Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Lotro in China, and other interesting tidbits

Lotro has finished closed beta in China and will be doing Open Beta soon(tm)

No word as to the pricing model, but my bet is it will emulate WoW over there.

Localization is a big deal so if you are wondering why it takes so long for a game to launch in other countries, here is why: "The Lord of the Rings Online for the China market remains true to the original story line in the novel with the same familiar places, characters and monsters. CDC Games has made significant investment to localize the game for the China market. More than 10 million words were translated and more than 100 tests and changes were performed during the localization process." (taken from here: http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2473363/)

10 million words. That's like translating the entire works of Tolkien or something (I was gonna say Bible first but I'll try to refrain from making unnecessary religious references.) Wow, tons of work. And Chinese ain't no easy language to translate this kind of writing into either.

Anyways, I have been playing Lotro a bit lately with my wife and sister in law, and also have been trying to get Rumples from 58 to 59 and get his minstrel quest done but running around solo in the Foundations of Stone where nameless things dwell is a bit.. hazardous... (doable, but deadly)

2 comments:

Anton said...

Wow...Sounds like a ton of work. I guess they expect China to be receptive to the game. Very Receptive.

Thallian said...

Yeah I don't think it'll do badly. I just don't know how much money its actually worth, the Chinese pay in pennies per hour after all for most online games.