Board Thread:General Mod Discussion/@comment-28201943-20161231215134/@comment-25101089-20170101103250

RedLagoooN wrote: Gen. Grievous1138 wrote: Angmar exists for balance. I'll see if I can find the thread, but Mevans wrote a long explanation of why it's in the mod.

Gen. Grievous1138 (LOTR Mod Wiki Admin) comlink 04:16, January 1, 2017 (UTC) man im confused some ppl here dont even think about balance just lore, while some actually want the game to be fun for everyone. Whatever we are designing in the mod is always a tenuous balance between several factors: Gameplay, Lore Accuracy, Programming Feasbility, Community Expectations, Realism... And there is not always a strict precedence. For example, we may make the Orcs more effective against Men and Elves than the lore would suggest, because if we did otherwise, nobody would ever play with Orcs. We may invent new peoples for the South and East rather than have them lie empty or scattered with uninteresting tribes. But then, we may also disable important parts of the vanilla game to come closer to the workings of Middle-earth. And we may give the 'evil factions' sympathetic speechbanks and portray them as ordinary folk, instead of entire peoples of 'darkness' who are full of hatred and anger and warmongering and savagery. But we may not wish to make the world as realistic as possible, because then the gameplay would be tedious and limiting. And, most importantly, we may change our mind on any of this at any time.

Ultimately, if we strove to make a mod that was fully lore-accurate, it would be rubbish to play, and also completely impossible to do in this game. If we based it on gameplay and realism, it would be overwrought and lacking that comfy feeling of Middle-earth magic, and just as stressful as real life. And if we based it on community expectations, everything would be disorganised and chaotic, lacking the overall sense of consistency that many people have complimented us on, and full of non-canonical 'cool stuff'.