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June 6, 2003
One of the great things about working with Tolkien's work and The Lord of
the Rings movie property is the quantity of rich and beautiful imagery
available. Middle Earth is a wondrous place, full of flavor and texture,
both beautiful and horrifying.
In addition to deep competition and strategy, the best Trading Card Games
provide their players with a great sense of exploration. The Lord of the
Rings TCG excels at this like few other TCGs, and the images and geography
of Middle Earth is a large part of that. Not only do you get to explore the gameplay and strategy that each new set of cards brings, but the images from Peter Jackson's films and the beautiful card templates created by the Decipher art team provide a window to Middle Earth -- it's a LOTR collector's dream.
The Main Lobby
We wanted to try to capture some of that sense of exploration, wonder and geography in the online environment, with different areas of the game
representing different locales and themes in Middle Earth. In the Alpha
version of The Lord of the Rings Online TCG, the jumping off point is the
Main Lobby. From here, you'll be able to access different game lobbies,
each with its own cultural theme and artwork, including Tutorials in The
Shire, a Casual Game lobby in Lothlorien, Premier Series Events in Fangorn
Forest, Sanctioned Tournaments in Gondor, a Rated Game lobby on the plains
of Rohan, and the Dwarven Trading Post in Erebor.
There's still some tweaking and tuning to do of the layout, and new areas of
the map may be opened in the future, with exploration of some of the shadow
culture themes in the works - a Middle Earth crawl tournament that takes you
from the Shire to the depths of Mordor, anyone? Or perhaps the Online World Championships in Far Harad?
Check back with us on Monday, and check out the Elven-themed Matchmaking
Lobby and Game Lobby screenshots we'll be releasing to see a couple of great
examples of the culture themes at work.
Scott Martins
Lead Designer
Worlds Apart Productions
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