Bring on the Eye Candy:

Looks Keep us Longing for LOTRO

By Shayalyn

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Back in the day, if you were one of the few people who’d actually heard
of online gaming, your game choices were few. EverQuest and Ultima
Online topped the food chain, and most gamers, if they weren’t playing
one, were playing the other. These days, however, online gaming is a
good bit more mainstream. Though we gamers haven’t quite risen above
the public perception that we’re all a bunch of socially isolated
geeks, it’s tough to ignore that the current game topping the MMOG food
chain, World of Warcraft, has over 5 million subscribers worldwide.
Online gaming has arrived, which means that more and more game
developers are throwing their hats into the ring.



I can name several MMOGs due to launch in 2006 right off the top of my
head: Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Auto Assault, Hero’s Journey, Age of
Conan, Dark Solstice...and, of course, Lord of the Rings Online:
Shadows of Angmar. Each of these games is competing for our cash. Each
one is counting on us being willing to shell out the cash for the game
plus a monthly fee to adventure in a simulated world. And the time for
these game developers to capture our attention is now, before their
games launch. What sorts of things keep us longing for a game in
development like LOTRO?



At the risk of sounding hopelessly girly, character creation and the
overall look of a game hold a great deal of importance for me as a
gamer, so I want to see attractive character models coming out of the
development stage. For me, gaming is a means of stepping out of reality
for a little while, and donning the exotic look of a sexy little wood
elf nymph, or a scrappy human priestess. I’m not only venturing into a
fantasy world where I can wield magic or weapons against my foes--I’m
taking a break from the reality of bad hair days and too-tight jeans
(damn you, Ben & Jerry!).



href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?set_albumName=album02&id=druid_old_model&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> alt="Old school wood elf"
src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album02/druid_old_model.thumb.jpg"
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 83px; height: 150px;" align="left"
hspace="4" vspace="2">About 6 years ago I created my first elf in
an online game. I fired up EverQuest, selected my avatar’s face from 5
or 6 choices, and set the color of my eyes. I picked out a hairstyle
from a modest selection, and then chose its color. In just a minute or
two I was ready to step out into the world of Norrath. My character
looked angular and weird, but hey...I was in a world full of other
people, with other avatars, and I could not only converse with them,
but I could join them and battle the forces of evil.



Oh, how things have changed. Once, the novelty of cavorting through an
online world was enough to sustain a game like EQ or UO; we didn’t care
if our characters looked like glorified stick people. That’s no longer
the case. Now we want advanced tools for character creation. We want to
be able to create an avatar that looks unique; one that our friends
will be able to recognize by appearance, not just by the character name
that hovers mysteriously over our heads.



When I first tested Dungeons & Dragons Online, the latest release
from Turbine (also, incidentally, href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?set_albumName=album02&id=DDO_character2&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> alt="DDO elf model"
src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album02/DDO_character2.thumb.jpg"
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 125px; height: 150px;" align="right"
hspace="4" vspace="2"> the developers of Lord of the Rings
Online), I took a full 10-15 minutes during character creation just
making certain my elven ranger had the right look. Gone are the days of
pick-a-race, pick-a-face, pick-a-hairstyle character creation. In the
newest MMOGs we’re selecting the shapes of our character’s individual
features, from eyebrows to nose to chin. The hairstyles and hair colors
are vast. Eye colors are no longer blue, green, gray or brown, but run
the scale from ice-blue to onyx-black. Some games (DDO is not one of
them) even offer sliders that allow players to adjust the shape of
their facial features in minute detail.



How will LOTRO fare when it comes to character creation tools? The game
isn’t in beta yet, so it’s hard to say with any certainty. What is
certain is that the character models we’re seeing in official
screenshots look beautiful. In an href="http://www.ogaming.com/data/3916%7ELotROpart1.php">interview
with OGaming, LOTRO’s executive producer, Jeffrey Steefel,
said,  “You will...be able to custom create things like hairstyle,
color, face shape, facial attributes, complexion, special features like
scars, and to some degree body shape (we have to make sure you can’t
make a hobbit that is taller than an elf!). I must confess the
foot-hair slider will be glaringly absent, though…” That sounds vaguely
promising, and also a good bit like the character customization in
Dungeons & Dragons Online.



href="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?set_albumName=LotRO_Screenshots&id=bear_in_mind&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> alt="LOTRO screenshot with character model"
src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/LotRO_Screenshots/bear_in_mind.thumb.jpg"
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 150px; height: 110px;" align="left"
hspace="4" vspace="2">The second thing that instantly draws my
attention with MMOGs in development is, well, looks. How does the
environment look? Are the screenshots visually appealing? Yes, yes...I
hear you saying, “Screenshots don’t make a game! What about the
gameplay?” All in good time, my dears. Gameplay is indeed crucial, but
it’s not something we can easily assess without experiencing it. Now,
in these pre-beta days of LOTRO (and they’ve been pre-beta days for a
good long time), we have to go on what little visual information we do
have.



For the past week or so, my spare time has been sucked up by a
monumental single-player game called The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
When this game was in development, I thought the screenshots looked
impressive. Now that I’m actually playing the game, I can only say that
I’m completely and utterly blown away by it. It is, bar none, the
higest level of immersion I've experienced in a PC game to date. The
world is so visually impressive that I find myself stopping along the
roadside, not to fight off a bandit (although there are plenty of
those), but just to stare at the play of light along the mountains in
the distance. I’ve had more jaw-dropping moments playing Oblivion than
I can count, and that’s just in relation to the visuals, without even
taking into consideration the way the wind sighs in the trees, or how
the weather comes on gradually, first with the sky darkening, then with
the winds picking up, then with fat raindrops falling and splashing on
the nearby lake as the lightning flickers and the thunder booms.



Kind of makes you want to run out and spend $50 on Oblivion, doesn’t
it? See, that’s my point. While many will say that screenshots don’t
make a game, it is true that they provide that little visual carrot on
a stick that keeps us longing to play any game in development. There’s
a reason why the communities surrounding MMOGs in development flock for
new screenshots. Screenshots give us a glimpse into the world we’re
hoping to experience soon. The more impressive they look, the more
intrigued we become with the game in question--intrigued enough to take
a closer look, at least.



Naturally, as LOTRO’s development unfolds, I’m like any other gamer,
keeping an eye on all aspects of the game. But I can honestly say that
if a game in development didn’t have some serious visual appeal in the
form of attractive character models and eye-popping scenery, it
wouldn’t interest me. My tastes have become a lot more sophisticated
since the days when I was content with EverQuest. Fortunately, so has
technology, and LOTRO is looking good. Bring on the eye candy!

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