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Damn government

Yet it is a magical number somehow :)

Have you seen the XBox One reveal? I own no console at all and watched the reveal without any preconceptions. Half way through I stopped and went back to gaming (if I want to watch tv, I'll use my television). It's also perhaps a good thing to watch this: Youtube.com
Bare in mind that Angry Joe is an XBox 360 fan :)

Hmmm, I just had this great vision where WB (or any generic games studio hired by WB) would make an RPG based on The Hobbit (something along those lines has to happen, right). And they would go really big with it (open world design, real role-playing and all that good stuff), just to prove that they could easily outdo a modding team and show the world that they are indeed a worthy company and a force to be reckoned with.

This ofcourse would cost them a big amount of money, but that would be alright, as there are many Tolkien fans who would love to have a well made LOTR rpg (the petition by aforementioned modding team proved that). They could already imagine the smiling faces of thousands of new WB fans chanting 'Over the Misty Mountains Cold', while spending loads of their hard earned money on this epic game. But then, at the moment of the completion of development, a horrific realization settled in. Somewhere down the line WB had made a deal with Microsoft for the game to be an XBox One exclusive... 3 weeks later (as expected) the XBox brand was taken off the market and WB went bankrupt as the XBox fail coincided with the Tolkien Estate winning the lawsuit.
Yup, that was a nice vision :)

I sure hope Eriador will be added to the map then (after the main mod is finished ofcourse). I would love the idea of being able to rebuild and repopulate Anuminas and Fornost (although that's probably way beyond the scope of this mod :) ).

MERP is not dead. You're actually killing it yourself with such ******** comments, because you're helping WB in achieving its goal (taking out the fanbase)...

^ This (Mmarksp). I know it's hard to have so much patience, but an update without any noteworthy news, wouldn't be much of an update... I think patience is our best weapon against WB as it seems to me that they're trying to hush up MERP by not responding to anything. (For those having lots of problems with patience, try this: Mindbodygreen.com :P )

Yeah and if they would do that, they should shout it all over the f*cking world. For surely WB would never come up with the idea of looking at this moddb page. Oh wait, they already did... If you want to risk your *** for a high profile lotr mod to keep people like yourself happy, go ahead. And as TheLastSilmaril said, they could be working on it secretly. But that's the point right? That secrecy can only be kept by appearing to be idle. Therefore I wouldn't even want to know what's going on if this was the case.

It does actually. It says they're not being idle at this point. They are working out something, be that anything related to MERP or not. I think that's positive :)

Haha, that would have blown my mind xD But yeah, seems to me that he means the Oblivion version...

I respect your opinion ofcourse (with gritting teeth admittedly :P ). And I prefer neither because I first want to see how this mod will turn out. Next to that, if this mod will turn out to be as good as it promises to be (which I'm pretty confident about), I will enjoy both mods equally well :) I love TLD and I hope I'll love TVS too.
The only mod that I'd prefer above any other well-made lotr mod would be MERP, but yeah... *sigh*

That's completely understandable I think. I support the idea of making your own models and giving your own artistic twist to mods. Also there are three elven factions involved in TLD and so basing elven armors on the armors that are featured in the films wouldn't work. Furthermore I think the elven armors the TLD team used, looked awesome. Whenever I play it, I'm completely immersed and feel as if I'm genuinely roaming the lands of Rhovanion, Rohan and Gondor. It's just another interpretation that suits Middle-Earth very well.

Huh? Which costumes from TLD weren't inspired from the movies then? As far as I can tell there's no sign of any plate armor in the books, while a lot of Gondorian soldiers wear plate armor in TLD. Also the outer wall of Minas Tirith was black (or dark, like Orthanc) according to the books, but it is white in TLD. So basically my question is where did TLD obviously depart from the films to follow the books?

That's because you're not able to destroy the ring when you're not playing the ring bearer quest line. And when you are playing the ring bearer quest line, I think your main priority would be surviving Mordor instead of attending the battle at Dagorlad.

You won't really be involved in the establishment of the story line when you're following the fellowship. So yes, you can choose to follow Frodo and Sam on their Quest for Orodruin, but the choice would not be definite as you're free to part ways with them at any time. Therefore you don't need to miss out on any battles. It's a free-roaming game after all :) (I'm not a dev, though I have been an active commenter on this page for more than a year, so this may contradict the current view of the team on this matter).

Really, that quick? A total overhaul in less than a year? That's very impressive :)
Will that be V1.0 btw?

Because WB doesn't care about us or any customers for that matter... They only care about their money. If anything, the petition will leave a mark. But I even doubt that... Anyways, courage and hope are found in unlikely places. Just read through the comments on the next page and you'll find it ;)

No, but you'll be free to follow them.

I agree and if this means what I think it means, Hail to you MERP team, that your pc's may never have a BSOD and your mods never die!

Wow, that is pretty awesome. Perhaps I'll have my own pilgrimage to the Hobbiton set once :)

The devs have already done that I believe, to no avail sadly... They've actually sent one to Ian Mckellen too. He did answer but couldn't help.

I think increasing hope would be somewhat of an overstatement. MEB said the team was only just alive a few pages back (metaphorically speaking ofcourse). So they're hanging in still, but I hope they will outlast the TE-WB lawsuit.

Yes, you're right. If only there would be some justice in this world...

You're right though :) And since MERP is a non-tangible product, that lawsuit could be very interesting.

You're welcome :) And nobody knows really. I have no jurisdiction experience or anything so I can't predict how long the settling of this lawsuit is going to take... We're talking about 80 million dollars though, so my best guess is that it's going to take quite a while.

That decision is about the counterclaim which was issued by WB after the Tolkien Estate sued them. If a judge will deem the counterclaim invalid, that would be of no real use for MERP, other then keeping the hope alive.

Indeed it is, but still without answer I fear.

Plans for a totally new mod or plans for MERP in another engine? I'm sorry for my impatience... It's just that news is hard to come by these days :)

Well, yay for them. They'll see Gandalf fighting a Balrog. I hope WB will make their own spywared platform. Then I'd put a little WB logo on the wings of shadow...

Yeah, I figured as much.. Is that because WB answered or because the project has been idle for too long?