Narrative generation in Lord of the Rings online

Abstract

Narrative is an integral part of Lord of the Rings Online. True to its literary and filmic forebears, theonline game incarnation of Middle-earth places considerable effort in delivering an engagement with the narrative developed in Tolkien’s works. Although most MMOGs contain a wealth of background lore and story elements delivered through quests, LOTRO offers a primary story-line that runs through a character’s life from the very first to the last levels. The primary story-line runs parallel to events happening in Tolkien’s (2001) The

Lord of the Rings with a number of charactersfrom the latter making appearances to give players quests and push the narrative forward. Theseelements, among others, give LOTRO a strong sense of a designed narrative that is sometimes feltas superfluous by some players in other MMOGs (Calleja, 2007). [Extract from the Introduction]