The website MMORPG has
released an article about developing of Lord of the Rings Online. Lord of the
Rings Online Executive producer Jeffrey Steefel has recently returned from a
trip to Korea where Turbine is getting ready to launch Lord of the Rings Online.
MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood recently caught up with Steefel to talk
about developing for these two very different markets and what Noth American and
European players can expect to see from the move.
The details are as
below:
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Lord of the
Rings Online Executive Producer Jeffrey Steefel where we talked about launching
the game in the Korean market and what that might mean for those of us in the
west.
As you may or may not know, Steefel had just returned from a business trip to
Korea where Lord of the Rings Online is getting ready to make its debut. He told
me that right now, they are finishing up the Closed Beta process and are moving
toward a limited Open Beta.
It seems as though there is a lot of interest in the game over there and that
fans have been enthusiastic as the game gets closer to launch. When I asked him
to compare the fans and anticipation in Korea with the fans and anticipation for
the same stage of development here in the North American market, he said that it
was a bit like comparing apples and oranges as the markets are so different.
While we might not expect that a western story like Lord of the Rings would
penetrate into the Korean market in the same way, Steefel gives Peter Jackson#DY#s
movies a lot of credit for the level of excitement over the game.
One of the challenges that is facing the Turbine team in gearing up for a
Korean launch is the speed at which players move through content. For example:
while (and remember, we are speaking in broad generalizations here) North
American players tend to like quests that are descriptive, but aren#DY#t
necessarily specific, Korean players would prefer a very specific text
description, telling them exactly where they need to go. Fortunately, Turbine
has plans to fully localize and culturalize the game, looking to not only bring
the game into a different language, but into a different culture as well. As a
result (and serving as a pretty good example), a number of the quest texts are
being re-constructed to better reflect a more popular Korean play style.
Before we got off the topic of the Korean launch, Steefel pointed out to me
another of the differences between developing a game for release in the West and
prepping for a release in Korea; customer service. In Korea, game companies have
actual physical walk-up windows set up to handle customer service issues. No
emails or petitions falling through the cracks here.
Read More Here
Resource: MMORPG
