The beards on female humans is a symbolic update that heralds huge changes

[Radhruin_EU]

Doesn't matter. They've decided to represent a much wider variety within the playerbase and applied it to Human characters, seeing as all players are human.

And that not only breaks the conceptual basis of the game but breaks any meaningful connection between those characters and Middle-earth, because the devs have done *nothing* to align that RL diversity with Middle-earth's own (beyond what's always been in the game with the 'classic' appearance of the Men among the Free Peoples). No hint of story, not even the bare minimum of some quickly cobbled together flavour text for origins. In game terms that's just a mess.

[Mund]

That idea is wildly out of keeping with a game like this. Your own RL identity should only have an indirect relationship at most with the character's - they're not 'you', you and your identity don't exist in the context of the game-world, the character and their identity do. There's never been any expectation before that your RL identity should be carried over straight into the game (in this or any other RPG); the devs have gone badly awry by blurring that line because the character and their identity should reflect the world they inhabit and be a natural part of it (since they were notionally born into it and will have been moulded by their experiences within it). As soon as you start insisting on direct player representation and treat the player's identity as primary the whole thing stops making any conceptual sense and becomes an incoherent mess.

This is a strange thing to say. Many players (not all) create characters that reflect them, particularly their main character. There is plenty of research from the past 15 years or so looking at player motivations and character customization that bears this out. If the game doesn't support the same extent of player diversity (like a lack of origin text in this case), that's a shortcoming of the game but not much of an argument for denying customization options. The game is limited, so therefore it should be...even more limited?

[Mund]

Can you please stop bringing politics into this? Seriously... no one here ever said anything against your existence.

Of course they have. People have been saying a whole lot in the way they've reacted to this issue. It only takes a bit of empathy to see that, a bit of consideration for another person.

[mr_underfoot]

How is that not hypocrisy?

Be tolerant of different opinions maybe?

you, ah need to work on your definition of hypocrisy.

and i'd be happy to tolerate your opinions. how about you tolerate SSG's?

opefully there are not many players interested in such an appearance or trolling others

yeah that particular bugbear's been brought up several times in the forums. well, where are these trolls you fear so much? it's been over a week. any reports? none? maybe it's because hardly any players outside these forums care enough about the issue to attempt said troll, and frankly, even fewer players would notice.

the thing about the people who thought up this trolling thing is that they dont see the lorebreaking lotro character as a human being expressing themselves, but rather as an attack on them and the things they love.

why was that allowed in the first place? What does it improve about the game? Who is going to seriously use it and who asked for that?

avatars are special. they're how we players experience the game. they're a little bit of ourselves, our imagination/creativity/fantasies customized and projected onto lotro's version of middle-earth. now we've been given more *options* that allow players more variety in how their special avatar looks. do some of those options break lore? yes. was it a politically-fraught decision? obviously. was the attempt worth all that? apparently the higher-ups at ssg think so, and i personally agree. will it hurt ssg's bottom line? maybe.

on the contrary it gives the developers an even higher obligation to be true to his work and do it justice wherever possible

an adaptation that goes against tolkien's wishes is more obligated to follow his wishes? interesting take.

Can you please stop bringing politics into this?

this unnecessary thread, and your complaints, are political in nature. the politics is brung.

[Tralfazz]

where are these trolls you fear so much? it's been over a week. any reports? none? maybe it's because hardly any players outside these forums care enough about the issue to attempt said troll, and frankly, even fewer players would notice.

That was my major concern, that some of these new cosmetic options – especially the new beard options – would be used to mock certain people or groups. Fortunately, you appear to be right: I haven't seen that in game one time. I've heard that it's happened, I'm sure it will happen some more. But it doesn't seem like it's going to be a significant problem.

Frankly, the biggest problems have been the the intolerant views openly expressed by a sizable chunk of this forum's community and the uneven enforcement of the forum rules. I can't say more about it because I'm not interested in getting another strike, but one side definitely had its posts deleted and the authors of those posts slapped with forum infraction points a lot more thoroughly than the other side; even though the other side was openly using political terms and phrases.

[Chaltier]

an adaptation that goes against tolkien's wishes is more obligated to follow his wishes? interesting take.

Interesting attempt at twisting my words to make them appear nonsensical while entirely missing the point.

Tolkien was opposed to film (and by extension more recent media that didn't exist in his time, like video game) adaptations because of writers' tendency to be incapable of sticking to the source material without inserting themselves and their own views and interpretation. For that reason, absolutely, if anyone decides to make such an adaptation anyway he has all the more obligation to study Tolkien's critiques of other adaptations and do their best to make a product he would find as little reason as possible to criticize.

Not allowing the perfect to become the enemy of the good, sometimes a few compromises have to be made to the medium (screen vs. book, gameplay, making enough money to keep it going, etc.), but fundamentally it should be the world he wrote and embody his vision and values as well as possible.

No developer should ever try to shoehorn their own vision, views, or agendas into an IP that isn't their own, but all the more so when the author was so opposed to adaptations for precisely such reasons.

[Arnenna]

If this move for inclusion and diversity of the player base where interviews about that? Where trailers about that? Where Tolkien fans what have inverviews and confirm what they care less about this game for 15 years, but NOW because of THAT move they decide give this game chance to try? Yes, some female players say that they don't have problems with beard on female characters, but they already play Lotro anyway

And ok, SSG can gain few more players with that, but how many players don't like that move? Players who play Lotro for many years, respect decisions from developers, trust them and accept their approach to game. Half-backed move without any thinking about how players respond on that and how players feel about that.

And IF they want to bring more players, they need announce that changes first, and have honest talk with veteran players about changes for whole game style and game direction

They did announce it, on April 18th.

https://www.lotro.com/update-notes/l...lease-notes-en

LOTRO is celebrating the uniqueness of every Player!

They don't have to discuss it with existing players first to find out how they feel about it. In fact, that would probably be very shaky ground to put themselves onto. Imagine a local bar interviewing their regulars about who can come in for a drink.

[mr_underfoot]

No developer should ever try to shoehorn their own vision, views, or agendas into an IP that isn't their own,

in theory, i agree with you. in practice, i can't think of a single adaptation that lives up to your expectations. and lotro failed your test on day one.

[Radhruin_EU]

This is a strange thing to say. Many players (not all) create characters that reflect them, particularly their main character. There is plenty of research from the past 15 years or so looking at player motivations and character customization that bears this out. If the game doesn't support the same extent of player diversity (like a lack of origin text in this case), that's a shortcoming of the game but not much of an argument for denying customization options. The game is limited, so therefore it should be...even more limited?

An RPG will typically represent player diversity by having genuine character diversity built into its setting, it won't just fake it like this because that would be absurd. The lack of any context for it here (that they've not even tried to frame it in a way that makes sense within the game by relating it to the diverse people the setting itself includes) is just plain bad. They've just mashed the setting flat so that as far as Men go, everyone from everywhere has the same appearance options, and there's no rhyme or reason to why people might be where they are. No story, in an otherwise heavily story-based game; it's an obvious contradiction. It's just acknowledging the modern world directly. If it hadn't been obvious before that SSG had stopped even pretending, it sure is now.

If a game doesn't support broad character diversity because its setting doesn't allow for that and that setting also happens to be very popular worldwide (hint hint, we're talking about one of the world's most famous and popular fantasy novels here), that's not a shortcoming: it's authenticity. It's playing it real. And most people get that concept.

[Lambtron]

And that not only breaks the conceptual basis of the game but breaks any meaningful connection between those characters and Middle-earth, because the devs have done *nothing* to align that RL diversity with Middle-earth's own (beyond what's always been in the game with the 'classic' appearance of the Men among the Free Peoples). No hint of story, not even the bare minimum of some quickly cobbled together flavour text for origins. In game terms that's just a mess.

What bothers me in particular is the distinctiveness of each subset: Bree, Dale, Rohan and Gondor are now gone. Previously, there were limitations to what each one could look like as they had their own unique features (Rohan having blonde hair, for instance). Now the question can be asked, what's the point of choosing any of these subsets, aside from the origin title?
As you say, the player gets to choose elements for creating their character within Middle Earth. Hence the RPG aspect of MMORPG. I am all for options and customisation, as long as they fit within the world that it is made for. If the focus is to be on player representation, then there is no end, at the detriment of the intended game world. By that token, I have a disability. When can we have useable wheelchairs so that I can traverse Middle Earth as myself and feel represented?

[TesalionLortus]

So, a person assigned male gender at birth, but who has identified as female, is - a female. Without all that stuff that everyone is claiming isn't possible in Middle-earth - yes, they can naturally, grow a full beard if they wish to. Regardless of whoever sees them as "a man in a dress", that is not what they are. They are - female, because that is their identity. They say so, the law says so, and people should respect that.

That's a strange argument to make because for all purposes they look how they look, which wouldn't entail a female-like avatar, and with increased customization controls you could theoretically reflect it on the male one somewhat. That's basically what it means to roleplay in games. Even when you don't particularly care you still find yourself roleplaying, that's the thing. Nevermind Middle-earth is a little bit like "history" and it was presented that way, the way Tolkien envisioned it. Should we also have outright historical settings that try to portray things that were not possible and frame them as historical, so an outright lie and trying to rewrite reality itself? (I don't think so... that's bonkers, although that's already happening btw, in some cases - so very worrying).

do some of those options break lore? yes. was it a politically-fraught decision? obviously. was the attempt worth all that? apparently the higher-ups at ssg think so, and i personally agree. will it hurt ssg's bottom line? maybe.

If it will hurt SSG's bottom line that's simply a silly business decision to make (especially with how lazily it was handled, no origins etc) and I can't believe you made that statement with such conviction that it was all worth it, because - assuming the worst - it'll actually hurt their profits/good rep too, have an effect on development resources and what not. How is that a good thing for the game?

this unnecessary thread, and your complaints, are political in nature. the politics is brung.

So lore and how some people perceive immersion is 'political now, huh? I said it, you brought politics into this. But people generally talk about lore and how it impacts their immersion under these threads. If things were in any way actually political, here is the thing - they were already removed. But guess that's not enough for you, just want to silence everyone with different opinion?

[TesalionLortus]

This is a strange thing to say. Many players (not all) create characters that reflect them, particularly their main character. There is plenty of research from the past 15 years or so looking at player motivations and character customization that bears this out. If the game doesn't support the same extent of player diversity (like a lack of origin text in this case), that's a shortcoming of the game but not much of an argument for denying customization options. The game is limited, so therefore it should be...even more limited?

And yet it's curious there are MANY MANY games (many of which I played) that, regardless of some customization options (which aren't always 100% perfect and don't cover everything for every race/class/etc) still try to remain somewhat unique and adequate to their settings. That's because they know there is depth in that and attractiveness behind lore and immersion of the setting. Mostly every game I ever played realizes that and regardless of customization options they always try to frame it in a way that you legit play a character that comes from this world. Even games with lackluster worlds and lore try to do that, because it's an important appeal factor. Failing to do that is a failure at the most underlying level of rpg-like experience, right there at the start, at character creation panel. There is also some prestige and common sense in allowing some of these options, which is the exact reason why many games don't just offer you beards on females. Rather, they would try to frame such an option as part of some cultural feature and in case of lotro they could have done it for dwarven women and made it their unique thing (which is still representation, and plenty of people would be satisfied with that alone)

Seems like SSG had utterly forgotten about that and perhaps you did too. There is some common sense/consistency/lore appeal/organization that gotta come with any such options or changes. Idk, maybe there is like a huge portion of vocal players who seemingly act like they don't care about any of this as long as MoL and SSG release new cool stories, but I assure you, many non-vocal rpg-like minded players DO care about such things and it's sad watching SSG just shoot themselves (needlessly...) in a foot like that.

Of course they have. People have been saying a whole lot in the way they've reacted to this issue. It only takes a bit of empathy to see that, a bit of consideration for another person.

Sure. Try it this way: It only takes a little bit of empathy and maturity to see that, a bit of consideration for another person, that people enjoy and immerse themselves in games differently, that for some is actually immersion breaking (regardless of what you think of it) because it was done in a half-assed way and people rightfully fear what direction their beloved game might take. Doesn't mean they're some "enemy" or "bigots." How difficult is that? A little bit of consideration for another living person who is different from yourself? Sometimes it amazes me how people can talk of empathy while completely invalidating legit experiences of other people.

[TesalionLortus]

By that token, I have a disability. When can we have useable wheelchairs so that I can traverse Middle Earth as myself and feel represented?

Yeah. And there are plenty of things I could tell about myself and scream wildly I wanna have my own special representation choices that simply aren't there, not here, not in mostly any other game. I don't. I realize not everything will be reflective of myself. That's normal - if we expect a game or any other product to actually remain appealing and unique in terms of what it has to offer, with some decent engaging quality behind it as opposed to utter creative void. Some games are simply sim simulators and that's alight, and those usually don't have much storytelling as a result, but some others far from it and that's alright too

[Elmagor]

They did announce it, on April 18th.

https://www.lotro.com/update-notes/l...lease-notes-en

LOTRO is celebrating the uniqueness of every Player!

They don't have to discuss it with existing players first to find out how they feel about it. In fact, that would probably be very shaky ground to put themselves onto. Imagine a local bar interviewing their regulars about who can come in for a drink.

This update notes for players who already playing Lotro. How they bring that earth-shaking changes to people who NEVER try Lotro or don't try it for years? I can see how SSG trying turn away veteran players from Lotro. I don't see how they trying bring new players. Game advertising was weakest point for Lotro in 16 years. Yes, they make a lot of changes in last 3 years, but potential new players never heard about them.

Yes, maybe Lotro need race of man characters from Harad, Umbar and players can accept them, and accept their dark skin, or weird hairstyles. But why rush things right now, and spend resources on that right now where game have so much problems? I don't have problems with having people from Harad or Umbar as part of Lotro, I having problems with pretending what people from Gondor, Rohan and Arnor looks like people from Harad and Umbar. It's ridiculous and represent nothing. Represent no one. Yes, SSG "want to make as many players feel represented in the game as possible" - but people have no problems where dwarf, elf, human or hobbit represent them in previous 15 years. I have no problems how my LM elf represent me from Moscow, Russia. All my characters represent me in different way, sort of form and I like them in form what I create for them. Not someone else doing that for me. And I will be crazy if I complain about that, because Lotro still have so much potential and developers have so much things to do.

[Lambtron]

Yeah. And there are plenty of things I could tell about myself and scream wildly I wanna have my own special representation choices that simply aren't there, not here, not in mostly any other game. I don't. I realize not everything will be reflective of myself. That's normal - if we expect a game or any other product to actually remain appealing and unique in terms of what it has to offer, with some decent engaging quality behind it as opposed to utter creative void. Some games are simply sim simulators and that's alight, and those usually don't have much storytelling as a result, but some others far from it and that's alright too

That was precisely my point.

If the focus is on representation of players rather than the world and the characters within, it's neverending.

[choon_blaze]

I couldn't care less about what they do to the characters as long as they still gave the option to opt out. They can add horns, tails, extra limbs to humans, make hobbits grow wings and fly off to the sunset for all I care. I'm not a RP er and never will be.

People are getting sidetracked with semantics here. It's not about "the lore", it's about bringing the dreaded 2020s real world toxicity inside a fantasy game where people literally go to escape and now they can't. Moving in this direction has demonstrably (and painfuly) ruined another big mmo which resulted in low player numbers/profits, 25% of workforce getting fired (twice) and a permanent loss of goodwill and trust to once a beautiful mmo. And they still make ridiculous statements like "it was the best decision for the game, it's now better than ever!" all the while doing objectively worse in every single metric compared to the past.

Don't try to fix what's not broken and don't alienate your established customer base in favor of some new, unknown demographic that doesn't exist. The grass isn't always greener on the other side.

[Radhruin_EU]

Of course they have. People have been saying a whole lot in the way they've reacted to this issue. It only takes a bit of empathy to see that, a bit of consideration for another person.

Nobody's said a thing about people's RL identities. The conceptual problem here is this insistence on reflecting modernity *directly* in an 'ancient' fantasy world where things are just plain different. Fantasy is escapist: people like to immerse themselves in an imaginary 'secondary world'. This isn't a graphical chat room with avatars where RL references would be natural, it's an FRPG with characters where RL references are out of place: there's a clear disconnect between it and RL and not everything translates across that divide because of the innate differences between the invented secondary world and the real, primary world. And the more you try to force such a secondary world to reflect modern society and its tropes so it directly accommodates players' RL identities, the less compelling an experience it'll be.

avatars are special. they're how we players experience the game. they're a little bit of ourselves, our imagination/creativity/fantasies customized and projected onto lotro's version of middle-earth. now we've been given more *options* that allow players more variety in how their special avatar looks.

Characters aren't avatars, even if some people mistakenly call them that; those two terms aren't interchangeable. An avatar's a graphical representation of a player; a character in a game is the representation of a fictional person, and hence the term player-character for the person whose role the player is adopting. You shouldn't confuse the two. SSG certainly shouldn't be confusing them or encouraging players to, because they should know better. Turbine definitely knew the difference.

[Fadil]

That idea is wildly out of keeping with a game like this. Your own RL identity should only have an indirect relationship at most with the character's - they're not 'you', you and your identity don't exist in the context of the game-world, the character and their identity do.

This is such a short sighted and silly take. Study after study shows that yes, people do identify with their avatars/ player characters in Mmorpgs.
It doesn’t matter that you say it shouldn’t be like this, it is like this for a lot of players. And it has been the subject of many research papers the last years.
It may be different (more intense) for younger people, but in general a lot of players even think their player character has the same characteristics as they do in real life.
They, quite literally, identify with their Avatar/ player character.

See for example: https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/4211/3252
or: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/v...51&context=etd

"Van Looy et al. (2012) goes on to state that players prefer these different types of
identifications for different reasons. Some people choose to create avatars with similar identities,
because they find that online interactions are more fulfilling when they feel their avatars’
personality resembles their own (Ducheneaut, Wen, Yee, & Wadley, 2009). Lim and Reeves
(2009) noted that similarity identification decreases the psychological distance between human
players and their avatars and increases the self-relevance of the games. As such, players are
likely motivated to spend more time and more resources, both emotional and monetary, on the
development of their avatars {...}

The success of one’s avatar in the virtual world tends to be significant to the gamer,
considering that most perceive their avatars as representations or idealizations of their self-
identities".

From a different article:
“When a player receives a chance to customize their avatar, it is often found that the avatar’s identity relates to the identity of the player.
Livingstone (2015) explains how the character customization allows the player to reflect their own individuality and how the player’s and avatar’s identity can be linked together.
This can then lead to the avatar looking like the player or the player reflecting their avatar’s identity.”

https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pu...er-and-avatar/

So, having said that, while a lot of us may roleplay a dwarf, a hobbit or an elf, especially with human characters a lot of players like their avatar to look like they do in real life.
And that has always been possible in Lotro and other Mmorpgs.
I can quite literally pick the same hair/ skin color I have in real life, put on a pair of jeans and a modern shirt and play Lotro as me.
As I have done for years, and strangely no one has ever asked me to "justify" my existence in Lotro, let alone come up with some origins story.

But hey I'm a white woman, and most here are probably white guys, you and me never questioned whether or not our characters belonged in Middle Earth, we simply did.
While this exclusive white centered view, is NOT in accordance with anything Tolkien wrote, for example about the House of Beor.

Being able to participate (in a way) in Tolkien's story is what makes this game so interesting/ fun to a lot of people.
And sometimes it’s cool to be able to do as someone who looks like yourself in rl.
It is telling that it bothers some this much that sometimes everyone, including people that aren’t white or straight, would enjoy being able to play like themselves.

They don’t ask for something special, they just ask for that what you have been able to do for all these years.
Especially when that might in fact be exactly the core of what Tolkien wrote about.

"Tolkien demonstrates that he dislikes most of all [...] segregation of the Other, and isolation of those who are different, whether by race, nationality, culture, class, age, or gender"

From: Chance, Jane. "Tolkien and the Other: Race and Gender in Middle-Earth." Tolkien's Modern Middle Ages. Ed. Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers. New York: Palgrave, 2005

Maybe it does bother you, but tbh, it is exactly none of your business how people look at, or experience their Avatar/ player character.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you disagree with all this, or even think that people shouldn’t identify with their player character,
but who are you to impose your thinking or your extremely limited views about what Tolkien wrote about, upon others?

[wispsong]

Nobody's said a thing about people's RL identities. The conceptual problem here is this insistence on reflecting modernity *directly* in an 'ancient' fantasy world where things are just plain different. Fantasy is escapist: people like to immerse themselves in an imaginary 'secondary world'. This isn't a graphical chat room with avatars where RL references would be natural, it's an FRPG with characters where RL references are out of place: there's a clear disconnect between it and RL and not everything translates across that divide because of the innate differences between the invented secondary world and the real, primary world. And the more you try to force such a secondary world to reflect modern society and its tropes so it directly accommodates players' RL identities, the less compelling an experience it'll be.


Characters aren't avatars, even if some people mistakenly call them that; those two terms aren't interchangeable. An avatar's a graphical representation of a player; a character in a game is the representation of a fictional person, and hence the term player-character for the person whose role the player is adopting. You shouldn't confuse the two. SSG certainly shouldn't be confusing them or encouraging players to, because they should know better. Turbine definitely knew the difference.

There are several things we should consider before we bash SSG.

When the game started nobody ever thought that a minority group would dictate a majority what is acceptable and what not.
This part of society has become like spoiled children if they don't get their way and politicians/corporations play along. Selfishness, self-obsession and anti-social, I would even go as far as society destroying behavior has taken over the western world. Even history is changed to please them and any written work that does not include them will also be changed. We are not any longer people of ME but people from earth playing in ME. (hope this doesn't get me banned but it is necessary to understand why we are where we are)

SSG as Turbine belong to big corporations who are essentially in charge and can dictate such things.

Christipher Tolkien passed away and as we have seen with RoP, his heirs are not interested in preserving the professors work, MEE also switched hands.

I really hope we don't see gender identities pop up on the avatar screen, I rather have them remove male/female and just give all options under race because this is where we are heading anyways as a society.

[wispsong]

This is such a short sighted and silly take. Study after study shows that yes, people do identify with their avatars/ player characters in Mmorpgs.
It doesn’t matter that you say it shouldn’t be like this, it is like this for a lot of players. And it has been the subject of many research papers the last years.
It may be different (more intense) for younger people, but in general a lot of players even think their player character has the same characteristics as they do in real life.
They, quite literally, identify with their Avatar/ player character.

See for example: https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/4211/3252
or: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/v...51&context=etd

"Van Looy et al. (2012) goes on to state that players prefer these different types of
identifications for different reasons. Some people choose to create avatars with similar identities,
because they find that online interactions are more fulfilling when they feel their avatars’
personality resembles their own (Ducheneaut, Wen, Yee, & Wadley, 2009). Lim and Reeves
(2009) noted that similarity identification decreases the psychological distance between human
players and their avatars and increases the self-relevance of the games. As such, players are
likely motivated to spend more time and more resources, both emotional and monetary, on the
development of their avatars {...}

The success of one’s avatar in the virtual world tends to be significant to the gamer,
considering that most perceive their avatars as representations or idealizations of their self-
identities".

From a different article:
“When a player receives a chance to customize their avatar, it is often found that the avatar’s identity relates to the identity of the player.
Livingstone (2015) explains how the character customization allows the player to reflect their own individuality and how the player’s and avatar’s identity can be linked together.
This can then lead to the avatar looking like the player or the player reflecting their avatar’s identity.”

https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pu...er-and-avatar/

So, having said that, while a lot of us may roleplay a dwarf, a hobbit or an elf, especially with human characters a lot of players like their avatar to look like they do in real life.
And that has always been possible in Lotro and other Mmorpgs.
I can quite literally pick the same hair/ skin color I have in real life, put on a pair of jeans and a modern shirt and play Lotro as me.
As I have done for years, and strangely no one has ever asked me to "justify" my existence in Lotro, let alone come up with some origins story.

But hey I'm a white woman, and most here are probably white guys, you and me never questioned whether or not our characters belonged in Middle Earth, we simply did.
While this exclusive white centered view, is NOT in accordance with anything Tolkien wrote, for example about the House of Beor.

Being able to participate (in a way) in Tolkien's story is what makes this game so interesting/ fun to a lot of people.
And sometimes it’s cool to be able to do as someone who looks like yourself in rl.
It is telling that it bothers some this much that sometimes everyone, including people that aren’t white or straight, would enjoy being able to play like themselves.

They don’t ask for something special, they just ask for that what you have been able to do for all these years.
Especially when that might in fact be exactly the core of what Tolkien wrote about.

"Tolkien demonstrates that he dislikes most of all [...] segregation of the Other, and isolation of those who are different, whether by race, nationality, culture, class, age, or gender"

From: Chance, Jane. "Tolkien and the Other: Race and Gender in Middle-Earth." Tolkien's Modern Middle Ages. Ed. Jane Chance and Alfred K. Siewers. New York: Palgrave, 2005

Maybe it does bother you, but tbh, it is exactly none of your business how people look at, or experience their Avatar/ player character.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you disagree with all this, or even think that people shouldn’t identify with their player character,
but who are you to impose your thinking or your extremely limited views about what Tolkien wrote about, upon others?

Written 2005, during Tolkien's time gender would have been male/female. I believe Tolkien was against discrimination of anybody different but ME is based on European mythology and he was a devout Christian. He believed in everybody is equal but in different roles for men and women. Anything named as sin in the bible he also would have seen as such. Tolkien and his son are dead and therefore everybody now can without challenge add/subtract and interpret his writings how they see fit.

[Elmagor]

There are several things we should consider before we bash SSG.

When the game started nobody ever thought that a minority group would dictate a majority what is acceptable and what not.
This part of society has become like spoiled children if they don't get their way and politicians/corporations play along. Selfishness, self-obsession and anti-social, I would even go as far as society destroying behavior has taken over the western world. Even history is changed to please them and any written work that does not include them will also be changed. We are not any longer people of ME but people from earth playing in ME. (hope this doesn't get me banned but it is necessary to understand why we are where we are)

SSG as Turbine belong to big corporations who are essentially in charge and can dictate such things.

Christipher Tolkien passed away and as we have seen with RoP, his heirs are not interested in preserving the professors work, MEE also switched hands.

I really hope we don't see gender identities pop up on the avatar screen, I rather have them remove male/female and just give all options under race because this is where we are heading anyways as a society.

When JRRT was alive, world changing because of progress and because of WW1 and WW2. But it was he who can decide what belong in his Middle-earth and what never belong. What working in this fantasy world and what don't have any sense. Millions and millions of fans - prove what he have pretty good taste and make pretty good decisions. If he don't have good decisions, that created works just crumble and magic stop working.

We can see that with Disney and Star Wars where they trying not follow canon and adding new things. Something goes wrong here, some pieces of that puzzle don't fit, and whole fantasy world of Star Wars stop working as good as it was in the past. They don't bring new fans, but they lose many old fans.

Same thing happens with SSG. They decide what belongs in Lotro and what don't belongs in Lotro. Of course, they never revert that decision, but they don't want to fix damage done by that decision. For many years we was proud what we have game where devlopers cares about game and players cares about game, and together we create some sort of magic. With such decisions Lotro turns into just another MMO, with less money, less amount of fans, and with nothing special, nothing what can stand alone.

Once again, SSG don't understand why they doing something and how players react on this.

[Arnenna]

This update notes for players who already playing Lotro. How they bring that earth-shaking changes to people who NEVER try Lotro or don't try it for years? I can see how SSG trying turn away veteran players from Lotro. I don't see how they trying bring new players. Game advertising was weakest point for Lotro in 16 years. Yes, they make a lot of changes in last 3 years, but potential new players never heard about them.

Yes, maybe Lotro need race of man characters from Harad, Umbar and players can accept them, and accept their dark skin, or weird hairstyles. But why rush things right now, and spend resources on that right now where game have so much problems? I don't have problems with having people from Harad or Umbar as part of Lotro, I having problems with pretending what people from Gondor, Rohan and Arnor looks like people from Harad and Umbar. It's ridiculous and represent nothing. Represent no one. Yes, SSG "want to make as many players feel represented in the game as possible" - but people have no problems where dwarf, elf, human or hobbit represent them in previous 15 years. I have no problems how my LM elf represent me from Moscow, Russia. All my characters represent me in different way, sort of form and I like them in form what I create for them. Not someone else doing that for me. And I will be crazy if I complain about that, because Lotro still have so much potential and developers have so much things to do.

Who said anything about new players? Not me, not SSG in their announcement either. Read it again . . . .

LOTRO is celebrating the uniqueness of every player!! Nope, no mention of new players there.

This thread isn't about the lack of game advertising, I think most players would agree with you that needs improving. It's off topic here though and would make no difference to the conversation even if it weren't.

No idea why the changes are coming now. Nobody does, except SSG. Could be something as simple as they wish to be more inclusive, or could be something far more pressing, such as a compliance issue. Its all guesswork, because only they know why. Everything else is speculation. Things have changed in the last 15 years, the world has changed in the last 15 years. People better catch up with it.

I'm genuinely happy for you that you can create your character in Middle-earth to reflect yourself, and in a way that you're happy with. Its also great that you have had the freedom to do that for the last 15 years. It's also great that many other players can now do the same.

[Fadil]

Written 2005, during Tolkien's time gender would have been male/female. I believe Tolkien was against discrimination of anybody different but ME is based on European mythology and he was a devout Christian. He believed in everybody is equal but in different roles for men and women. Anything named as sin in the bible he also would have seen as such. Tolkien and his son are dead and therefore everybody now can without challenge add/subtract and interpret his writings how they see fit.

Being a devout Christian, which I also am, thank you very much, doesnt equal being a bigot.

"Anything named as sin in the bible he also would have seen as such"
Tolkien was a Christian, he wasnt an imbecile.
He knew when the Bible was written and what that society stood for.

Anyway, yet again we go into politics.

[TesalionLortus]

Well, let's make an interesting fantasy with Tolkien still being alive today and having enough time to comprehend the modern times. I believe he would be fine with ideas of inclusivity but he would still say something like "just make it make some decent sense within these canvas I created please."

SSG did good in this department for Stout-axes and different dwarven clans. (Not just good, they did an amazing job!)

SSG failed in this department for the avatar update, not only failing at some basic internal lore building effort (which wouldn't be too difficult), but also completely undermining any of the rpg elements behind player character creation and trying to introduce some weird utter separation between the player character and the world in which we play, as if the player character was just some irrelevant avatar picture on twitter completely unrelated to the game, as if nobody engaged with rpg behind rpg. Something that most other games simply don't do, it's just a lame way of handling this, and there are much better ways of handling this.

Simple. People can argue all they want but that's what it all comes down to and nothing going to change that (well, if they add origins and release more hairstyles/beards/etc... maybe then!)

[Arnenna]

Written 2005, during Tolkien's time gender would have been male/female. I believe Tolkien was against discrimination of anybody different but ME is based on European mythology and he was a devout Christian. He believed in everybody is equal but in different roles for men and women. Anything named as sin in the bible he also would have seen as such. Tolkien and his son are dead and therefore everybody now can without challenge add/subtract and interpret his writings how they see fit.

I'm agnostic, but I know a lot of devout Christians, including my late Mother and my best friend. Part of their Christianity is that they are decent people, able to show acceptance and tolerance of others. They accept what is, even if it comes coupled with forgiveness. I'd like to think that the wonderfully talented human who wrote words concerning the goodness and kind deeds of others, would know the difference between "sin" and diversity.

Maybe I'm wrong, but maybe not.

I have much lighter opinion of SSG this last week, that's for sure. They've bitten the bullet, and stood by their decision, and good for them. They've got my support on this.