Dammit! I was in RFC (Ragefire Colu ) with Superman and he just left the group while we were in the middle! And he rolled need on the powered armor, he can’t even use it! I’m not grouping with him again.

TV series or comic books with multiple stories continuing forever, with perhaps some story arcs covering multiple episodes are easier (although not easy) to match with an MMORPG context.

Exceptions would be stories from books where the major context is the bigger universe or context and stories in a book or film just reflect a small story in that universe or context.

“The Superman adventure could go anywhere” ?? Granted I don’t play CoH, but I don’t get it. Superman is the classic hero that doesn’t die. He can’t die. Yeah, kryptonite, blah, blah, blah.

I guess that the stuff you mention is stuff that just doesn’t bother me. I like interesting tactics, well-written quest text, and Tolkien.

Where-as the little side stories in the game are interesting, because I don’t know what happens, and I can fail them a few times.

There’s no point what-so-ever having our characters help the hobbits through the barrow downs because our characters don’t show up in that part of the book and we know the hobbits make it through ok anyway. But, we can adventure in the barrow downs, take part in the lore of the world, and help the fight against The Great Evil by doing our bit elsewhere.

It’s fine not to like the game, but I don’t think you can blame Turbine for the fact that the book sets down in black and white what does and does not happen to the fellowship. I’ve done plenty of quests for Elrond, Gandalf, Aragorn, et. al. and it’s excellent fun.

No restrictions is the big difference.

We know how the Aragorn based adventure will end.
The Superman adventure could go anyway.
Look at the Matrix Online where a major character death took place.
Yet, LOTRO, we know what awaits…so, really why do it?

Look at LOTR: Conquest to get an idea of how to approach that same license. The key is giving more choices.
I am sure Turbine has a lot of control out of their hands thanks to Tolkien’s Enterprise.
But, this limits the overall appeal of LOTRO, which has been shown by sales.

Now, if Turbine were to do the same thing with Harry, then I guess we know there will be lifetime subs and 9.99 a month deals all over the place again.

As for companies liking “Yes Men”, I think what companies like is revenue. And I very much doubt that a Lord of the Rings property that didn’t have any of the familiar characters in it would do nearly as well. So, if you are going to make a persistent world, with the characters we know in them, then the players aren’t going to be able to affect what those characters do all that much.

As you get past level 20, you can start developing an agenda of your own, which takes you northward, and on a different track from Aragorn. Unfortunately, since we know who kills the Witch King of Angmar, we can’t be the ones to do it, even though he’s at the center of the evil of the North. We can’t throw down Saruman, either. Maybe that’s the disappointment you are expressing?

http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_5746

But I could be wrong