Screenshot Gallery:
http://haven.theonering.net/picpost/source/Middle_Earth_Online

Explanation:
Middle Earth Online has been in development for well over a year now. It was looking very promising, offering many different aspects to gaming which otherwise haven’t been seen. Some of these different ideas were permanent death, limit on Elven population, as well as severe limits on Magic abilities.

However Middle Earth Online was all but canceled recently. The entire Dev. Team was axed, and the game sent into a long delay. Sierra may have doughts on their new and innovative ideas, wanting to make the game more main stream and less accurate to Middle Earth. However we don’t yet know what Sierra has in store for us as far as a new Dev team, and if they might come up with some even better ideas that will work, though that looks doughtful as of now.

Review:
As explained in the explanation of MEO, things have taken a seemingly severe turn for the worse. There is no telling what will happen with MEO right now, and so describing my feelings on the game in its current state would be boring since little is known about what ideas will shape in the future.

Though to comment on the past ideas, such as permanent death, as well as limited magic and Elven population, I’m all for them. If done right permanent death could add not only a lot of realism, which doesn’t always equal a lot of fun, but it would also add importance in what decisions you make as a character. In other games were the penalty for dying is virtually nothing, you might see very young characters tempting their fate against horrible creatures that eat the great warriors of the land. However with the permanent death system you’d see a lot more role playing, and a lot less stupidity on the part over zealous adventurers.

Magic in Middle Earth was also very limited, even Gandalf didn’t show a full array of fire balls and lightening bolts spitting forth from every orifice in his body. To have players running about casting spells of mass destruction all over the place would completely destroy any semblence of a Middle Earth atmostphere. Powerful magic might be a fun, but if thats what your after you can find it in just about any other major Online RPG out there.

As far as limiting Elves, I’m all for it, though I believe it would have been hard to properly do so. Elves would probably be a very popular race. In fact in a poll done at the Mevault Elves were the number one race that players were going to play, or planned to play. Considering the Elven population in the third age was low, in the fourth age you would be hard put to find an Elf out and about adventuring.