Talk:The Wastes

Not sure what happened here but there are notes all over this thing that say a region is now an area and an area is now a region. Lets not muck up this entire website switching the terms after what? 10 years? Matthew.zellmer (talk) 18:36, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Wait, what? Yeah, that's really confusing. I'd say we keep up the normal nomenclature. If it's actually different in-game, we could add one sentence (not multiple, all over the article) at the end of the article that clearly states that somehow it's done differently in-game and how you can see that (this is unclear to me at this point). --Ravanel (talk) 08:58, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

The answer is simple: (Turbine) SSG reversed their historical usage (or at least compared to the WIKI's) of the geographic terms Area and Region in Update 20.

The Wiki historical usage is Land > Region > Area

The Release notes: Update 20 - Battle of the Black Gate - March 21, 2017

"Update 20, The Battle of the Black Gate, features more than ninety quests in three new regions: the Noman-lands, Dagorlad, and the Slag-hills. Discover new adventures beginning in the Camp of the Host."

Compare that with our definition of Area: "Each region of Middle-earth is divided into different sections, or Areas"

So, if those three questing locations are "Regions" then that would make the Wastes a Land!

However, other than in marketing material, I don't believe the game refers to either "Area" or "Region."

That is, except for the Maps -- in which case the "Land" for the Wastes is in-fact Mordor - not Gondor!

And then SSG/Turbine compounded things by making Mordor an Expansion -- which is why the two sections of the Mordor navigation template!

The Wastes is a Region#Mordor of the Land of Mordor, as is the Plateau of Gorgoroth.

Also, don't forget, the Wastes was released in two parts. The first part did NOT include the 3 Regions (areas), only the Camp of the Host, which was then considered part of North Ithilien. In a patch, SSG moved the Camp into the Wastes because of performance issues.

Today, in retrospect, if someone is so inclined, they can go back and change things to be historically consistent as opposed to the way things were originally presented, and delete the footnotes. What's present was written contemporaneously with the release, and I don't know that anyone besides me has even read it until now! According to the history file, nobody else has contributed to the page.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 18:40, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification! So if I understand correctly, the only source for a change in nomenclature from SSG's end is that sentence in the release notes? Because in that case, I don't think the developers gave that one word much attention - after all they don't need to document and categorize their new digital environments on a wiki! This is not the first time the developers have been somewhat inconsistent; iirc there was something similar going on with the introduction of Mirkwood back in the day. In this case, I would suggest to stick to the definitions of Land > Region > Area as we have them on the LOTRO-wiki. We can make a note about the developers referring to the three areas as regions in those release notes, if you like, but then I suggest it is only mentioned in one clear spot in the article and with reference to the source as a trivia of sorts. That way it does not come off as confusing to readers. --Ravanel (talk) 15:10, 19 October 2017 (UTC)