Look what I found over in Readerville!
'War Stories'
LotR - The Return of the King: "We named the *dog* 'Strider'".
Frodo: Please, what does it always mean, this... this "Aragorn"? Elrond: That's his name. Aragorn, son of Arathorn. Aragorn: I like "Strider." Elrond: We named the *dog* "Strider".
A discussion of Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King. If you're a pervy hobbit fancier, this is the place for you.
I'm not registered there--what is it?
obtaining an id and password from bugmenot.com will work to get in
Still more Unused Audio Commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Recorded for the Return of the King.
CHOMSKY: Mordor, the "dark land." Which you correctly pointed out before we began should be properly known as Orcistan.
More:
ZINN: Oh, I believe completely that Gandalf was cannily exploiting Sam's latent hobbosexuality from the very beginning. If nothing else, Gandalf is a sophisticated psychologist with a keen understanding of the plight of the closeted Hobbit in the intolerant, provincial Shire. Why else did he select Bilbo as the burglar for Thorin's party in The Hobbit? Perhaps because he knew the company of 13 male Dwarves might be appealing?
CHOMSKY: You mean Bilbo's hobbosexual, too?
ZINN: Well, you know what they call an eleventy-one-year-old bachelor in Buckland, right?
CHOMSKY: Ohhhh.
In case anyone else is watching, Turbine took over 100% of the development of Middle-earth Online, the MMO. I don't think an MMO should be done at all, but Turbine's probably the best people around to do it.
Lord knows Vivendi Universal did NOTHING for over a year. Launch this year? Beta hasn't even started signing up yet.
much fear
You know, people complaining about the unwieldiness of the acronym MMORPG is the only reason I remember it. Is MMO a little different, or is it just an abbreviation of an acronym?
Some folk advocate using MMO as the generic, covering MUSH, MUD, MUCK, MMORPG, etc. Rarely does "MMO" get used for anything other than EverQuest and it's siblings, however. The MU* crowd genteely despise the graphics-oriented crowd.
There are MMOs that aren't RPGs - the most successful is Planetside, which is like permanent Halo. "War that never ends", very, very little RPG material, just lots of shooting other folk, dying, respawning. MMOFPS isn't much better than MMORPG. :)
Someone's showing off now.
Actually, someone's a gigantic geek. It's what Alfredo and I do every evening - play World of Warcraft. (Since he won't join my Fading Suns tabletop campaign).
I'm not sure he'll play Middle-earth Online, but I will - if for no other reason than to know definitively that it's worthy of much scorn.