LOTRO: the adoption of culture

Culture is a fabric of information, a dynamic interweaving of shared perspectives, an ongoing dialogue about who we are: how we shape our social identity to be successful in life, how we interact with our friends to be appreciated, how we define ourselves in relation to others.  The online social space gives us virtually unparalleled opportunities for experimentation with all of this stuff, and it may be that a lot of what we mean by play is just this relatively unfettered chance to try new social things without having some of the potentially awful consequences of the real world.  The hitch - or one of them - is that culture is also a creature of context, rich, subtle and deep, an ongoing multifaceted discussion on various levels - from pop culture to the very personal.  And online instances of innovative culture rarely give us a deep context from which to start, at least, one that isn't the norm.

LOTRO is different.  The depth of Tolkien's work, from the creation of the universe to the family trees of the residents of Hobbiton, creates a shared base of knowledge from which the participants in LOTRO can begin to shape their own personal myths.  The result is a culture that is different from much of what else is out there - rather than the stilted uncertain clumsy attempts in other realms, in LOTRO the expectations are much more clear:  we know what elves are like, we know about second breakfast, and the adventurous Tooks, and why there are no Dwarf women in the world (they rarely appear in public).  Further, even in the books, Tolkien did a masterful job of creating the impression of a rich and complete and believable world.  There are scattered references to history, or song, or myth throughout the works, many of which are only explained in another work.  There's a tremendously deep body of work describing this world and it's history, through the various ages... and the references serve to convince the reader that that history is available, that this world is believable.    One of the things that is most satisfying about the original books is just this sense of richness and believability. 

Kudos to the development team, for staying true to such amazing source material.  With something this well done, you don't want to mess with it.  And that fidelity has amazing result - the culture of LOTRO is not WoW with better graphics.  In some way it turns into a validation (if one was needed) of some of the core cultural values that make Tolkien's original work so meaningful:  nobility, appreciation of beauty, the value of loyalty and humility, the strength of friendship and a true heart.  The culture of LOTRO, the behavior of the players, is consistent with these core principles - that and a dollop of whimsy, rarely far off, in the original works.  People treat each other differently here... there's no Barrens Chat, no griefing.  The team has created a space for the flourishing of a different culture, and it's being happily embraced.

One last note here:  one very successful implementation of a cultural encouragement is the presentation of how to choose a name in the character creation screen.  As appropriate for each race, there is a brief description of naming conventions - suggestions and description to enable the users to name their characters appropriately.  And, not surprizingly, people very consistently follow the suggested conventions - no "Killr1337" here, the names are appropriate to Tolkien's elves or hobbits or dwarves.  The culture, founded on the rich context Tolkien provides, grows in an appropriate fashion.

Note:  I fear this may not be clear - I may revise and expand all this.  Lemme know if you have questions?

Comments

[Jye Nicolson]

My experience is that it's a difference in degree, not kind. LotRO has plenty of Trogdors (and Tragdors, Troggdors etc etc), inane chat (Bree OOC...) and griefing behaviours. It just has *less* than the average WoW server, and more casual roleplay. I agree that Turbine have done a good job, but it's more a nicer neighbourhood than a utopia :)

[Ron Meiners]

You're right, of course. A bit of a utopia for me perhaps, as a long-time Tolkien fan, but certainly not "flawless". Mostly I wanted to highlight how certain aspects of cultural behavior show up in LOTRO: there is a unique culture, or a distinct one, it is, I feel, strongly informed by the literature and the wealth of knowledge of the works by the participants, and it's consistently and positively influenced by some of the design implementations made by Turbine. Too, I think, there's the element that this culture will now tend to propagate itself: having a clear identity, participants will feel empowered to promote that identity.

This was an odd post for me, and one even more disjointed than normal... my wife's about to go into labor, Multiverse is about to ship our 1.0 release, and this is a topic I've been thinking about, really, for some years - specifically how Tolkien created a rich culture and communicated that, and how that should prove a solid foundation for an online LOTR culture. I think that's clearly happening and it's really exciting... but I'm sorta distracted these days!

Thanks for the comments!

[JoBildo]

As a side note, you know what little Tolkien reference I found the other day while questing in Evendim? A reference to a little toy dog, that a hobbit was looking for. This is in reference to a little known children's story JRR wrote for his own son.

It amazed me that even that little thing had been put forth into the game. It's those type of flares that make me keep logging in, even when I'm frustrated with the questing at my current level.

[Khan]

I have to agree with much of your assessment. WoW's Lore always felt superficial to me. Like a thin veneer over, well, nothing. What Tolkien managed in his world was to create a world with a history. Not only did the current times have history, there was a history to the history. You are looking at z but before, it was y and before that it was x. The depth of Tolkien's world comes across quite well in the game. I like participating in things in the game that I've read about and conversely reading things in the books that I've done in the game. Turbine did a great job!

As for the culture, I think it's about the same as WoW but with a more mature group. There are still boneheads in LoTRO, but it's like the volumn is turned down. Most people also seem to genuinely try to get into the spirit of the game with naming and in-game behaviors.