that actually allows you play instruments in real-time, in-sync (not easy with latency), with others.
This of course will lead to all kinds of wonderful emergent behaviour, such as this fun video of the Mario theme song, or some really impressive renditions of Dust in the Wind (via Joystiq)
But these positive tidbits unfortunately undermine the fact that Turbine (or frankly any of the hardcore MMORPG companies) still think more like a video game company than the web company that they should be. News came out this week that North American and European players are to be forecably segregated. This obviously has some people not very happy at all:
"Yeah, our guild's been pretty upset about this....our British and other overseas friends which make up about 1/3 of our number. Some very sad faces when this story broke on our forums." - Brian Rucker
"WAKE UP. There isn't one argument about MMOs that is more actual and important than this one." - HRose
"So much for the 'World Wide Web' guess it's just a pipe dream" - Elisdor
This isn't some story about how Turbine is now being run by an anti-immigration neo-rightist hell bent on keeping the French from frooffing up our online games (that would at least have reason). No, as Damion points out, this is just about making a distribution deal with Codemasters in Europe a little cleaner. It's a case of being shortsighted both for the company, and for it's implications on the Internet.
The bigger picture is that sadly only 1/3 of American's actually own a passport, and any ability to promote ties to people overseas is a positive. I happen to believe that MMOs have a very positive social role to play in providing a global third place for connecting people. There are also the direct business benefits that would be enjoyed by both Turbine and Codemasters by creating a larger base community.
If Turbine had this in mind they could have easily constructed agreements that allowed for accounting across territories. Unfortunately, neither company had the foresight or vision to take the time.
Technorati Tags: lotro, segregation, mmorpg, turbine, virtual worlds
Don't forget my boy Geoff Scott, who's the music director over there. He and Steve D make a formitable team for just about any challenge you give them.
Posted by: Jason Booth | March 24, 2007 at 05:59 PM
Sorry Geoff. Shout out to you as well, it's a damn cool system.
Posted by: Nabeel Hyatt | March 25, 2007 at 02:52 PM
Turbine reversed this decision today! (http://lotro.turbine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20518) Good for them.
Posted by: Ryan | March 27, 2007 at 06:30 PM