Augury

For quite awhile I’ve been hoping that, one day, there would be a game that would allow people to write their own music. I mean, after all, modern computers have sound cards, and can generally run complex music synthesizing software. Sending a string of MIDI signals across the internet is not any more outlandish than sending real-time physics data for fifty or so people and potentially hundreds of projectiles (see: almost any multiplayer First Person Shooter).

So recently I came across this video from Lord of the Rings Online:

Very cool! Although it does bring up the obvious flaw that I never thought of - What happens when people use this music-synthesizing utility to break in-game character. I mean, from my impression, this sort of thing is purely a roleplay / fluff feature (no tie-in to mechanics), so the fact that something that’s intended primarily to improve immersion is seemingly used almost exclusively to break it is problematic.