Amazon Games has announced it will be making another attempt at developing a Lord of the Rings MMO, following the cancellation of their previous attempt in 2021 after co-developer Leyou Holdings Technology Ltd. was purchased by Tencent. This new game is being developed in-house by Amazon Games Orange County, the developer of Amazon's first MMO, New World, and with the cooperation of the Embracer Group, who purchased the IP rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in August of last year. This new game, currently untitled, is still in the "early stages of production" and, according to Eurogamer, is "built from the ground up" and does not use assets from Amazon's last attempt, meaning we may not hear more details for several years.

While the announcement is short on details, it does confirm that the game is targeting a release for both PC and consoles, and that it will feature "the beloved stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings literary trilogy." This puts it in direct conflict with Lord of the Rings Online, which launched in 2007 and is still actively receiving support today. In response to Amazon's announcement, Lord of the Rings Online developer Standing Stone Games posted on their forum to dispel fan concerns that their game would be going away. "Like you, we, and our partners at Middle-earth Enterprises are huge fans of LOTRO," the message begins. "It is beloved, it is sixteen, it is evergreen. LOTRO is like the long-lived Ents, Elves and Dwarves; and we mere mortals, are the stewards of LOTRO and its community. Standing Stone has every intention of growing and supporting this community. The road goes ever on..."

Amazon Games Vice President Christoph Hartmann, speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, also said he believes the two games can co-exist, but it is more likely that people will naturally migrate to Amazon's title. While he stressed that he has "a lot of respect for them to keep it going that long," he also believes the gulf in technology will be too great for people to choose Lord of the Rings Online over his game.

"They have a, not huge, but a very dedicated fanbase. But looking just at the technology, where we're at now, and where we will be in a couple of years, it's just worlds apart. It's a little exaggeration if I say it's going to be like black and white movies to colour, but that's the approach I want to take. It's just a completely different world," said Hartmann. "I think they actually can co-exist. Even the most likely scenario is… for people just to move over, because the other one is an old game. It's not a bad game, but the industry moves on at some point, and it's a long time from their release to ours."

For now, however, The Lord of the Rings Online is still going strong, and likely will for another few years. And for any Lord of the Rings fans who want a single-player game, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum looks like it may finally be releasing this week after several years of delays.

Source

 

[zoogie]

So Amazon's last MMO attempt sank to the bottom of the ocean. I guess they're going to bravely try again, but I'm afraid the sea is always right.

 

[kudofan]

How about no?

 

[The Catboy]

How many times do we need to teach them this lesson?

 

[Xzi]

They can't even create a standard game anyone likes, and making a good MMO is ten times harder. More money than sense.

 

[Bladexdsl]

complete with 80% more micro transactions!

Fuck it's gonna be a shit show. I would not be surprised if they renamed Gollum to Gacha.

 

[_47iscool]

 

[Marc_LFD]

Amazon really is trying to make their brand a one-for-all things, but just nope.

 

[DarkCoffe64]

The MMO craze has been ages ago, if these corpos wanna shamelessly follow them popular trends, they should make a...

what's popular these days nowadays... uh, a LotR Vampire Survivor's clone, or something?

 

[Xzi]

what's popular these days nowadays...

Survival-crafting games. Even Nintendo jumped on that bandwagon.

 

[Guacaholey]

Survival-crafting games. Even Nintendo jumped on that bandwagon.

Those are still popular? I remember when like 8 years ago those were everywhere. I know Minecraft and Terraria are still insanely popular. I think 7 Days to Die also still enjoys popularity but I figured that one was because it was a good survival experience. Rust and Ark too, but those are both good games and the latter is pretty unique.

 

[nolimits59]

They actually made New World worth it IIRC, balanced with the economy also (traditional battlepass, don't give huge advantage etc) if they use the experience they have thanks to that they might pull it off, who knows.

 

[Xzi]

Those are still popular?

Yeah, roguelikes and soulslikes had their moment in the sun after MMOs and MOBAs, but those were always fairly niche genres. Valheim released just a couple years ago and we've already had like six other survival-crafting games release since then.

EDIT: Dunno how I forgot about battle royale games, those were obviously the biggest fad for a while.

 

[SonyUSA]

Pay2Win and you get big boosts if you have Prime, most likely.

Though let's not forget, LotRO became pay to win years ago.

 

[TomSwitch]

Amazon is probably the second most economical way to play game if you are not a prime member ( first being free game from Epic )

 

[SushiKing]

Yuck. Stick to games that people actually want like BFME Remaster/remake

 

[axialcecal]

tbf all MMOs are just a waste of oxygen. Multiplayer in general post 2012 has been a descent into madness

 

[TomSwitch]

Give me Rings of Power season two and I will subscribe to Prime to watch it and maybe get some free games.

 

[LokeYourLord]

No matter how much money you throw at something will help you solve a core problem: You don't understand your audience and customers. And this couldn't be any more apparent than with Amazon and their shitshow that was LoTR - Rings of Power. An MMO (another one at that) isn't going to work out any better for them this time than their last one(s), and their spectacular failure that was Rings of Power.

Maybe they should use that money to hire some people with common sense that know their audience, customers and lore/story (mainly since they should come from such a category themselves), and that don't shit all over their audience/customers with their preachy propaganda and constant changes to the lore/story in order to appease the people who never buy their products anyways.

Corporatism at its finest: It's not about making money, it's about making ALL money, and never is it more apparent than when corpos throw ungodly amounts of money at things only for them to fail regardless because they don't know, understand or simply want to understand and know their customers and audience.

How many times do we have to teach you this lesson old man, you don't piss off your customers.

 

[PopcornSweetie]

Well well well... This is going to end well..