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[Jacob/Lee]

Lord of the Rings is a brand with orders of magnitude more recognition than Warhammer Fantasy if I had to guess. I can't see WB being any harder to work with than a company like GW either - maybe even easier.

[Aklyon]

I wonder how successful the game would be if they had stripped out all the LOTR stuff and made their own IP or used a lesser-known one?

I honestly don't think the IP is benefiting them all that much.  Selling it as a LoTR game isn't fooling anyone who knows more than the very basics of the lore, and it's probably alienating at least a few curmudgeonly gits.

I always thought they missed a trick by not going with Warhammer Fantasy instead.  Oddly charismatic greenskins fit the lore far better, and they're already basically ultraviolent comic relief.  Plus the DLC/expansion potential would be basically limitless with the plethora of different races, anyone who can say they wouldn't pay for at least Skaven, Chaos/Beastmen (think of the mutations!) and Vampire Counts is either a liar or a fool.  Also, y'know, goblins.

Their weird McGuffin of a new Ring would fit in better with a world that has umpteen million powerful artifacts, the new enemy types they shoehorn in already have very close equivalents in WHF, and the lore is just generally convoluted but open enough for them to get away with a lot more craziness than is feasible with LotR.  Hell, even the weird wraith possession thing would make far more sense with an IP switch.  OR they could drop it entirely and let players lead the WAAAGH as an orc.  The early game could consist of you carving your way through the nemesis system to become a chieftain/warboss.

A WHF based Mount & Blade style game using something like the Nemesis system in place of generic lords would be pretty much my dream game.

TL;DR: Green iz da best.

So you're saying we need someone to make an orky WHF game with a nemesis system?

[Ozyton]

The idea of being a grunt working your own way up to warchief/warboss sounds pretty cool to me. What if you had random strengths/weaknesses like other orcs and had to play around them?

[Dunamisdeos]

Minor quibble, but nearly all the enemies in Shadow of Mordor identify themselves as Uruk-hai and not the garden-variety Orc.

What traits would make them "Tolkien Orcs?" I struggle to remember how they were supposed to act in his books.

As a curmudgeonly LOTR git, the thing that saves the game atmosphere-wise for me is the way they nailed the behavior and "culture" of the orcs as described in the books. They are generally cruel and violent without being outright stupid, and are held together primarily due to fear of the guy above them.

[nenjin]

The idea of being a grunt working your own way up to warchief/warboss sounds pretty cool to me. What if you had random strengths/weaknesses like other orcs and had to play around them?

I'd play the shit out of that. I wish there were more games where you legitimately get to play the bad guys without completely diluting it with humor and cheese so no one takes to too super srs.

[Jacob/Lee]

Minor quibble, but nearly all the enemies in Shadow of Mordor identify themselves as Uruk-hai and not the garden-variety Orc.

What traits would make them "Tolkien Orcs?" I struggle to remember how they were supposed to act in his books.

As a curmudgeonly LOTR git, the thing that saves the game atmosphere-wise for me is the way they nailed the behavior and "culture" of the orcs as described in the books. They are generally cruel and violent without being outright stupid, and are held together primarily due to fear of the guy above them.

True. I like to think that the ones with terrible English are actually just really bad at speaking Talion's language. Some of the Uruks are actually pretty human-like and well-composed, at least for a LotR work. Some lines that stick out:
"We fought for a better world. Now chaos will reign."
"Do it then! Murder - like we do!"
"Raise your guard. Take a stance. Show me some sport."
The singers and poets show that Uruks have at least some degree of advancement among them, too.

I read somewhere that the team designed most of the Uruks with WWI fighters in mind - people driven to the extremes of their own personality by constant fear and brutal conditions. I hope they retain that characterization through Shadow of War.

[Dunamisdeos]

Minor quibble, but nearly all the enemies in Shadow of Mordor identify themselves as Uruk-hai and not the garden-variety Orc.

What traits would make them "Tolkien Orcs?" I struggle to remember how they were supposed to act in his books.

As a curmudgeonly LOTR git, the thing that saves the game atmosphere-wise for me is the way they nailed the behavior and "culture" of the orcs as described in the books. They are generally cruel and violent without being outright stupid, and are held together primarily due to fear of the guy above them.

True. I like to think that the ones with terrible English are actually just really bad at speaking Talion's language. Some of the Uruks are actually pretty human-like and well-composed, at least for a LotR work. Some lines that stick out:
"We fought for a better world. Now chaos will reign."
"Do it then! Murder - like we do!"
"Raise your guard. Take a stance. Show me some sport."
The singers and poets show that Uruks have at least some degree of advancement among them, too.

I read somewhere that the team designed most of the Uruks with WWI fighters in mind - people driven to the extremes of their own personality by constant fear and brutal conditions. I hope they retain that characterization through Shadow of War.

In the books they talk about local politics, make observations about the war from their perspective, all of that kind of stuff. They are simply irrevocably evil, unlike WH orks who are also delightfully stupid.

[ZeroGravitas]

"The scum tried to knife me" is as British as it can get without exchanging scum sum for bloke.

from the section i was thinking of in Chapter 2 of Book Six:

They've lost their heads, that's what it is. And some of the bosses are going to lose their skins too, I guess, if what I hear is true: Tower raided and all, and hundreds of your lads done in, and prisoner got away. If that's the way you fighters go on, small wonder there's bad news from the battles.

[Neonivek]

The issue is that "Accentless" is kind of a non-existent thing.

[nenjin]

Jesus, whatever.

[scriver]

"The scum tried to knife me" is as British as it can get without exchanging scum sum for bloke.

from the section i was thinking of in Chapter 2 of Book Six:

They've lost their heads, that's what it is. And some of the bosses are going to lose their skins too, I guess, if what I hear is true: Tower raided and all, and hundreds of your lads done in, and prisoner got away. If that's the way you fighters go on, small wonder there's bad news from the battles.

Ah, I was thinking about the movies, because in my head the game is set pretty firmly in the movie adaptions rather than the books.

[Fewah]

Is it confirmed that the fortresses you take can be sieged as well?
Or is it basically... "WHILE YOU WERE AWAY OVER HERE, YOUR FORTRESS WAS ATTACKED AND TAKEN BY GLOB MOB#2"?

Im having a hard time imagining how they'll do defending sieges.

[nenjin]

Yes, it's confirmed you'll defend them.

My guess is you'll be notified when it's going to happen and it's a mission on the map just like fort assaults are. Start the mission, see the fort siege screen, only you do it from the defender side. Rather than pick your defenses at the time of attack, you'll have available the stuff you've spend the Mirrian for like an Iron Gate, Siege Beasts etc...

[Man of Paper]

Been playing some Starpoint Gemini Warlords, and it has a good solution I think to that issue. You can see enemy fleets on the map, and can usually tell when and where they're going to attack. When they get to their objective a little bar pops up showing the balance of forces and a timer. If you wish, you can do nothing and let the timer run out, where it auto-resolves based on the strength of the fleets in combat. If you get there before the timer runs down though, the timer disappears and you become involved in the battle. You can also obviously intercept the fleet before they even reach their goal.

Just replace fleets with hordes and I think it'd do well.

Perhaps even better, they could take a leaf out of Rome 2's book (let me finish before you have a seizure at the suggestion) and give commanders armies that gain their own traits as well. Kind of amplify the Nemesis system a bit. Say, for example, Dush the Douche likes to fire at his enemies from a distance, and is a fan of the ambush. Perhaps his army could reflect his desires and be more likely to attack a stronghold at night, or have men lying in wait within the walls as a siege begins.

The last bit there is all headfantasy, and I have no basis to assume such a thing would ever come into being, but the idea was too enticing not to share. I also haven't watched many of the gameplays of SoW, so everything I've said could already be in or out. I'm just trying to avoid the media hype-train, that way I'll more than likely enjoy the experience regardless.

Also I guess partially ninja'd by nenjin even though I technically wasn't providing an actual answer.

[nenjin]

It's been implied and assumed, but not explicitly stated, that captain and warchief options on attack and defense flow from their tribe/class. So facing guys from the Feral tribe you can probably expect Caragor packs and Caragor riders. Mystic tribe you can probably expect necromancy, curse and probably spiders. I don't know how they've mapped it out if at all, but it would seem a huge missed opportunity if all orc captains of class X got the same siege options regardless of other factors.

Also the whole time passing thing and dividing up Middle Earth into regions conflicts somewhat with a broader, RTS-style field of view for things like sieges and the movement of armies etc... It's not clear in SoW how you know about stuff happening outside of the region you're currently in. It was said in dev streams that "time only really passes in other regions once you travel to it." Essentially a lot of the automated parts of the Nemesis system are suppressed if you're not present to see it happening. Unoccupied regions stay in stasis so, for example, you don't come back to find half your captains and warchiefs dead or deposed. So I don't know how the game telling you that your fort in Nurn is under assault when you're in Gorgoroth would work. The way they've described it just traveling to that region defend the fort would be read as "time passing."

So I imagine you'll get a story mission to introduce the concept of defending your fort (possibly after you capture the very first one) and then it will be some sort of check that, while you're in a region with a captured fort, the game may spontaneously generate a fort assault for you to defend against. And if you don't respond, you lose the fort, the region and probably all your orcs at the fort.

I'd think that simulating the Nemesis system in non-active regions starts to become too much overhead for them when you're simulating......300? orcs and armies moving around, leveling up, dying, getting new traits, so and so forth. Starts to sound a bit like DF at that point.

As an aside, they did say that enemy orcs you've met in other regions will hunt you across regions. Which is pretty cool.