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Lord of the Rings Online gets a Mac client
Lord of the Rings Online is a massively multiplayer game run by Turbine Entertainment based on JRR Tolkien's popular fantasy fiction series. The game first went live back in 2007, but a few years ago transitioned over to a free-to-play model, aiming to bring in a large audience of free players supported by a smaller group of people paying for microtransaction items. Now, after "planning and discussing and working on this for quite some time," Turbine's VP of Product Development Craig Alexander told TUAW in an exclusive interview that Turbine is releasing a Mac client for Lord of the Rings Online this week, bringing the free-to-play game to Apple's platform and the Mac audience. The client is now live, and can be downloaded directly from this link. The Mac platform has been making leaps and bounds forward in options for gamers lately. Steam famously brought its platform over to Apple's personal computers recently, as have several other developers. Turbine first considered bringing Lord of the Rings Online to Mac back when the game went free-to-play, said Alexander, but the reason it took so long was because the company decided to build a native port for the game rather than depend on emulation or other similar methods. "Trying to outsource the task just didn't make sense," said Alexander. Kate Paiz is the executive producer of the game, and she said that because the Mac client is native, it'll be the exact same game on the Mac as it is on the PC. "It'll all just work natively," she told TUAW. "The Mac stuff will work through the same patcher." The Mac game itself won't have any extra features or experiences exclusive to the Mac, but Paiz said the team always tries to figure out how to best welcome new players, and was thinking about the Mac client even while developing the game's latest expansion, Riders of Rohan, released a few weeks ago. The current launch of the game will be as a beta client, downloadable directly from Turbine that will simply sign into the game's live servers. A closed beta has been active for a few months, so this is essentially an open beta period starting now. Turbine expects to maintain and update that client over time, fixing any problems that users have. Alexander said that as the client moves out of beta, the company will consider making it available on Steam or other downloadable platforms. The Mac App Store probably isn't a possibility just yet, because Turbine depends on the game's microtransactions for profit, and running those through Apple's marketplace would just cost too much at this point. But Turbine is expecting both to see current players excited to run the game natively on their favorite computers, and new players interested in a free-to-play experience on OS X. "There haven't been a lot of MMOs or free-to-play games on the Mac yet, which we think is an opportunity, " said Alexander. "We're hopeful we're going to get lots of new players." And Paiz said that Turbine is happy to have Mac users on board. "We're very excited to welcome the Mac community firsthand ... We'd like to see what this IP and this game means to them personally."
The Game Archaeologist and the What Ifs: Middle-earth Online
I had so much fun walking down the halls of "What if?" last week that I thought I'd keep the streak going for the rest of the month (if you'll allow for some summertime indulgence). It's not that I necessarily wanted MMO history to turn out differently than it did, but it's always tantalizing to wonder what the field would look like with different games out there. Would they have proven more popular than our current crops? Would they have pushed the envelope of innovation? Of course, it's easy to project greatness onto never-released titles, bemoaning that "if only MMO X had launched, we would've had the perfect game!" What ifs are interesting but should never be taken as absolute fact. This week I wanted to look at a project that's related to an MMO near and dear to my heart. As most of you know, I'm somewhat of a Lord of the Rings Online nut here at Massively. Sure, the rest of the staff is upset that I smoke pipeweed inside and never wear shoes, but that's just how far I go to understand the game. But even my LotRO isn't immune to a massive what if. Known to some but not to all, Turbine wasn't the first MMO studio to take a crack at Tolkien's license -- no, for that we have to travel back to 1998 and revisit Sierra On-Line. It was this company that had a brief but memorable run designing Middle-earth Online, aka "What if LotRO had permadeath?" It's a fascinating glimpse into an entirely different approach to the IP, and even though it died a fairly early death, it's important to be remembered. Frodo lives!
Rumor: Turbine working on console MMO?
Internet scuttlebutt has it that Turbine is cooking up a console MMO codenamed Project Hendrix. A posting at GameSpot cites a Turbine job listing that seeks an engineer for an "unannounced online console project." The article also mentions the resume of one Josh Phelan, a Turbine employee who apparently mentioned the Hendrix title in his online resume (which has since gone dark). Turbine's console aspirations are nothing new, as studio VP Craig Alexander hinted at such desires as early as 2009. Commenter speculation links the job listing to the mysterious Pottermore title, and given Turbine's acquisition by Warner Brothers (which also owns the Pottermore trademark), it's not unreasonable to suspect that the sorting hat could be getting ready to assign a Potter MMO to House Turbine. Check out the details on GameSpot and let us know what you think in the comments.
PAX East 2011: The future of MMOs from the mouths of the developers
The PAX East panel that almost made me late for the Star Wars: The Old Republic Meet 'n' Greet was a panel hosted by MMORPG.com and featuring some of the heavy hitters in MMO development for this year. I am certainly glad I did not skip this one. This was the chance for the fans to hear what the future of MMOs will bring from the people who are making them. Let me give you a rundown of the panel members -- and tell me you don't just stand in awe of these guys: (from left to right) Curt Schilling, the founder of 38 Studios; Craig Alexander, the VP of Product Development for Turbine; Jeremy Gaffney, Executive Producer at Carbine Studios; Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer for Trion Worlds; Brian Knox, Senior Producer for En Masse Entertainment; James Ohlen, Creative Director for BioWare; and Colin Johanson, Lead Content Designer for ArenaNet. The opening question really set the stage for the panel. It let us know where the minds of these producers and executives are. The question was simple: Where do you see online games going in the next 10 years? Follow after the cut to find out their thought provoking answers.
Developer round table: MMO betas, page 4
Craig Alexander, Turbine VP of Product Development
Turbine: Easier to develop MMOs on the Xbox 360 than the PS3
Craig Alexander, Turbine's vp of product development, spoke at Austin GDC today in a panel called "MMOs to Consoles", which is no surprise since Turbine is working on a console MMO. It's investing heavily in the MMO console arena, and their current title, which remains unannounced, is in "active development."However, he did spend a lot of time pointing out how difficult it is to develop games on the PS3 vs. the Xbox 360. Duck your head as the fanboys go to it.Here's the logic: The Blu-ray drive on the PS3 is actually slower in seek and access time than the DVD drive on the Xbox 360. Once the Blu-ray gets up to speed, it can handle large amount of data. Just not in seeking and accessing, which is a pain for streaming when you're playing something like an MMO. The memory architecture is different. When you're dealing with main memory, you work with "256ish MB" on the PS3 vs "512ish MB" on the 360. The tools aren't as friendly on the PS3. That includes the performance monitor tools, the debugger tools ... everything. Migrating a project from the Xbox 360 to the PS3 is much harder than moving from the PS3 to the 360. Alexander recommends starting on the PS3 to get all of the heavy lifting done first, but using his same logic it sounds like developers will have a frustrating time during that process. Don't happy tools make happy workers? Gamers already feel like some titles suffer because they have to be developed for both platforms. Is this going to affect MMOs coming to both platforms?There's more. Read on, Macduff.%Gallery-73468%
AGDC09 Breaking: Turbine confirms console MMO in the works
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gaming_news/AGDC09_Breaking_Turbine_confirms_console_MMO_in_the_works'; During his talk at AGDC entitled "MMOs to Consoles -- Challenges, Opportunities, Emerging Trends," Turbine's Craig Alexander, the VP of project development for the company, has confirmed that they are working on a console MMO.The project has been in Turbine's production house for a year and a half now, and the staff is actively seeking to launch the title on Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles. Turbine does also have plans to develop for Wii in the future, although they did not go any further into that topic. Over 20 million dollars has been spent on developing the platform for this title. The targeted release date for this project is early 2011. Craig also said during the speech that he believes that consoles will eventually pass PCs in the MMO market, making this a lucrative endeavor. He also hinted briefly at a free to play subscription model, saying that MMOs should have "minimum friction to access."Turbine has said in the past that they will completely confirm their console MMO plans in early 2010, but speculation is still in the air as to if this is a brand new IP, or perhaps one of their former titles repackaged for the console. (Edit: Craig has now said, and we quote, "Under no circumstances should you attempt to port a title." This now looks to be a brand new console IP for Turbine.)We'll keep this post updated with new information as we receive it.%Gallery-73468%
LOGIN 2009 online gaming conference speakers announced
Over the past few years, the online gaming conferences put together by Evergreen Events have been rather significant ones in the industry. Evergreen Events are the people who organized the ION Game Conference which we covered extensively last year, and the Online Game Development Conference in 2007. As we announced previously, ION has been renamed as LOGIN for 2009 and they're already announcing some of the conference's speakers. Among the many speakers slated for LOGIN this May are David Ryan Hunt, Senior Game Designer at Flying Lab Software, and Craig Alexander, Turbine's VP of Product Development. Alexander's session will be "Building Online Games for the Console Generation: Challenges and Opportunities" which could certainly prove to be interesting. We'll keep an eye on how the conference is shaping up as we get closer to the four-day event kicking off on May 11th.
Panel of MMO developers discuss the industry at Comic-Con
Over at New York Comic-Con 2008, Ten Ton Hammer assembled a group of respected MMO developers to answer questions about the future of the industry, and just to talk shop in general. The members of the panel were: Age of Conan Game Designer Jason Stone, Warhammer Online Senior Producer Jeff Hickman, Turbine Vice-President of Product Development Craig Alexander, 38 Studios Vice-President of Creative Development Scott Cuthbertson, and EVE Online Game Designer Matt Woodward -- phew, that's a lot of capitalization.There are two videos to watch, one in which the questions come from TTH, the other being an audience Q&A. Combined, the videos take the better part of an hour to watch, but you'll find some interesting and differing viewpoints on various topics, such as business models, world-altering events, product placement, sci-fi versus fantasy MMOs, winning market share from World of Warcraft, and community features in and out of game.
