Lord of the Rings: The White Council - Project on hold ?!

Gorath

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1Up writes they have been informed by an anonymous source that EA has cancelled Lord of the Rings: The White Council. The rumor hasn´t been confirmed yet.
More information.
 
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I had heard little about this but was cautiously optimistic ... then I read a newsbit at goats ... errm, I mean the Codex that deflated any enthusiasm I had - so this is no longer a disappointment, nor a shock ... just a shame on several levels.
 
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Ah, but it was a perfect game... in my mind, at least. Something Gothlic-like in ME? Sign me up!

:(
 
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I made a few jokes about that ea will cancel it sooner or later...i didn't expect them to care that little about their reputation...that's the third rpg they cancel...

well, it still has not been confirmed by ea of course...would (have) be(en) the first ea game i'd buy in a decade...
 
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I would still want to see it come out. You'll never see me complain about an abundance of open-ended RPG's.
 
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Saw this at Shack News:

Last night, we reported on a rumor that EA's announced open-world RPG The Lord of the Rings: The White Council had been cancelled. While Electronic Arts has yet to respond to our inquiries into the matter, we have now received confirmation from a reputable source close to EA that the project has indeed been dissolved. Furthermore, executive producer Steve Gray--whose name was originally attached to the game's working title of Project Gray Company--is apparently no longer with Electronic Arts.

Our source, who requested to remain nameless, indicated that the project's collapse appears to have been in part due to management issues, which resulted in an overall lack of sufficient development progress. The team assigned to the game has been broken up and reassigned to other projects. The Lord of the Rings: White Company was in production for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
 
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I don't understand why anyone would actually wish a LOTR RPG, even an action consolish RPG to be cancelled?
 
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Maybe because Tolkien himself was against industrialisation/technology. I certainly wouldn't have minded a decent LOTR rpg though, but I guess we would have ended up with something like Fable or best case scenario something like Oblivion.
 
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Not without cause. As the witty and acerbic gadflies of the Codex will tell you, or indeed as our homegrown wit Viking_Berserker puts it: it's all crap.
 
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There is a reason I don't frequent Codex afterall. I enjoyed his year in review somewhat - but the endless negativity gets old. This board has spiralled into the same pig headed negativity Codex suffers from. We would all like RPG's to be complex, consequential and free ranging but not every game will be. That doesnt mean everything sucks and nothing is fun. Its a GAME, most of the flawed games are still quite fun.

The negative pattern here and at Codex is just plain tiresome. Repeat after me:
- Oblivion sux. Every news item on it needs to get trashed.
- Gothic 3 is amazing. Any reviewer who disagrees is a moron.
- Bethesda is at fault for all RPG shortcomings, global conflict and world hunger.

Following the strict RPGWatch/Codex formula outlined above, Project Grey clearly fell victim to Bethesda.
 
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The bastards.
 
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I didn´t follow the news on The White Council but i think it´s sad that the project is on hold (or even dead?) I would have loved to see a crpg in the LotR-setting.
I have nothing against all the action adventures and rts-games with the LotR-license but that´s just not my flavour.
 
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I don't even know why EA starts an RPG project. EA should just say no and stick to FPS shooter game 1,987,874
 
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actually its this site that's in love with Gothic 3. Codex are basically an extension of that horrid Fallout fanbase. Although for some weird reason they think that diablo is teh bomb too.

its a shame taht EA cancelled yet another traditional CRPG. Since Ultima 9 their track record hasn't been great for actually getting published. Brian Fargo got the license for Bard's Tale but I think they published it themselves and did not go through EA.

It doesn't sound like the issue this time was with deadlines. They have been so dogmatic about those thanks to their cash cow sports titles and this caused problems with developers. I am curious to know what those "management" problems were. If this source was in fact Steve Gray himself I wonder if we'll get a nice disgruntled report in a year or so when the non-disclosure agreement is over.
 
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They produced Ultima Online and the original Bards Tale.

Yeah - Ultima Online just hit 9th anniversary ... to quote Real Genius "that was yesterday, what have you done for me today"

:)
 
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