The world is rife with properties ideal for the MMO treatment, but few are as suited to this style of game as Middle-earth.
Of all the things suited to making into to a MMOG, I would say stories are amongst the worst. Generally, the whole thrust of a story, particularly those of the swords and sorcery ilk, is how a hero or small band of heroes is able to overcome impossible odds and make a difference. This is ideal for making a single-player RPG maybe, but a massively multiplayer game? The role of the majority of people in the book is be prospective cannon fodder in order to distract Sauron from spotting Frodo, Sam and Gollum as they sneak in the back door. Granted, there's some fundamental elements of questing that could be applied to some facets of the game, but no-one's going to be repeating it in game, both because it's not a very interesting quest to do and because it would be the de facto end of the game anyway.
A broad milieu would seem much more ideal. That's one of the things World of Warcraft has going for it, in that they didn't have to ignore the most famous elements of their backstory when making the game.
After completing a few quests for the high-ups in town, the player is offered a chance to delivery a decisive blow against the brigands. This offensive proves successful, but during its course, one key event takes place: unbeknownst to its inhabitants, Archet's wall suffers a breach, and unfortunately, no one finds out until it's too late. The player returns to town to find it under siege, and must then fight off wave after wave of bandits. When their boss is finally slain, not much remains is Archet, and from this point forward, every time the player visits the town, it'll be in a ruined state.
This seems kind of inverted instancing. At first blush I thought it sounded like a step in the right direction in light of my previous comments on the static nature of quests. But thinking about it, it's not really that different from the current crop - it's still a linear quest with one outcome, but now you're spared the effect of the town still being around for others to fail to save.
Yeah, I had pretty much the same feeling when I read about that quest. It has to be instanced otherwise it's just a one-off quest like the big story ones from AC back in the day. Whoever gets to it first and solves it is the hero and everyone else is just a putz with a sword who helped out and is never remembered.
So, it has to be instanced to give any effect, but then, it's basically just a bogus thing because are you really having an effect on the world if only you see the result? If the city is destroyed for you but Larry the Leaper has yet to run the quest and he talks to you about how the town is sieged, it ruins the effect.
I don't know. I just don't think it's truly possible to do in a MMOG.