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The Road to Mordor: Double dragons
Last week Turbine released the concept art for one of its major bosses from the upcoming Rise of Isengard expansion: Draigoch. With it came a number of appropriate "oohs" and "ahhs," and no doubt raiders began thinking up uses for a giant dragon skull in their homes. But there was also a crowd that popped out to cry foul about lore molestation -- that this was a blatant example of Turbine pandering to MMO players by including the expected dragons even when the lore shouldn't support it. A couple examples of quotes, first. "Yet whatever way you cut this idea, how can you integrate another dragon into the story? Smaug was the last one of his kind," Contains Moderate Peril complains. A commenter on our article sniped, "So Turbine's decided to entirely drop the pretense of sticking to the lore, then?" Ouch. As much as I am totally not attached to MMO lore in general, I feel like this might be a good time to both address this particular argument and also the larger one of Turbine's approach to Tolkien's world. Are giant dragons lore-breaking? Does Turbine simply not care about remaining faithful to source material? Do you have my decaf light mocha with cinnamon sprinkles?
The Road to Mordor: Becoming a true Tolkien lore-master
Every Friday, The Road to Mordor brings you the latest in Lord of the Rings Online news, guides and analysis. Every MMORPG comes bundled in with what we call "lore" – that is, the background story of the entire world, the framework which holds the game together. Although some people claim to ignore the lore of the game to "just play it," everyone's aware of the lore at least to a certain point. Without it, we'd be generic heroes fighting generic mobs in generic settings. Lore provides the Who, the What, the Where and the Why of the virtual world around us. Who are those guys I'm fighting against? Why is it important that I beat them? Where did they come from? What history do they have? By providing context, lore enriches the game experience, and as such, it's a vital part of constructing a good MMO. Don't believe me? Think back to some of the blander MMOs that you've played or seen – chances are, they're pretty weak in the lore department.
