Middle Earth Roleplaying Project (total conversion mod for Skyrim)

Middle Earth Roleplaying Project, or Merp, is a total conversion mod for Skyrim. It remakes Middle Earth in a map nine times larger than Skyrim's map. The book's descriptions are held to a very high standard and some visual inspiration is taken from the movies.

There are three different game modes, if you will.
The Ring bearer quest line which begins the day Frodo leaves Bag End. From there, the freedom of the Elder Scrolls games meets Lord of the Rings. You can decide to do what Frodo did in the books or not. Player choice.
Better destroy the Ring before everyone at the Black Gate dies.
A white council story line which, actually I don't know what that will entail, but there you have it. You can play it or not.
Then a Free roam mode similar to Skyrim. Events in the world are triggered by the dates in which they happen in the books. So if you're over in the Iron Hills for whatever reason and you want to make it to the Battle of the Hornburg, you better hurry or you'll miss it.

There's a bunch of different races to play as.
One of the modders said them a long time ago, so I can't remember for sure everything, but I believe we'll see: beornings, hobbits, rohirrm, elves, dwarves, dunedain, men of Eriador, men of Gondor. There may have been more, I'm not sure.
The weapon arsenal for Merp is also supposed to be more varied. For example a standard sword in the Westfold of Rohan will look different than a standard sword of the Eastfold of Rohan.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/merp-middle-earth-roleplaying-project/images/rohan-weapons1#imagebox

They have more screenshots of their work on their website. http://www.moddb.com/mods/merp-middle-earth-roleplaying-project
Enhanced mounted combat is planned. I don't know how it's going to be enhanced, but spears are going to be in the mod too. Maybe the two are related.
Magic will be largely restricted to be more lore friendly; no fire balls and the like.
There will be a realism mode similar to Fallout New Vegas's Hardcore mode; in Realism mode, the player has to worry about food and water, and I believe combat is much more unforgiving.
I just think it's amazing that the map is nine times larger than Skyrim's map; Rohan alone is roughly the same size as Skyrim.
This is the tour of their map. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMb3jn1m7QE
Keep in mind, this tour was uploaded in February. A lot more work had been done since then.

Rohan was 90% generated when Warner Brothers sent it a cease and desist letter. Hopefully everything will work out Ok and one day I'll get to play it. Especially now that the Tolkien Estate is making the claim that Warner Brothers/Saul Zaents never had the legal rights to non-tangible digital media. Merp, being a mod that one has to download, would fall under the category of non-tangible digital media. If this is true and the Estate wins in their lawsuit, then Warner Brothers' cease and desist letter is void and they won't be able to harm the mod anymore.

I just hope that the Tolkien Estate doesn't turn out to be yet another obstacle for this mod. I really would like to believe that Christopher Tolkien would do the right thing, but you never know.

This is the kind of things that happen when a corporation lets its legal department run amok.

As long as there's no commercial use, there should be no reason to interfere with this amazing fan project. An active fan base is the best thing that can happen to a franchise, so why try to intentionally alienate it????

This reminds me of back in the 80's when I met a woman who ran a relief program for orphans in Belfast. They'd worked hard to get a children's hospital up and running in a bombed out part of the city, and volunteers had painted cartoon characters in the ward to cheer things up, many of which were from Disney. It was no problem until they got covered on an American TV show, when Disney's lawyers saw the pictures in the background and promptly sent the orphans a Cease and Desist Order.......

I bet Disney kept the whole thing quiet. Big companies have to worry about their PR too.
That's where I think the petition will succeed; if someone influential finds out what's going on, it could look bad for WB. Especially now that their legal position to send a cease and desist is in question.

I thought this article about the lawsuit was well written and informative.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/11/tolkien-lawsuit/
"Based on their track record, there is absolutely no reason to believe that Warner Brothers has any intention of limiting their use of the Lord of the Rings to only tangible goods. The Hollywood business model, when it comes to paying people for their work or their intellectual property, is pretty clear. Take what you can get away with and let them sue you to make you follow the contract. Then lie if necessary to keep from having to pay them any money."

The spirit of business!

I hope 2013 is a kinder year to Merp.

Long Live MERP in 2013. And may all the execs at Warner Brother underwear spontaneously combust at the next boardroom meeting.

Amen to that, petty.

The Merp team posted an update on their page.

"Happy new year everyone!

Its been a while since the last news post, so we thought we'd make a new one for the new year just to give everyone an idea of where we are at currently. Don't worry, we haven't gone anywhere.
We all had a lovely Christmas over at MERP HQ, its been quite quiet, but then again, we've had no work to do. Hope you lot a had a great Christmas and New Year too!

So, the bit every one wants to know about, how is the C&D situation going?
Well, we were in contact with WB's attourney before Christmas, but haven't spoken to them for about a month due to the holidays. We hope to get back into negotiations soon, but because of their other lawsuit with Tolkien Enterprises, we've been swept under the rug a little. It looks more hopeful than a few months ago, I'll put it like that. The negotiations are currently under an NDA, which is why we don't post much anymore, but the team are still actively fighting for MERP.
The petition also just surpassed 26 000 signatures, which is just mind-blowing, we never thought we'd even get a fraction of that, so Thank-you so much for getting so many people on board and for your continued support on here and on out Facebook page.
We hope to be able to tell you more about the situation as soon as possible.

In other news:

MERP scored in the top 50 mods of 2012
Happy Birthday Tolkien! (January 3rd)
That's all for now, but we hope to post more soon! -Happy new year from the MERP team^MEB"

y do u evn want this game when u have guardians of middle earth lol

Don't worry RA, it's just Carly.

{{{I may regret saying this.}}}

The Merp team mentioned me in the amended update
Right at the end of the update, they posted
"PS: RecoveryAnonymous, you are an absolute legend, all the medals to you "

Well-done spreading the word, RA! Glad to see you getting some recognition for your efforts.

This really popular guy on youtube got back to me. He's probably going to make a video for Merp to help raise awareness.

Breaking news.
Saul Zaentz is counter suing the Tolkien Estate. They are arguing that they do possess the legal rights to online games.
"... that a 1996 agreement specifically allows online video games — but also that the fame and goodwill generated for Tolkien’s work is “largely the result of the dedicated efforts of Zaentz and its licensees (including Warner Bros.) over the past four decades.”

In other words: Not only are we in the right, but you should be grateful that we made Tolkien’s works so popular in the first place."
They want damages to be paid for even raising the accusation in the first place.
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/01/lord-rings-slot-machines/

They want a trial by jury. I'm not sure how this is going to end.

Very interesting.

I really do resent Zaentz claim that they're basically responsible for Lord of the Rings' popularity. But it seems that the fate of little Merp has been swept up into great matters between juggernauts.

The great battle of our time, as they say with dear little Merp and tens of millions of dollars being thrown around.
I was just thinking of a bit of the parallels with Merp's development and The Ringbearer's journey.
In both cases, there were many instances where failure seemed likely, but was always avoided, if only just so.
I hope Merp is finished, with all this looked at happily in retrospect.

Hi RA,
I'm not a gamer, but I've been telling my gamer friends about this. If MERP ever goes public I may have to do some expanding and exploring.

I was noticing on the MERP site news tab there's this notation:

PS: RecoveryAnonymous, you are an absolute legend, all the medals to you

So what's the legend?

I spread the word about Merp around on YouTube for a few months.
I also got a few people on YouTube to talk about it along with some threads I started on various gaming forums.
The Merp team wanted to say thanks
But thanks, David for helping spread the word about Merp.

If MerP does get saved RA it will be in no small part down to folks like you- you more than deserve a shout out for it.

Thanks, petty.
Merp's release and getting to actually play it one day would be all the shout out I'd need.

hi

Greetings