Quote Originally Posted by Agamaran View Post
Listen up. No one here wanted the mod to be shut down. I've been following the mod for four years now myself. Back then they were still developing for Oblivion and had an alpha out that included a fully developed height map and some developed settlements--they even had a 100% modeled Minas Tirith. Was it amazing? Yes. Was it legal? No.

This is a problem the mod team has faced ever since they decided, in their mission statement, to model all of their work off the New Line Cinema movies. The battlement walls of Minas Tirith are actually black, made of the same stonework as Orthanc, but one of the famous Tolkien illustrators (don't know which--probably both) decided to draw the entire city as white stonework. This was then translated in the movies. And it was then fully realized in this mod. Cripes, they even added catapults on the towers, even though there is never mention of Gondor having catapults on the towers in the books.

Simply put--it was a movie mod, not a lore mod. What more proof did you need when they changed the aspect of creating Middle-earth to "you will play as the Ring-bearer"? On top of all of that they then decided to port the mod over to the currently super-popular Skyrim. TATW skates on thin ice but at least they're not waving their hands like a bunch of idiots and blowing raspberries to WB saying, "Neener neener neener, look at what we're getting away with!".

I signed the petition because I like the work and hope that it continues, but let's get real here. The only way it will continue is if that team decided to wholly compromise their "we are creating movie games" angle. They would certainly have far more respect and supporters if the mod drew its inspiration directly from the books and wasn't trying to recreate the storyline of the book by making you play as one of the main characters.
Well in this case no mod based on a book or movie is legal. There is absolutely no difference between MERP and TATW. It's funny because a few months ago all mods which did not use copyrighted material (such as models and music from other games) were considered legal but now every smartass with five minutes of time apparently thinks that the MERP team is breaking the law. Spread the word people, TWC is full evil law breaking mod teams that need to be shut down NOW!