A very nifty map project for LoTRO !
Btw, I feel compelled to offer up my retired-professional opinion on the landscape, land design in LoTRO!
Extremely well done lads! Congratulations! Very impressive!!!
When I used to make games... especially RPG games, outdoor enviornments were always given the short shift. The early 3D engines did a good job of allow the player to go spluenking dungeons & catacombs... anything with nice square rectangular surfaces.
It was a huge limitation, brought upon us by limitations of computer memory & processing power (and some extant creative design). When I was working on Land of Lore II & III, I was really disgusted that our outdoor enviornments were just more orthogonal walls, painted with textures of trees, textures of doors, textures of grass, etc.
There were in fact, in those pre-3D card days, no easy way to create 1 engine/program that could do both small, tight, confined dungeons, as well as wide, open, expansive rolling outdoor environments. Some games did make 2 engines, one for outside, on for inside, but they still worked on the corridor pinciple, albeit really wide corridors.
When Ultima Online came out, with its non-3D engine, sprite-like graphics, it was still a huge hit, and showed a strength in outdoor areas. Using the 3/4 top-down view of the world, it spanned huge areas outdoors, and rewarded players for taking shortcuts, and just plain exploring. Finding an old ruin in the middle of the forest was always fun & worthwhile. As a designer, I always wanted to see more, and in 1st person 3D.
Since then, each of the MMORPGs have offered up a continuing wider & deeper outdoor area to explore & revel in. EQ1, AC, DAOC, EQ2, WOW.
While EQ2 landscape has many simliarites with LoTRO, LoTRO is really amazing. I started in the Shire, as a hobbit, so I really got to see the medival fantasy land I always dreamed about. Little farmhouses, stacked stone hedgewalls, fields of wheat, corn, etc. Rodents, cattle, bears, goblins... rolling hills, lush forests, underbrush..and yes, the occasional tater ("Whatz taterz precious??')
There are several points about the shire, which were orchestrated by carefull designers, in much the same way that landscape architects have done for kings & lords in the past 1000 years in Europe. Vistas that make your jaw drop, and your eyes tear. You can see for what seems miles in this game. What happened to the gray fog on the horizon of other games? What happened to the alien tree 'pops' of worlds gone by?
This game is beautifull to behold, and I really appreciate those designers & artists that fought the hard fight to make this a reality. They did A REALLY GOOD JOB AT IT!
Sorry.. it just had to be said ... by me ... at least once....
