What Is The Last Alliance?

TLA is a defunct concept for a video game based on works of J.R.R. Tolkien, that was developed by volunteers as a non-profit, educational initiative.

Some of the concepts were implented in code, but the software development of this project has been long discontinued.

What remains of TLA is a set of texts which study and interpret Tolkien's works (i.e. criticism, comment, scholarship and research) and a set of original artwork inspired by Tolkien's works.

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A History of The Last Alliance

In the beginning, there was a modding team. This modding team called itself Wildfire Studios and was founded in January 2001. By May of that year, Wildfire Studios had distinguished itself above other modding teams for its legendary Age of Kings modpack, Rome at War, which is still considered among the best modpacks ever made. In fact, Rome at War was even featured in and distributed with computer magazines.

Then in late 2001, Wildfire Studios began its next project, which was codenamed, "0 A.D." This project was going to be a total-conversion modification for Age of Kings, which set the game in the era from 500 B.C. to 500 A.D.. It was during this time, a time when public interest in Tolkien's work was on the uprise from the hype for the first movie, that some members of Wildfire Studios began to conceptualize The Last Alliance. Josef_Bugman, a veteran modder took it upon himself to create The Last Alliance as another one of Wildfire Studios' modpacks.

So Josef_Bugman sought out help from all around the Internet, enlisting many people, and eventually catching the attention of Adam (av_nefardec). In the early days of TLA, Josef_Bugman wanted no less than to recreate the New Line Cinema LotR film within Age of Kings. Then, in the first quarter of 2002, Wildfire Studios changed its name to Wildfire Games, to avoid complications with an already existing game development studio.

The first part of 2002 saw little advancement with the project except in the way of building graphics. The reason for this was simple. Both TLA and 0 A.D. were unsure of how they could fit all that they wanted to create into the rather limited scope of an AoK modpack. So in early 2002, TLA became Wildfire Games' first game development project. 0 A.D. soon followed suit, and is now doing very well as an independently developed historical RTS.

The Summer of 2002 was a rough time for the fledgling TLA. Josef_Bugman, whose time for the project was severly restriced by both university and personal reasons was forced to devote less and less of his energy to the project. It was during this time that Josef_Bugman appointed Adam (av_nefardec) as provisional project leader. Adam, by this time enthralled by the very idea of TLA, tried to pick up the pieces of the project and start anew.

Among the first things Adam did to revamp TLA was to induct several members into the TLA team, not the least of whom was Elfthehunter, a senior game designer today on the project. With Elfthehunter and others, Adam set off blindly into the world of game development. They began to write a game design document.

Then in December of 2002, TLA started the expansion process. TLA went out and recruited no less than twelve new members, among them were conceptual artists, musicians, database programmers, and linguists. Game Design became more meticulous, as the team learned more and more about what game development was all about.

In the spring of 2003, however, the team learned of possible legal implications of the development of such a project as TLA. The team attempted to adjust itself and development continued through 2007, but development slowly came to a halt afterwards. In September 2012, Wildfire Games publicly announced that the development of TLA would be discontinued until further notice. The team also announced that original content created during the design of TLA would be preserved as a cultural asset for Tolkien devotees, and as insipiration for those interested in fantasy mods and games.

— Based on a 2007 text by the TLA Staff; Edited by Aviv Sharon ("Jeru"), a contributor to 0 A.D., in September 2012.

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