The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar has just been released a week ago, set in a fictional fantasy universe created by J. R. R. Tolkien, Middle-Earth. The MMO allows marriages between characters and even between those of the same sex, but all this is about to change, as Turbine designer Nik Davidson told Salon his intentions with the game. We thank 1UP for the excerpt:

"The rule that we tried to follow across the board was: if there's an example of it in the book, the door is open to explore it. Very rarely will you see an elf and a human hook up, but it does happen; the door is open. Dwarves don't intermarry with hobbits; that door is shut... Did two male hobbits ever hook up in the shire and have little hobbit civil unions? No. The door is shut."

Davidson goes on to talk about why they chose to leave gay marriages out with The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, as the team didn't think it had anything to do with Tolkien's beliefs:

"Tolkien was a conservative Catholic. He went out drinking with C.S. Lewis every night, and the two of them had a worldview that was -- well, let's just say it clashes a little bit with the sensibilities of East Coast liberals who make up the largest population of Turbine." But Davidson doesn't rule gay marriages out completely either: "I just couldn't figure out how to get it all done with all the other things we had to get finished."