I saw some hands-on impressions, earlier today, of a beta of the forthcoming PC MMORPG, "Lord of the Rings Online." Though there does not appear to be a consensus at this point, those who have tried it DO agree that the game adheres to the design philosophy of, "Look at how much money World of Warcraft has made."

I'm of two minds about a "Lord of the Rings"-themed MMORPG. On the one hand, what certified nerd would NOT want to experience firsthand the wonders and terrors of Middle Earth? To ride atop an ent, to slay an orc, to spend an evening dancing merrily along with Tom Bombadil and flaxen-haired Goldberry and then pretending that you ACTUALLY spent the evening riding atop an ent, slaying orcs?

On the other hand, apply the MMORPG formula to the beloved Tolkien franchise, and it's scarcely an hour before you have rampant Hobbit-baiting, astoundingly-retarded fan machinema, and at LEAST one hundred teenaged participants teabagging fallen goblins.

The chief hurdle in this sort of game -- I mean, in making a faithful Tolkien-y game, which really hasn't happened yet -- is in maintaining the atmosphere of Middle Earth while still operating what is, in effect, a virtual amusement park, complete with crowd problems and obnoxious, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing tourists. Atmosphere is a very tough nut to crack, especially difficult in a multiplayer setting but not easy even when it's just you and the computer. The Silent Hill games did it well, but since those games basically consisted of your character and nothing else BUT atmosphere, it wasn't that grand an accomplishment.

The biggest problem I see in establishing atmosphere in a video game is that, people pick up a game, they're expecting to see action right outta the gate. Twenty-minute intro cutscenes are out of the question. Most games just toss you into the fray -- look out, kid, zombies! -- and figure that the monsters coming after you will sufficiently convey whatever eeriness they were going for. It doesn't work that well.

You wanna convincingly bring a guy into the world of Middle Earth, or any other world, for that matter? I'll tell you how -- don't start the player off with an action sequence. Don't have the player's character walking in on an assassination, or being chased by a dragon. If you want your moments of peril to have genuine impact on your players, you need to spend a significant amount of time at the beginning of the game establishing normalcy. I'm talking at LEAST an hour, which sounds like a lot, I know, but that's only because previous attempts at such approaches have been incredibly boring. You figure out how to make a character's daily routine even moderately engaging, and then when the monsters start arising, the player will FEEL the magic happening. One of the first tricks of effective storytelling -- set your rules, and then break 'em.

Of course, this is only tangentally related to MMORPGs, since the big hurdle in establishing atmosphere there is being able to keep all the other yahoos in-character. I've no idea how to do this, but I'll think about it.

What would YOU do?

Norm's Link-o-th'-Moment:

Drew's Script-O-Rama

Home of the original, better "Day of the Dead" script!