LOTRO Dev Talks About Bringing MMOs To Consoles

[wraggster]

Jeffrey Steefel, executive producer for Lord of the Rings: Online recently spoke to Eurogamer about the game's upcoming expansion and its future in the MMO market. One thing he mentions is the challenge of designing an MMO for consoles, which have a larger player base than PC games. He admits that UI development would be a huge issue, but also thinks MMOs could benefit from splitting tasks between various devices.
"Long term, for me, the real exciting vision is ... thinking about a game, a franchise, as this centralised content. There's this thing called Lord of the Rings that sits on a bunch of servers ... and whether you're on your PC, your console, your mobile device, those are all just access points, and they're all good at different things. ... The console is great for fast action, immediate activities. Combat, raids, things like that could be a lot of fun sitting on your couch. And some things that are necessary but slightly rote and boring, like managing your inventory or setting up for a raid, or some elements of crafting — those are things that you can do instead of playing Bejeweled when you're sitting on the train or on a break or whatever it happens to be."

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl.../09/01/2347240

[elk1007]

This is basically how the franchise .Hack// is designed.
Although none of it is connected in such a direct way.

If they could make a .Hack// MMORPG, I do believe I'd $#@! bricks.

[Coolie4]

i play ffxi. on my ps2. its available for pc, ps2, ps3 and xbox.

[noname1]

Would be cool to play a mmorpg on my psp.
I think there are already some ports of mmo's for the psp but i want a real game.