Filling the Gaps: following in the footsteps of the Wildwood and the Angle

[Celebrawn]

The landmass you marked would create the exact same problem as in Gondor though (as far as visuals go) = tiny, narrow landmass between the coast and some mountains/hills all the they way along the coast. That's exactly the sort of thing I wanna say to: please no...

Gondor was made accurately, a fairly narrow landmass between the sea and the White Mountains. Harad/Umbar will need some kind of eastern border that is not just an invisible wall looking into an endless desert you can't enter.

incoming level 150 Harad Boar that looks just like the level 5 Bree Boar XD I'm sure that they'll build enough new landscape assets that the new biom will look..... well, new and not rehashed, but I do not expect things like mobs to have anything new but a palette swap at best. Including the corsairs

Well, boars are boars, right. Only makes sense in a more "grounded" world, unlike WoW where anything goes. I expect some new wildlife exclusive to the desert, and hopefully jungle along the rivers, where there is the greatest potential for new animals like tigers, elephants, etc. But the repeating wildlife shouldn't really be radically different from what's in the rest of the world. ANd human enemies/NPCs, they shoudl just be men with different clothing, which is basically what they will be.

[miriadel]

I get that, but the boar models (just to say one) could really use an updated look for the new area instead of being the same 15 year old ones with just some swapped colors

[k40rne]

Very unlikely, do they work THAT far in advance? (So, before RoP came out, they would have to already be working on Umbar pretty extensively, not just thinking about it). RoP caused them to play around in Eregion in CardoSwan (to a small degree though, because they had no idea what this series is even gonna do). If they wanted to play that kind of promo game, then Rhun direction would make a lot more sense, set in stone immediately after the last ep of RoP. If RoP influenced that decision at all, then I would say it would be because RoP didn't gave us Umbar nor Harad nor anything decently Numenorean (which was a shocker) so maybe that's why they decided to do that :P alongside other reasons

We only just saw ROP maybe 4 or 5 months ago, but it was known about for years (no one had any idea what it would be besides involving Numenor in the 2nd age), so at some point SSG anticipated ROP would involve Umbar somehow (before it was released, obviously) likely a year or two before.
Umbar would have had extensive pre production research etc (Chris Pierson explained how rigorous their research processes are before), so maybe a year or 2 ago that they decided on it. This gives plenty of time in between for my theory to be accurate.

This ain't that diffficult a theory to grasp, and CardoSwan is a filling in the gaps thing, Umbar is an epic story arc and would have taken a lot of time to plan, unlike CardoSwan which could be put together relatively fast, without any need to plan years ahead.

I don't see why you keep bringing up Rhun, we are talking about before ROP was released or even teasers released that this process would have been happening internally within SSG.

[k40rne]

I'm quite sure you knew this isn't what I meant. There isn't a North Ithilien 1, and North Ithilien 2 map. Its divided up into logical sub regions, and those entire regions were released at once. Harondor is just one region, it doesn't have such a clear border.

You're assuming because we understand there is a N Ithilien and a S ithilien from the book that the fellowship travelled in. The books did not talk about Harondor much, so we have no idea how it would be broken apart or how the devs would incorporate it, much like Enedwaith, which is going to have at least 2 or more parts if they ever get to it. Enedwaith literally means wild middle & at one point took up most of Southeastern Eriador (in an earlier incarnation of Tolkien's map), same thing with Harondor meaning South Gondor, which is separate from Southguard which is also a part of Southern Gondor. Harondor lies between the Poros river in the North & the Harnen in the south, it is vast & it would be unlikely that they'd include it all, especially when they have so much other zones they are working on this year.

There was nothing rough about it. They pretty clearly said they had 15 years worth of story ideas. And this just leads back to my original comment. Yeah, this story will likely take 2-3 to play out. Then theres is northern arc that takes the same amount of time. The Mordor arc, the return to Eriador/Ending of the quest arc, and then various alternate leveling maps we know they have ideas for. Which would be about.... 15ish years worth of content? Not exactly room to go into the kind of deep dive into the depths of Harad just to reach the Harad jungles.

They said they had enough stuff to go for at least another 15 years. You're assuming all these timelines, & I never said we'd go so far South into far Harad which spans who knows how long, i said we may come into a Far Harad city at some point, not that we'd go deep into the territory itself.

Putting money into the game doesn't magically change how much new content is put out unless the hire more staff specifically at the landscape and quest creation levels. All this means is more efforts put toward things like QoL fixes, and graphical improvements, within the team they currently have. And quest-lite areas work for some places sure, but you wouldn't expect that in the depth of Harad, in the middle of the Haradrim Kingdoms, and all that.

I never claimed that. I said there may be a zone in the future, not explore the entire civilization. From what I can gather, Far Harad is like the equivalent of sub-Saharan Africa, so it could go on for thousands of miles. Near Harad would be an Egypt & surrounding Sahel, while Umbar would be like Morocco & the Barbary coast.

And it can easily, especially when their lead world builder is creating streamlined processes to make the landscape process much faster, they could hire some script writers easily enough for non epic story content or even crreate more of those kill x boars pop up quests to fill in a bit. We don't know exactly, but we should assume they will only get faster as time goes by, at least at landscape creation (because they've shown us they are constantly working on ways to speed things up).

I doubt RoP gave them any sort of push to do Umbar. There's been teases of going back to Umbar, and reconnecting with Jajax since 2014, long before RoP was a thing. Hell, arguably it ties back into the books since we know Aragon subdued Umbar at some point.

yes, Aragorn as Thorongil also subdued them in the distant past, but that doesn't mean ROP didn't also influence them to pick Umbar a few years later to attempt to cash in on a flawed anticipation of where the series could end up.

[Arnand_the_Fox]

You're assuming because we understand there is a N Ithilien and a S ithilien from the book that the fellowship travelled in. The books did not talk about Harondor much, so we have no idea how it would be broken apart or how the devs would incorporate it, much like Enedwaith, which is going to have at least 2 or more parts if they ever get to it. Enedwaith literally means wild middle & at one point took up most of Southeastern Eriador (in an earlier incarnation of Tolkien's map), same thing with Harondor meaning South Gondor, which is separate from Southguard which is also a part of Southern Gondor. Harondor lies between the Poros river in the North & the Harnen in the south, it is vast & it would be unlikely that they'd include it all, especially when they have so much other zones they are working on this year.

Who said anything about Harondor coming this year? With the fact we're getting a post-war Gondor, and then going to Umbar, this would indicate they're doing Umbar like they did Northern Mirkwood, as a separate thing. I never expected Harondor until a year or two from now as they build from Umbar back to Gondor.

Looking at the two most recent storylines, the Black Book of Mordor and Legacy of the Dwarves, they had 4-5 new zones each. Extrapolating from that I could see something like
-Post War Gondor: Includes Minas Tirith, Pellinor, South Ithilien, and Southguard.
-Umbar: Includes the city/area around it
-Far Harad: Desert map between Umbar and Harondor
-Harondor: Connects Far Harard to the post-war Gondor map.
Assuming they don't just go full Black Book and have us jumping around from Umbar to like Dorwinion or something.

They said they had enough stuff to go for at least another 15 years. You're assuming all these timelines, & I never said we'd go so far South into far Harad which spans who knows how long, i said we may come into a Far Harad city at some point, not that we'd go deep into the territory itself.

I never assumed anything about any timeline. I simply extrapolated how much content they put out per year to give a rough estimation on how long it would take to do X. That isn't an assumption, thats a conclusion based on facts. something else entirely. And yes, going to South Harad would take a number of new maps that doesn't really fit with what they've done at any point in the game's development.

I never claimed that. I said there may be a zone in the future, not explore the entire civilization. From what I can gather, Far Harad is like the equivalent of sub-Saharan Africa, so it could go on for thousands of miles. Near Harad would be an Egypt & surrounding Sahel, while Umbar would be like Morocco & the Barbary coast.

And it can easily, especially when their lead world builder is creating streamlined processes to make the landscape process much faster, they could hire some script writers easily enough for non epic story content or even crreate more of those kill x boars pop up quests to fill in a bit. We don't know exactly, but we should assume they will only get faster as time goes by, at least at landscape creation (because they've shown us they are constantly working on ways to speed things up).

That's not really a line of thought that follows.
-Making landscape is one thing
-Speeding up landscape doesn't speed up quest programming
-Script writers aren't programmers making quests
these things do not intrinsically lead to being able to make a suitable number of quests for the new areas.

yes, Aragorn as Thorongil also subdued them in the distant past, but that doesn't mean ROP didn't also influence them to pick Umbar a few years later to attempt to cash in on a flawed anticipation of where the series could end up.

That isn't how anyone does these sorts of cross promotions. If you're going to do a tie in to something you do a tie in with what you know they're doing. Not by throwing darts at a wall and guessing they might do that.

Umbar just makes sense. After lots of time in Mordor and the North in the last two storylines it makes sense to travel down south for scenery/NPC group change.

[TesalionLortus]

these things do not intrinsically lead to being able to make a suitable number of quests for the new areas.

You keep ignoring the fact we can have bigger land and same amount of quests/content work. Depending on the land and the idea of course. But it's fairly possible and they should just do that. Plus, what k40rne suggested, have some fairly easy and quick to set up autobestow/standalone quests in some lone landmarks - they've been using these a lot more pre-North than they did recently but this format is really good for distant-to-discover-by-a-Westerner places of the South, where the PC shouldn't be even treated like some perfect candidate to immedtiely be used by local authorities to handle their own affairs, so should really make good use of this format. And clearly easier/quicker to work with than, say, a whole chain with more complex triggers/NPC phasing etc.

And I'm not saying that as in "do generic quests, less stories" but more like have some of these simpler ones for extra amount of content and to make the land feel filled - so helps to avoid CardoSwan situation, where many players felt like there wasn't any content in its many clearly-defined landmarks/large unique ruins. Not sure why they avoided that format entirely in CardoSwan. If they had at least some of those, places would be more bustling with activity. Kill dead of X, gather Y in X etc. Especially Tyrn Gorthad and some of these many ruins across Cardolan. I think a lack of any of those, plus the fact how they handled some of these locks where they were not necessarily needed, with NPC bestowal condensation, and "in the wild" NPCs the half of whom super hard to bump into and some of them chained with prerequisites... sounds exactly how NOT to do adventurous questing (and on a boat no less!) in larger-sized Umbar/Harad, with exploration clearly playing a huge part, not just politics, fighting a war or countering evils of Sauron like in Mordor.

[Arnand_the_Fox]

You keep ignoring the fact we can have bigger land and same amount of quests/content work.

Except I've done so such thing. In fact, I've repeatedly mentioned that such a thing is possible when appropriate. Please don't lie about what I've said when even a casual glance at the last several pages can show otherwise.

Not sure why they avoided that format entirely in CardoSwan.

Those sort of small, auto bestowal, quests are generally not considered fun, interesting, or fulfilling, in any MMO. Most people don't consider that content, they consider it padding of the worst kind.

[TesalionLortus]

Except I've done so such thing. In fact, I've repeatedly mentioned that such a thing is possible when appropriate. Please don't lie about what I've said when even a casual glance at the last several pages can show otherwise.

And yet in your last post you said "not intrinsically lead to being able to make a suitable number of quests" so I referred to that specifically. Don't always have time to check +3 posts above, but I remember you did make a similar point earlier, somewhere, maybe pages ago. But I'm just human so maybe I remembered wrong, anyway in your last post you implied it's somehow impossible so I disagreed

Those sort of small, auto bestowal, quests are generally not considered fun, interesting, or fulfilling, in any MMO. Most people don't consider that content, they consider it padding of the worst kind.

Or maybe... most people consider most quests just filler because some of them generally race to cap. By this definition, NPC saying me to gather relics at Tharbad because they fancy to look at them or retrieve his satchel is just much a padding of the worst kind, no difference. You know what makes a difference? Some variety. Also, some simpler standalone autobestow and whatnot quests can be far more fulfilling with more adventurous spirit, in some situations. VS yet another one-off NPC telling you to do their chores... yeah, very original and "very fulfilling"
Anyway, most MMOs, from what I can tell, are considered to s*ck in general with appeal of their storytelling and that's not about a certain type of quests but all of them. So maybe look beyond just mmo landscape. Plenty of standalone, simpler quests in other open world/rpg games that people love, and they're nice for immersion as well, or setting up the world and locales, or mysteries. It's not impossible

Also, some of such small things and quests are basically why some players are all obsessed with Elder Scrolls games and ESO, for example, so really, there is no-one-size-fits-all answer and all kinds of storytelling or quest design can be beneficial> Plus variety is good as well

[k40rne]

Who said anything about Harondor coming this year? With the fact we're getting a post-war Gondor, and then going to Umbar, this would indicate they're doing Umbar like they did Northern Mirkwood, as a separate thing. I never expected Harondor until a year or two from now as they build from Umbar back to Gondor.

Looking at the two most recent storylines, the Black Book of Mordor and Legacy of the Dwarves, they had 4-5 new zones each. Extrapolating from that I could see something like
-Post War Gondor: Includes Minas Tirith, Pellinor, South Ithilien, and Southguard.
-Umbar: Includes the city/area around it
-Far Harad: Desert map between Umbar and Harondor
-Harondor: Connects Far Harard to the post-war Gondor map.
Assuming they don't just go full Black Book and have us jumping around from Umbar to like Dorwinion or something.

If you had read (as you accused TesalionLortus of not doing) the past few pages, you'd see this was already addressed. I made a long post about Scenario saying they would try to avoid doing the Eryn Lasgalen 'build back from' technique again. I asked him this in a time they would have been well underway of doing pre-production in Umbar, so I do not expect this outcome. They said ambitious & they usually do 3 medium sized landmasses a year, so a portion of Harondor in NW is not out of the question when they give us a new partial Gondor in the Summer (we just don't know what that will look like besides a non dawnless Eastern, possible Central Gondor & very likely Southguard. I don't understand why you'd think they'd redo MT yet again for the 4th time when we have a Midsummer version. In any case, based upon all they have said I would expect the western portion of Harondor that connects to a portion of Near Harad that surrounds Umbar should be available in the next expansion.

Far Harad is not not what you say, that's 'Near Harad', 'Far Harad' is far to the South.

I never assumed anything about any timeline. I simply extrapolated how much content they put out per year to give a rough estimation on how long it would take to do X. That isn't an assumption, thats a conclusion based on facts. something else entirely. And yes, going to South Harad would take a number of new maps that doesn't really fit with what they've done at any point in the game's development.

It matters greatly if they give us large landmasses with less quests per square mile. Facts? You are extrapolating based upon an understanding of their old techniques & not taking into account they will be creating new techniques in the future to further streamline these processes. We have no idea how much they will compress Harondor or Near Harad or even Southguard. They seem to have developed a lot more fleshed out landscape lately. Gundabad was a huge expansion. Cardoswan is a vast area., Yondershire is a decent size. From what I can tell, the last few years they have given us a lot more landscape than previously, so we should expect that to continue & grow somewhat. And with new moneys, they should be able to hire a few script writers for less important stuff. But with all these potentials being worked on, i'd still expect delays as they had with Gundabad. Now that's a comprehensive extrapolation.

That's not really a line of thought that follows.
-Making landscape is one thing
-Speeding up landscape doesn't speed up quest programming
-Script writers aren't programmers making quests
these things do not intrinsically lead to being able to make a suitable number of quests for the new areas.

You see things as staying static, I'm pretty sure I could deduce your politics from this, but I'll leave that alone.

That isn't how anyone does these sorts of cross promotions. If you're going to do a tie in to something you do a tie in with what you know they're doing. Not by throwing darts at a wall and guessing they might do that.

Of course they didn't talk to Amazon, & it's not a cross promotion. It's just based on an assumption. You think Amazon would tell them anything, then you don't know how Amazon operates with it's competitors.
It's just an assumption that would have been part of the calculus that brought them there, one of many. And if they got it wrong, then it didn't matter.

Umbar just makes sense. After lots of time in Mordor and the North in the last two storylines it makes sense to travel down south for scenery/NPC group change.

Umbar did make a lot of sense which is why it was a relatively easy deduction to make, but I'm sure there were many factors that pushed it along, including what other companies are potentially doing with the Middle-earth IP.

[k40rne]

Or maybe... most people consider most quests just filler because some of them generally race to cap. By this definition, NPC saying me to gather relics at Tharbad because they fancy to look at them or retrieve his satchel is just much a padding of the worst kind, no difference. You know what makes a difference? Some variety. Also, some simpler standalone autobestow and whatnot quests can be far more fulfilling with more adventurous spirit, in some situations. VS yet another one-off NPC telling you to do their chores... yeah, very original and "very fulfilling"

Totally agree & there are plenty of expansions & updates where they just put less and less work in the text & background, same for deed logs that had a bit of info about the landmarks (that I used to love reading). A lot of it is obvious filler & dull. it is as you say, variation that matters most.

Yeah, auto-bestow kill/gather quests & bounties definitely would make more sense in hostile lands.

[TesalionLortus]

where they just put less and less work in the text & background, same for deed logs that had a bit of info about the landmarks (that I used to love reading). A lot of it is obvious filler & dull.

It depends though. Some of the exploration deeds used to be pretty short back in the day. Say, "Ered Luin is littered with ruins of the old Dourhand kingdom. X is one such ruin." The end. Today? Sometimes they have like this 10+ lines long paragraphs detailing the entire history of the place. Happened with Cardolan or the Angle. That's pretty cool While deeds like kill X something are really just filler though, so don't mind if they don't have anything interesting said.

For some quests, if the context is right, a simple "You noticed a prisoner, pale from fear of what the desert bandits will do to him. You decide to give him a hand" would do and provide some nice PC POV/initiative/adventurous spirit of bumping into situations in unfamiliar land - literally same effect as NPC at the hub telling me in another quest "Ah, I think they also have a prisoner, I don't know anything about him but would you help him, because for some reason I care very much and am afraid you won't notice on your own" Well, so a different approach would be better perhaps... because it's a little bit narratively forced that all these NPCs know so much about these other NPCs because they just happened to seen them or know it somehow and just happen to casually throw it in, as additional "request"

[auximenes]

It depends though. Some of the exploration deeds used to be pretty short back in the day. Say, "Ered Luin is littered with ruins of the old Dourhand kingdom. X is one such ruin." The end. Today? Sometimes they have like this 10+ lines long paragraphs detailing the entire history of the place. Happened with Cardolan or the Angle. That's pretty cool While deeds like kill X something are really just filler though, so don't mind if they don't have anything interesting said.

The Deed text has generally been very good for the past couple years of content. It did suffer for many years before that though.

[TesalionLortus]

I was curious so I put together this little something to measure the in-game sizes, proportions and distances. The results are actually a bit surprising, though I'm sure the picture can be a little bit... confusing.


What I did was try to match the Google Terrain Map picture with the map of Middle-earth. I scaled it down, trying to find a sizeable chunk of land that would match. I settled on Rohan with Isengard, because when scaled down, it matches the actual Middle-earth proportions, placement of things, rivers and landmarks around Rohan almost perfectly. Anduin with the East Wall, for example, are a PERFECT match, and other landmarks seem to match too. From there, I started to cut off other lands and move them to where they belong on the map of Middle-earth, to see how they compare and how compressed some of the distances might be. It's a nice visualization of how the game evolved, with its land design techniques.


I thought that it was unlikely the scale and distances of the in-game world actually match those of the canonical Middle-earth map, nor did I presume they're in any way consistent - but now... I must say that they are, for the most part! Which is amazing!


Here is the map...


















***all distances and sizes marked are taken from the continuous terrain map (so before I started to cut off the pieces)



There are a few things to unpack here...







ERIADOR


It really shows here that it was a different world design philosophy. A bit "messy" - with some distances or compression apparently too much on a whim, since the devs didn't even dream of stepping beyond Eriador. But even then...




Horizontally, the green distance - from the terrain map, measured from the Western border of Ered Luin roughly to Helegrod - matches perfectly the distance that's there on the actual Middle-earth map. Seems like horizontal distance and some proportions are alight! Just like in Rohan.


So what's wrong? Why is there a white spot left between Ered Luin and Yondershire?


Note, there wouldn't be one in the East but I didn't include Trollshaws/Misty Mountains landmass on it. Plus I didn't include some Western non-Shire portions of the Yondershire (beyond the bounds) - but even with that included there would be a small white spot left. The reason why is because I tried to match these landmasses roughly with their corresponding spots and it turned out they're kinda... all condensed in the middle, if you do that. Basically, based on this experiment, you can tell that Misties in the game world are definitely a little bit too expansive on Eriador side and everything is pushed West to meet up with Ered Luin, with everything feeling big in scope around Breelands in particular (even bigger than they should, somewhat, with the scale that I took as a base, that's reflective of their modern design). Or, alternatively, you may say that the mountains were portrayed OK, but that old gap that we had before we got Yondershire... wasn't exactly just a gap or unexplored piece of land the exact size as it appears on terrain map but actual place of "imagination" where the distance compression was occurring. Which would make it pretty accurate, especially back then, if the major compression was only happening in a gap, but a small landmass compression doesn't hurt as much, so it is very cool today nevertheless!





Vertically however... it's very clear how dated this part of the world is, compared to what they're doing in modern areas, and I must say that CardoSwan itself doesn't do much to compensate for any of that yet. Canonically, with better proportions, Swanfleet would have to be further South along with Tharbad and the area made even larger. But that's not exactly the fault of this mini expansion - CardoSwan was great! - just of the old Eriador compression that's clearly happening here on the vertical front For starters, Forochel and Evendim would be either too closely put together, with Shire too close to Evendim, on the terrain map, OR there is a chunk of these mountains/hills being compressed on the Forochel/Evendim border. Take your pick, but it's not the worst...


Oh boy, the blue distance marked is measured from the North of Forochel to Isen (at the heigh of Southern Gap of Rohan, on terrain map). See the problem? In LOTRO's world that entire Minhiriath/Enedwaith coastline gets shrunked and compressed in height - compression the size of the height of entire Dunland expansion with parts of Enedwaith, no less! That's a pretty substantial distance compression!


The final result is that Eriador's position in Middle-earth is also a bit misaligned and moved South, closer to the end of Misties. I marked with red where the Northern coastline of Forochel and Iron Pass gateway in Carn Bronach meet in LOTRO's world. Canonically, Forochel should be much further North than it is on terrain map. So again, the height is very shortened in Eriador... I wonder how that part of the coastline is going to be shaped and connect with Gondor if we ever get there. It'll have to be much shorter somewhat and pretty uncanonical.







RHOVANION


This one is much much better, suprisingly! There are only a few smallish issues.


Lothlorien, while well sized, has a bit too much of Mirkwood so closely to its shores (Unless we try to pretend Mirk-eaves + Dourstocks isn't actually Mirkwood yet, then OK). And there is definitely a gap here, with a small compression happening vertically. The distance from Lorien to Gates of Gundabad should be a tiny bit larger, if judged by more canonical proportions. But it's not such a big deal, the compression of that size is tolerable, and it was certainly difficult to work/predict distances and sizes in Rhovanion... you know, with the Strongholds of the North placed somewhere out there, with huge, somehow calculated gaps left but no idea how they'll use them yet and how any of that will translate into content, with some borders already done, with Rohan and Lorien on the other side. And it still worked out pretty well! The proportions for Mirkwood are roughly ok, the flow of Anduin matches nicely, with mountains extended a bit on the Western side of Anduin of course, but it still appears like it is fairly faithful and the distances roughly match with the canon ones. Then, continuing South... Rohan, as I said, is perfectly aligned!


What we've always considered the greatest sin of Rhovanion were Iron Hills or Dalelands... and they kinda are, but then again, they actually match their corresponding spots or edges of said spots. Something like Eastern Iron Hills could easily fix that. Then, for Dalelands, maybe 1 or 2 villages nested in these hills East of the Lake, plus maybe a Dale settlement along the river South, that would make Dale feel a bit more believable, like a small kingdom, not just lone huge cities and wildlands. But well, yeah, I'm actually surprised that the "Iron Hills too far West" issue isn't actually such a big issue (other than some misalignment of rivers) because the exact distance needed to deliver the full canonical extent of Iron Hills... would be exactly that, region-sized, and that's certainly doable... in time and given opportunity. So Eastern Iron Hills Someday That region could be a little bit narrower than the actual Iron Hills are and a bit longer instead. It would also paint the right distance needed between Rhovanion and Rhun, and you get some place for Dorwinion too, which in itself should be a sizeable buffer between the West and Rhun.


Rhovanion is of course not a perfect detailed match here, especially the furthest North, but it's very accurate for distances - it's only the details that get muddy and misplaced a little. Pus, the lonely mountain itself isn't as "lonely" and more like it's a part of that entire mountain chain, almost blending with it, with this massive size. The Lake is oversized of course, compared to what it should be for consistent scale, but that's normal and expected with such landmarks - but the actual overall distances match the corresponding landmarks and distances from the map pretty well. That's very nice!







GONDOR


Now, Gondor is aligned perfectly with Rhovanion (no misalignment like with Eriador) and... it's actually pretty accurate! Its size and scale, when compared with Rohan, was never a problem, which I thought it was. The problem is they extended these mountains so far South, from Central Gondor forward. I do get that Minas Tirith needed space to be built next to mountains but it didn't really need to be that harsh in the central part of Gondor. Should have been far more gradual, with the coast getting narrow very near MT but not before. Back then, it was of course a different time, so maybe they tried to cut their corners, you know. The amount of actual landmass, including mountains, is still pretty big and it perfectly fills that entire space, as far as proportions go, of where Gondor should be, canonically. It's not exactly wrong, it's not exactly compressed (because the right amount of landmass exists), it's just utilized differently... meaning a huge chunk is filled with mountains and these untravesrabvle valleys. Could just use some additional, cosmetic touches, and yeah, maybe Ered Nimrais region someday?







MORDOR


You can see that the game's landmass covers the canon Gorgoroth somehow accurately. Maybe it's not exactly super accurate with proportions inside the mountain-walls of Mordor but the overall distances are very accurate and this gives the general idea of how large Nurn needs to be (though they can oversize the sea of course and have lots of untraversable mountains, to make it quicker). Mount Doom itself is oversized, while a lot of space on the edges filled with untraversable space and mountains. It's a bit small once you start thinking about it, but I don't mind, because yeah, I get it, it's quicker that way plus they don't want to overwhelm people with dark landscape. Most importantly, it doesn't matter because in all this darkness it isn't even that apparent (that it's so small, it doesn't feel that way) so my immersion doesn't suffer. Plus: all in all, once again, the actual distances match, so that's all cool and accurate!


Gorgoroth is as big as it should, a large chunk is just non-traversable, but it's there to convey the size. Maybe if they add some new section behind that Watching-stone in Thuringwath to connect with Nurn... or have something added in that area West of Udun... or beyond Seregost, to explore some of the Lhereth backstory with this mysterious relative of her.. That would definitely make it even cooler and more open/expansive than it is is now. But I'm definitely satisfied with what's there, even if a little boxed in and a shortcut with all these extended mountains you can't climb. That's good enough for Mordor.








UMBAR? HARAD?



With that said... I made these useful overlays to show how much distance there actually is, if we're talking the in-game world proportions of Rohan/Rhovanion/Gondor and Mordor, which all seem VERY consistent in the end, so I would expect the same for all future releases. Well, at least I hope so... because jumping into such strong compression, like we have in Eriador from North to South, would feel very wrong and awkward, especially with Rhovanion/Gondor/Mordor distances being VERY consistent and accurate here, almost no compression of landmass occurring there. Not to mention all the expansive landscape additions such as CardoSwan, Yondershire, heck, even the past expansions like the two Rohans and Mordor. They all set the bar. Just wouldn't feel right to say "we're compressing it all now!" despite them never really compressing anything in any major way ever since Eriador, as it turns out!




They don't have to do everything all at once and some of these things may never even end up in the game, if worst come to pass. But roughly, this is the distance situation we're dealing with here!





Black: From the Southern Mountains of Shadow to the South, it would take the exact lenght of Vales of Anduin + Wells of Langflood along the Anduin + Elderslade (measured to the Gates of Gundabad) to reach landmarks that lie in a straigh line East of Umbar. That's three updates of landmass, roughly.



Grey: Based on this map (I added this missing section from the Second Age map onto the Third Age map) it would take 2 x this exact distance to reach the narrow bay on the other side of Harad. LOTRO team has creative freedom here, more so than usual, so they may choose to extend this bay a bit or even reshape/interpret differently some of what's shown here - so maybe they would be able to shorten that distance without compression. Now, I'm not saying they need to reach that glimpse of other shore, but it's interesting to think about: should they choose to expand in a straight line East of Umbar, just along some major rivers and such... so the exact same way they kept going along the Anduin in the North but perhaps utilizing some of their quicker land creation techniques and playing around with boat mechanics/questing... who is to say that's not a viable scenario? It's not exactly unrealistic to say they would be able to reach that goal post, if that's what they wanted, without any compression happening here. But my bet of course is that they would rather focus on connecting back to known lands. Still, interesting to think about!





LET'S JUMP TO RHUN...


Grey: Also, similarly to the above, it would take 2 x this exact distance to reach the Long Lake from the Mountains of Shadow. Serves to show how expansive that gap between the West and Rhun should feel. Whatever they do, it would be just a very narrow corridor created to reach Rhun from the West, at first, which itself would take the amount of update preparations that were needed to reach Gundabad (so Ered Mithrin + stuff along the Anduin). So maybe they're better off stepping into Rhun from Mordor and just focus on making the expansive Rhun?


Sea of Rhun??? It is the size of Cardolan, if under the right consistent scale - but they often choose to extent bodies of water... for greater effect and to minimize the amount of some of the spaces they have to make for actual lands. I would be fine with that - imagine a body of water greater than Cardolan, with some islands on it and boat action, probably some Easterling sea warfare going on in the story (based on the Chayasir account). When you look into the distance it stretches far and wide... and if you choose so, once all these updates/expansions are released, you can swim from one side of it to the next, a looong time! (No quest would force you to do that of course, could be an achievement though!). Well, yeah, definitely. That's what I wanna see, and that's how they can cut some corners too. Because on the above map, what would be Rhun seems like... it would need to be at the very least 2.5 x Rohan expacs with Wildermore (marked with the green borders). That would be a lot for landmass. So they can definitely cut some corners here by having even larger sea, which would be mostly water far and wide, aside from some extras for boat action, so mostly along coasts and some island or two further into the sea.


Orocarni, on this map specifically, looks pretty far, though I'm sure there are some decent reasons why the author put it that far. But, canonically: "Since it is known that the other four Houses awoke in mountains in the East, the only mountain range in the East was, in fact, the Orocarni.[4] This suggests that the other four Houses did indeed awake in these mountains. The distance between their mansions in the East and the Misty Mountains, specifically Gundabad, was said to resemble Gundabad's distance from the Blue Mountains in the West." So i think they could get away with it if Orocarni was much closer to their Rhun, bordering it. Since the distance between Gundabad and Blue Mountains would somewhat mirror it then, as far as the current in-game terrain goes. So you know, we can explore that stuff with homelands of the other clans and maybe some devastation stuff and whatever is happening there around Orocarni. So I wouldn't mind Orocarni closer than on this map. That's one of those "beyond the edges" territories that provide more wiggle room for interpretation, without necessarily being an actual distance compression.








BACK TO UMBAR AND HARAD!


You can see that I put sizes of Rohan Expacs (+Wildermore) and CardoSwan to illustrate the amount of landmass it might take to portray the South and remain consistent with their scale so far. It is a lot, would actually feel like a lot, assuming they don't cut too much corners in artificial ways. Would be very consistent and amazing feeling of expansive South to witness. Truly kingdoms and fiefdoms of the South, with Far Harad further below Umbar. It's not exactly unrealistic if they don't rush anything and the game lasts for 15 years to come and longer if we're lucky. I think focusing on the coastline + even the sea itself would be a right direction, for now. Though they may also do Harondor. Maybe just Western Harondor at first? (as part of Southern Gondor subregion?)





Also, sea is definitely something that needs to feel big, and with consistent distances it very much would!



Grey: So, the distance straight South - between Dol Amroth and shores of Umbar - gotta be a bit longer than the current distance between Dol Amroth and the shores of Ithilien in a straight line East.




Purple: Coincidentelly, both the missing coastline of Far Gondor/Anfalas and the missing Southern coastline, so from the Mouth of Anduin to the very end of the Corsair Penisula... equal the current distance of the entire shoreline from Osgiliath to Dol Amroth, along the Anduin and the coast. This shoreline takes a sudden turn in the housing area, so I made a cut in Belfalas, and illustrated it in a straightened manner for comparison.


This translate to 6 regions, if we're counting the Housing Area in Belfalas. So, 6 classic regions - very roughly - to cover these distances along shores, Gondor-Umbar, Gondor-Far Gondor. Although, with Umbar, a part of that shore would be in actual Umbar expansion, we don't know how far, but that reduces the number of "classic-sized" regions that would be needed to maybe 3-4? That would give us a long shore to play with - but just sea cosatline this time (unlike the half of it on the Anduin back in Gondor). That's exactly what I want the journey South to feel like... Long journey along the long sea!





PS: As a side note, something I found interesting... Tol Fuin would be the size of something like Iron Hills or Lonelands, when I compared... so that's an interesting concept, visiting an entire regular-sized region that's basically one island

[k40rne]

GONDOR
Now, Gondor is aligned perfectly with Rhovanion (no misalignment like with Eriador) and... it's actually pretty accurate! Its size and scale, when compared with Rohan, was never a problem, which I thought it was. The problem is they extended these mountains so far South, from Central Gondor forward. I do get that Minas Tirith needed space to be built next to mountains but it didn't really need to be that harsh in the central part of Gondor. Should have been far more gradual, with the coast getting narrow very near MT but not before. Back then, it was of course a different time, so maybe they tried to cut their corners, you know. The amount of actual landmass, including mountains, is still pretty big and it perfectly fills that entire space, as far as proportions go, of where Gondor should be, canonically. It's not exactly wrong, it's not exactly compressed (because the right amount of landmass exists), it's just utilized differently... meaning a huge chunk is filled with mountains and these untravesrabvle valleys. Could just use some additional, cosmetic touches, and yeah, maybe Ered Nimrais region someday?

I think the main issue with Gondor is it looks accurate, but the mountains should be further North, so it throws the proportionality off (compression is just an easy way to describe it). Also it needs a bit of a clean up job in West & Central, and the southern parts before crossing the Anduin with the look of those cities/fortresses. There are some lovely parts too such as Imloth Melui & Tumladen, also Pelargir is quite nice. Mainly it's Dol Amroth, Linhir, Ost Anglebad, Arnach & Calembel that could use a few tweaks to bring them to the calibre of the rest of the world. So hopefully some of that will be addressed in the new post-war Gondor we have coming.

Just wouldn't feel right to say "we're compressing it all now!" despite them never really compressing anything in any major way ever since Eriador, as it turns out!

They don't have to do everything all at once and some of these things may never even end up in the game, if worst come to pass. But roughly, this is the distance situation we're dealing with here!

It would seem they'd be more inclined to just give us a portion of those regions of Southguard (maybe not this one), Harondor, Near Harad, or they'd have to be extremely barren. I can only go based on what was said & we will have Umbar next expansion & they have said they do not want to create another Eryn Lasgalen building back out situation, so I guess time will tell what solution they devise.

I'm definitely not expecting all these vast regions at once. I see it more like a Great River situation. Where they can carve out a large landmass with multiple biomes heading down a specific pathway. the Brownlands being a tiny portion of what it should be comes to mind, which demonstrates this type of technique quite well.

Also you said it would be 3 landmasses, that could fit because most full expansions would count for 2 medium landmasses, plus one medium & maybe a smaller one is a normal year. So it really all depends on what they are doing (or have done) with the non dawnless Gondor.

Quite an interesting & informative post anyway. Well done.

[Arnand_the_Fox]

Of course they didn't talk to Amazon, & it's not a cross promotion. It's just based on an assumption. You think Amazon would tell them anything, then you don't know how Amazon operates with it's competitors.
It's just an assumption that would have been part of the calculus that brought them there, one of many. And if they got it wrong, then it didn't matter.

Well the idea that SSG and Amazon are competitors is patently false, at least since Amazon's Lord of the Rings MMO project got shut down. A company making a TV show set in a universe, and a video game company making a game set in the same universe, are not competitors, they are not fighting for the same audience. Its not a choice between watching the TV show or playing the game.

Also, you don't need to do something for cross promotion to do basic talks with the company. For instance, Cryptic Studios makes both the Star Trek Online, and Neverwinter MMOs, and in both cases they have conversations not only with CBS and Wizards of the Coast, the IP holders for those series, but also third party groups like IDW Comics. They do this so they can get foreknowledge on future Star Trek and D&D storylines, so they can plan their game story to fit with those as much as possible. There is no big "AND NOW FROM IDW COMICS WE PRESENT!" cross promotion when they put something from the comics into STO for example, and likewise when one of the STO ship artists helps IDW make a new ship design they acknowledged him in the credits but there isn't a big ad for STO included. That just basic IP management.

Umbar did make a lot of sense which is why it was a relatively easy deduction to make, but I'm sure there were many factors that pushed it along, including what other companies are potentially doing with the Middle-earth IP.

This logic doesn't fly. You can't decide to go someplace to build for what other companies are doing when you don't know what those other companies are doing.

You see things as staying static, I'm pretty sure I could deduce your politics from this, but I'll leave that alone.

And I'm pretty sure you would be wrong about the latter because you're wrong about the former. I've made no claim about seeing things as static. That is just your straw man. All I've done is based extrapolations from long term trends, trend which have never been static themselves.

It matters greatly if they give us large landmasses with less quests per square mile. Facts? You are extrapolating based upon an understanding of their old techniques & not taking into account they will be creating new techniques in the future to further streamline these processes. We have no idea how much they will compress Harondor or Near Harad or even Southguard. They seem to have developed a lot more fleshed out landscape lately. Gundabad was a huge expansion. Cardoswan is a vast area., Yondershire is a decent size. From what I can tell, the last few years they have given us a lot more landscape than previously, so we should expect that to continue & grow somewhat. And with new moneys, they should be able to hire a few script writers for less important stuff. But with all these potentials being worked on, i'd still expect delays as they had with Gundabad. Now that's a comprehensive extrapolation.

Wrong again here. I was talking into account possible future streamlining. Streamlining however is not the magic panacea you seem to think it is. You can't just streamline your way into quadruple the content(not landscape but content) unless your original process was so ineffective that you wouldn't be able to put out the number of quests we have seen them put out.

If you had read (as you accused TesalionLortus of not doing) the past few pages, you'd see this was already addressed. I made a long post about Scenario saying they would try to avoid doing the Eryn Lasgalen 'build back from' technique again. I asked him this in a time they would have been well underway of doing pre-production in Umbar, so I do not expect this outcome. They said ambitious & they usually do 3 medium sized landmasses a year, so a portion of Harondor in NW is not out of the question when they give us a new partial Gondor in the Summer (we just don't know what that will look like besides a non dawnless Eastern, possible Central Gondor & very likely Southguard. I don't understand why you'd think they'd redo MT yet again for the 4th time when we have a Midsummer version. In any case, based upon all they have said I would expect the western portion of Harondor that connects to a portion of Near Harad that surrounds Umbar should be available in the next expansion.

Try to avoid does not mean absolutely will avoid. I read what you wrote it just doesn't say what you seem to think it does.

We also know theres only 2 major landmasses their year based on the roadmap, that being new Gondor and Umbar, with a "continuing adventures" between them.

Also, some of such small things and quests are basically why some players are all obsessed with Elder Scrolls games and ESO, for example, so really, there is no-one-size-fits-all answer and all kinds of storytelling or quest design can be beneficial> Plus variety is good as well

Well no. as a long time fan of both Elder Scrolls and ESO I can tell you this is not why people like Elder Scrolls. People like Elder Scrolls because of its lore, all the books, notes, journals, misc conversations, and world details you can find all overthe place that give the setting a fleshed out feeling almost no other game has. The small misc quests are generally one of the most mocked and hated parts ofany Bethesda game, see the Skyrim/Fallout 4 radiant quests, because they aren't fun or interesting.

[Arnand_the_Fox]

Grey: Also, similarly to the above, it would take 2 x this exact distance to reach the Long Lake from the Mountains of Shadow. Serves to show how expansive that gap between the West and Rhun should feel. Whatever they do, it would be just a very narrow corridor created to reach Rhun from the West, at first, which itself would take the amount of update preparations that were needed to reach Gundabad (so Ered Mithrin + stuff along the Anduin). So maybe they're better off stepping into Rhun from Mordor and just focus on making the expansive Rhun?

Given that all previous Easterling setup has been in the north(Northern Mirkwood and Iron Hills) they would probably go into Rhun from there since thats where the Easterling refugees are coming into the west from. Makes sense we would follow their trail back rather than mount an expedition through Mordor of all places to get to Rhun. Dorwinion is also treated as being Easterling lands in dialogue in Dale, so that would make for an easier "into Rhun" map since Dorwinion is seemingly treated as part of Rhun in LOTRO.

Assuming they ever actually go into Rhun proper in LOTRO that is.

[TesalionLortus]

Also it needs a bit of a clean up job in West & Central, and the southern parts before crossing the Anduin with the look of those cities/fortresses. There are some lovely parts too such as Imloth Melui & Tumladen, also Pelargir is quite nice. Mainly it's Dol Amroth, Linhir, Ost Anglebad, Arnach & Calembel that could use a few tweaks to bring them to the calibre of the rest of the world. So hopefully some of that will be addressed in the new post-war Gondor we have coming.

Dol Amroth, especially, due to some of these wings, and maybe ease out a bit in a few spots in some of these others too. But generally, no, I would disagree about the rest - I dislike that word now, I think :P Bring to caliber of the rest of the word or bring up to modern standards, as people tend to say. Even if not intended, the result implied or de facto what comes out of this screams "make everything the same" to me. If there is anything I would change about Gondor in this regard, would be to have some cities that aren't necessarily just white stone - so something between the first one that we ever see (but that was more of a village treatment) and these others of stone. A mashup treatment. But that's not that important and they're not going to change it now, and overall, these smaller stone cities are actually pretty nice, so like Linhir, Calembel, Arnach etc. Not everything needs to be a walled-in, perfect fortress, huge NO to this. Gondor is not even anywhere near at war in these areas for a chunk of its recent history, why would anything in there be somewhat super fortified or enormous in size. Uniformity or big big size for everything aren't helping, it's just cheapening the world. I like how some of these small-medium sized Gondorian settlement felt, all somehow different, not just same pattern.

Well no. as a long time fan of both Elder Scrolls and ESO I can tell you this is not why people like Elder Scrolls. People like Elder Scrolls because of its lore, all the books, notes, journals, misc conversations, and world details you can find all overthe place that give the setting a fleshed out feeling almost no other game has. The small misc quests are generally one of the most mocked and hated parts ofany Bethesda game, see the Skyrim/Fallout 4 radiant quests, because they aren't fun or interesting.

Well, but that's what I meant. Small things that flesh out the world and the adventure more - but not necessarily in this epic, important epic quest way or a plight of the NPC way. But you could have more adventurous quests with somewhat more miscellaneous conversations too, or something odd happening -rather than outright "please, orc invaded, go kill orcs" each time that's connected to a larger chain of dealing with these orcs (steal correspondence, burn banners etc, we really know this pattern so far...). This type of thing does make sense in some situations but when not needed probably shouldn't be overused but that's certainly something the devs overuse quite a lot in this game
I'm not saying "go kill 5 boars because you need food" should be there everywhere, though may be sometimes - because as I said, if we talk effect, it hardly matters whether NPC says kill boars because we need food VS PC wanna kill boars because they need food, but variety matters too. Other than that, all these little quests could have details, lore and world tastes in some form of course. That's exactly what I mean by these smaller, standalone quests (though the quest text doesn't exactly need to be a book of text, but as long as it's somehow contributing to lore - meaning the internal lore of the game, not just Tolkien canon- , aliveness of the world and fleshes it out - that's great). I didn't mean a ton of utterly generic tasks like "You came across the oasis. Kill ostriches' You came across the wild lions, gather some meat" Instead, try to work in a little bit more engaging lore or world-building element to it. But without making it this big big story chain and have it be more adventury.
That LOTRO could use some cool random pages/texts/books that you can run into sometimes is something I would have said, yeah... except... well, not without UI scaling :P For now, something like the Crystal Journal on rare occasion is enough

[Phantion]

Great work, TesalionLortus!

My honest guess is that if SSG wanted us to visit Orocarni, just to be realistic here with the game's current map-scale in Rhovanion by and large, we'd end up with a version more similar to the Amazon map of Middle-earth:


https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/...e53wq0xm24.jpg

Notice that, in this version, the Orocarni are somewhat closer to the inland Sea of Rhun - and that appears to be more do-able for SSG as far as the current map scale goes. You'd still have a couple of Rohan's worth of terrain between the inland Sea and the Orocarni. It would also be comparable to the scale of other MMO's and their progress, including Guild Wars 2 and it's map-scaling of things.

My other guess is that they might need to rename the Orocarni due to licensing issues- probably with a different Elven word-combination that has the same meaning.

My other hope is that they'd consider that idea that both the Amazon and the old Lindefirion maps have in common: the concept of a larger Gulf of Lhun-style inner bay way to the south of Umbar in "Far Harad" territory. The Amazon map only has part of it way down at the bottom. Apparently, they know their fan maps. On Lindefirion, the lands were known as "Saraj," and they could have different names in LOTRO. But what's nice is that it could be a nice set-up for tropical and jungle territory.

Another thing we need to remember is that Far Harad IS on SSG's radar. Remember that Haradrim prisoner quest in Aelin Veren in North Ithilien? One of those Haradrim pretty much says, "I think you'd love our deserts and jungles." So "jungles" have shown-up in quest-text and are on the radar.

I know I've love a "raising Mumakil" quest doing various chores to help a young oliphaunt grow hahahaha! There's plenty of variety and intriguing places to explore.

I also really hope they'll add in the homelands of the other Dwarven Houses and . . . introduce the Avari under a different name. Tolkien's manuscripts hint at other hidden Elven realms out there that are like Felegoth - and it will be interesting to see if they can arrange plots involving Avari, the Blue Wizards and their efforts in the East and South (*under their game names, of course), and so forth. There could also be plenty of "neutral peoples" who weren't aligned with Sauron but who weren't enemies to him either and who might have taken advantage through trade, etc., and lived their own isolated lives out there. I'd even be fine with having other Stoors living out there who kind of decided to stop wandering and settle-down in a vale or something. Having Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Men all out there would help keep the "Middle-earth" going in various pockets. It would have a lore precedent with Tolkien's accounting of the Great Journey of the Elves and how some of them decided to stay in 1 particular spot and didn't follow the others toward Valinor - as well as Tolkien's own knowledge of actual human migrations drawn from his knowledge of philology. The same applies to Men who didn't fully make it to Beleriand and stopped along the way. It could apply to the three groups of Hobbits migrating toward the Shire. Azanulbizar and Gundabad gave us a pretty fair concept of what's going on with the Dwarves. I do know this with Elves: it wasn't just the Wood-Elves and the Raft-Elves. There were a lot more out there - not only those who chose to follow Oropher and Amdir and then Thranduil and Galadriel + Celeborn. This doesn't even touch local Maiar spirits like the River Maidens of Gondor and the likes of the Huntsman and his Court in Enedwaith. There's so much more out there to imagine . . .

Cheers!

[Celebrawn]

Have they announced specifically the expansion will be just Umbar? I don't remember seeing that, we're assuming, but there is also no indication they won't connect it to Gondor. with Harad in between. I know there is a great distance down to Umbar from Gondor, but I have a feeling they might compress that distance for the sake of the game.

[TesalionLortus]

I know there is a great distance down to Umbar from Gondor, but I have a feeling they might compress that distance for the sake of the game.

Well, but that was my deduction though - turns out they've never really compressed distances, as far as post-Mirkwood content goes. Why now? So we can rush to both Harad and Far Harad, which would feel vastly small and far less believable in the process? (While, at the same time, they have something like 2 x Rohan in the game, which feels massive - or Gondor itself, which is a long distance along the mountains). So I have confidence compression won't be happening here, this is just right. Plus, looking out into the sea horizon somewhere on water in Harondor, closer to Harad/Umbar borders... gotta feel like you're actually distance away, not... immediately see Tolfalas pop up on the horizon :P


Yeah, Phantion! I could definitely see Orocarni be closer to Rhun, perhaps even closer than on this Amazon map (it already has a name in LOTRO: Ered Cernin). Or, though the road there is far so probably not too soon, yeah, agree the devs have every opportunity here to either base the world on some of these other cool maps or come up with their own takes on things in places such as Far Harad.

They could also get away with keeping the distance consistent, like I compared on the map - so it is a long one and feels that way - but shrinking some of the actual land-landmass by having that Bay of Umbar being larger than it should - so they get extra wiggle room for bay landmarks and boat action, make it look more impressive for views, and have the actual dry land shrunk a bit in the process, so less to develop/cover. Sure, they didn't exactly do that for the Mouth of Anduin and surroundings in Gondor, so in effect the Bay of Umbar would be much larger in comparison, but no problem there - they've also extended pretty much all the lakes too, and I would rather have the bay that feels a bit grander, especially if they're going to have that Umbar city sitting at the edge of it and we get boats for some water travel and content. Compare to Mouth of Anduin, back then they didn't even have boats to make use of them, so I didn't complain, but it doesn't really feel... too big and as wide as you could imagine, it's wider only in such a limited spot, but then immediately narrower up... and the other side... there is already Tolfalas getting in the way. With Umbar, especially with "keep consistent distances but upscale the body of water" treatment, they could have a sizeable bay to play in that would offer a nice view of exotic space - not just something that isn't much larger than Lake Evendim and hardly feels like it could have sizeable fleets move through it.... Speaking of which...

Back then, they wouldn't really expect players to get into the middle of their bodies of waters. Sure, you could take a swim, but your view is very bad, camera low, and overall wasn't very organic situation. So they never bothered as much - they just had a few of these boats and smaller ships (with nobody on board!) for a little distance immersion, when you saw them on the horizon. Now, I very much expect them to put actual people on these sailing cosmetic vessels, to make it feel like a real world. So a view would be something more from Assassin's Creed: Origins - a sizeable bay that can fit some ships and sailing action, with little boats, fishermen, slaver traders slowly moving though the bay back and forth, some patrol ships and others, simulating a semblance of life, not just an empty constrained water with 1 or 2 ships with nobody on board. In other words, the bay of Umbar should feel like an active bay suitable for Numenorean trading/war fortress, where entire fleets are built and such. Not just... like it might as well be a bit wider river... In order to achieve that, they do need to enlarge that body of water

[Arnand_the_Fox]

My honest guess is that if SSG wanted us to visit Orocarni, just to be realistic here with the game's current map-scale in Rhovanion by and large, we'd end up with a version more similar to the Amazon map of Middle-earth:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/...e53wq0xm24.jpg

Notice that, in this version, the Orocarni are somewhat closer to the inland Sea of Rhun - and that appears to be more do-able for SSG as far as the current map scale goes. You'd still have a couple of Rohan's worth of terrain between the inland Sea and the Orocarni. It would also be comparable to the scale of other MMO's and their progress, including Guild Wars 2 and it's map-scaling of things.

Given how, even with the map compression in the early days, neither Turbine nor SSG has compressed the world map as hard as Amazon's map does, I don't think they would do it themselves.

I would also question how much desire SSG has to go so heavily into Dwarves again given how Dwarf heavy large parts of the Black Book story was, and the whole Gundabad story being entirely dwarf centric. Especially when they have to finish the stories of the tribes of men(Easterlings, Corsairs, Haradrim, and Nurnhoth), the Hobbits(scouring the Shire), and the Elves(Lindon/Exodus).

Another thing we need to remember is that Far Harad IS on SSG's radar. Remember that Haradrim prisoner quest in Aelin Veren in North Ithilien? One of those Haradrim pretty much says, "I think you'd love our deserts and jungles." So "jungles" have shown-up in quest-text and are on the radar.

That really doesn't mean its on their radar. It just means they're aware of the established lore that Far Harad has jungles.

[TesalionLortus]

I've noticed this rough shoreline visible from Tolfalas on one of MiniExpBounder's videos:





And this is how the view into the Anduin looks like:




I measured the distance from Tolfalas to Pelargil and from Tolfalas to the mouth of Harnen on the map - they're basically the same. On these images? You can barely see the river wall of Pelargil in the distance and you can barely see the mouth of River Harnen (somewhat not to wide, it would seem, but I guess that was just a rough sketch of the landmass back then). Barely but you *CAN* see them. Based on this, you can tell the distances are definitively being done in the same scale by SSG, even when they just draw rough sketches of non-existent content. Which is alight and I would expect these distances to be like that for actual content we get this year, maybe with the mouth of Harnen a bit more spectacular than this rough sketch.

However... isn't that a bit weird that you would be able to sea Umbar territory beyond Harnen from Tolfalas, including its ports and such, if they ever let us climb some of these slopes? A little... awkward. So I feel like it should be alleviated somehow, hmm.


This is how it looks like in the Dawnless Day landscape, from Barad Rill:



Without the Dawnless Day, you would be able to see these exotic coasts of Umbar... so awkward and very immersion breaking, with such unnatural feeling. And that's from Barad Rill itself but with the boats, if you hop on a boat and move into the middle of Southern Gondor, that would effectively make you see the coast immediately adjacent to Umbar city. That's the right scale on land and would make it feel alright, because the feeling of longer distance on land is a little bit more conveyed, with cities not loading that far into distance and such, plus you have some of the elevation/forestation to play with to ease the transition into other biomes. But when you have a coastline + some biome change no less... it can really get weird and feel like it's such a small walk in a park from Anduin? Rather than this epic journey South?

They'll do what they will, probably already decided. But this makes me feel like a region border on Harnen with a teleport somewhere + some giant teleport border on sea to reach the new "South" region with Umbar in it would make it a better solution, after all. So something like this:



Because then they can have that shoreline visible from Gondor somewhat "easy on the eyes" in a cosmetic way, and no objects/cities attached. Perhaps not even as exotic as Umbar yet but more in alignment with however South Gondor is going to look like. And it's only when you teleport to a new region map that it becomes full-on Corsair biome with some corsair ports and vessels visible in the distance. A cheap trick, sure, but it wouldn't make a player outright see Umbar and all the Umbar/Harad stuff from Gondor, like it's just literally next door, with jarring biome transitions visible on the distant coast. And if they ever had that portion of Near Harad below Mordor, then you can easily add another teleport point on Harnen to transition into that. I'm all for continuous open world but in this case, even with the right scale applied, it really does feel like teleportation would be convenient for conveying a sense of distance and covering some of these things up on Gondor landscape - and vice versa... not outright seeing Tolfalas and Gondor when at Umbar's border or in Harad.

PS: Alternatively, they could also have some of these borders be desert borders and others, slightly beyond Harnen in some spots, so it's not just one giant elevation along the Southern side of the river (remember, we will have boats so... would be weird to punish us/not allow for getting into the river itself)

[TesalionLortus]

Well, I'll just assume the above scenario with the border on Harnen is what they chose to solve their map dilemma and I'll use this as an example. Also, I'm assuming that they're going to redo Dawnless Gondor to the borders of the Housing are (they wouldn't need to redo Ringlo Vale though).

This final result would be actually pretty cool, for the feeling of giant interconnected world:




Black: Closed border

Violet: Closed for now, until there is Anfalas

Orange: Long teleportation borders on waters


Or something like it, depending on where they chose to put things and what map layer Umbar is going to end up in, and whether we even get redo of Dawnless Sky Gondor. But the actual sea is already there, on any of these maps, so erasing some of the invisible borders and making it traversable... shouldn't be such a big deal? And the pay off could be pretty nice, who wouldn't want to feel like they can actually traverse the Bay of Belfalas and retrace the steps of Balakhor's journey to Dol Amroth? They would only need to have a solution for longer borders that can teleport you (so not just a narrow point) to solve the different maps issue. Something like these clouds in Elderslade might work, albeit without clouds, so we still get a nice horizon view with distant shores.

In this scenario, the Dwanless Day Gondor would stay in its own little pocket, though maybe it can have a teleport on water too, someplace, maybe just to reach the filled-in version of Tolfalas on the After map.

For starters, it could be just that orange border from the housing area to Umbar that would be the final one, and no Bay of Belfalas zone that would connect that to Dol Amroth map. But eventually, especially if they added Anfalas, would be nice to have the entire bay filled in, maybe even some ships travelling from here to there to be found.


PS: Scenario mentioned something about testing whether a more continuous entry to housing areas can be possible, so if it was... this could apply to water borders too. Would be nice to hop on a boat from your Belfalas house and swim further into sea. Albeit, in this example, Housing is technically on Gondor map (pre-MT battle) so it would probably need a teleport, either way

[miriadel]

could be map limitations, engine limitations, simply unfinished landscape and boundaries, no need to read too much into it.

I instead, if Scenario is reading want to suggest something that could be fun to have in the new landscape and help with immersion, without being too frustrating. It takes inspiration from the weather debuff in Forochel



Gnawing Cold - Lotro-Wiki.com


it can be trasposed in Umbar with something like Sand Storm: the whirling sand reduces your vision (applies an accuracy/evade debuff or reduces the draw distance)
and another like: Swelling Heat: the blazing sun hinders your resistance, seek the relief of shade to cool down.
This assuming it will be a desert-ish region but... food for thought anyway

[k40rne]

Well the idea that SSG and Amazon are competitors is patently false, at least since Amazon's Lord of the Rings MMO project got shut down. A company making a TV show set in a universe, and a video game company making a game set in the same universe, are not competitors, they are not fighting for the same audience. Its not a choice between watching the TV show or playing the game.

They would have been at the time - remember, Tencent pulling out of the Amazon Tolkien game was a fairly recent event.

Also, you don't need to do something for cross promotion to do basic talks with the company. For instance, Cryptic Studios makes both the Star Trek Online, and Neverwinter MMOs, and in both cases they have conversations not only with CBS and Wizards of the Coast, the IP holders for those series, but also third party groups like IDW Comics. They do this so they can get foreknowledge on future Star Trek and D&D storylines, so they can plan their game story to fit with those as much as possible. There is no big "AND NOW FROM IDW COMICS WE PRESENT!" cross promotion when they put something from the comics into STO for example, and likewise when one of the STO ship artists helps IDW make a new ship design they acknowledged him in the credits but there isn't a big ad for STO included. That just basic IP management.

Amazon is not like most companies & they didn't even tell their actors what was going on most of the time to ensure leaks would be nearly impossible. They would never have divulged what areas in Middle Earth they were setting in, besides the initial Numenor 2nd age outline they'd already given.

This logic doesn't fly. You can't decide to go someplace to build for what other companies are doing when you don't know what those other companies are doing.

You're being far too absolutist here. You can have a general understanding of where they are likely to go & build an assumption based on that, but ultimately it wouldn't affect you too much if you got it wrong anyway.

And I'm pretty sure you would be wrong about the latter because you're wrong about the former. I've made no claim about seeing things as static. That is just your straw man. All I've done is based extrapolations from long term trends, trend which have never been static themselves.

Ain't a strawman, and you are talking gibberish now. Your extrapolations are poor because you fail to take into account the world is dynamic. And for the record, you don't need to make an assertion for me to deduce what you said, based on the context.

Wrong again here. I was talking into account possible future streamlining. Streamlining however is not the magic panacea you seem to think it is. You can't just streamline your way into quadruple the content(not landscape but content) unless your original process was so ineffective that you wouldn't be able to put out the number of quests we have seen them put out.

I never said it was a panacea, I implied it should've been a major factor to incorporate in your so called extrapolations.

Try to avoid does not mean absolutely will avoid. I read what you wrote it just doesn't say what you seem to think it does.

We also know theres only 2 major landmasses their year based on the roadmap, that being new Gondor and Umbar, with a "continuing adventures" between them.

Pretty sure he said they wouldn't do it. I was softening what he said, but we will see what happens.

They gave a vague statement about an altternate non dawnless Gondor and mentioned the expansion would include an Umbar region, for you to assume that doesn't incorporate any of the areas we previously discussed is a bit silly.

Anyhow, time will tell & arguing about extrapolations & interpretations is becoming tiresome. I made a simple point that they likely would have included what Amazon was doing in their calculus, and you got very defensive. That's my deduction & I make a living based on my deduction capabilities which are usually pretty damn accurate.