Amazon is developing a new MMORPG for Lord of the Rings – promises open world for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X with top quality

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Amazon Games announced today, May 15th, that they are developing a new MMORPG based on Lord of the Rings. They had already presented such a game in 2019, but then discontinued it to the disappointment of MMORPG fans. The online role-playing game should now appear for PC and consoles. “Console” apparently means PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

These are the 3 most important facts about the new Lord of the Rings game:

  • The game has no name and release date yet.
  • The new game will be set in the persistent world of Middle-earth and will cover stories familiar from The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit. There is no connection to the Amazon series “Rings of Power” set earlier in Tolkien’s universe.
  • The team that was responsible for the Steam hit “New World” will be in charge of developing the MMORPG.

    • Amazon is increasingly devoting itself to “Lord of the Rings”:

    Lord of the Rings – The Rings of Power: The official trailer for the series

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    What the developers say: Both the developers and the rights holders emphasize that they want to create a high-quality game that will delight fans of Lord of the Rings and do justice to the brand:

  • Amazon emphasizes how exciting the “Lord of the Rings” brand is.
  • Middle-Earth officials rave about Amazon’s proven ability to create immersive worlds and render them for large audiences.

    • A similar project was planned in 2019 and was discontinued

    Wasn’t something like this already planned?

    Amazon announced in 2019 that it was developing a new Lord of the Rings MMO. This should play before the movies and work as a “Free2Play” game. They wanted to work with the Hong Kong company “Leyou”, which held the rights.

    But the project fell apart in 2021 after Chinese competitor Tencent bought the company that was supposed to develop the game. The company “Leyou” drew a clause to withdraw from the project.

    The person responsible at Amazon, Christoph Hartmann, a German, said that the project could still have been managed, but that Amazon Games found it too difficult to come to an agreement with the big competitor Tencent and preferred to get out.

    Now, however, the opportunity to create a Lord of the Rings MMORPG has arisen again, and Amazon has jumped at the chance.

    Could be the most important new MMORPG since 2014

    Why is this exciting? Since the great successes of Destiny (2014), Witcher 3 (2015) and Black Desert (2016), we know that console gamers in particular are longing for a deep MMORPG with an open world and an action-combat system in which they can do a lot can spend time.

    Since then, publishers have been aiming in a “Dark Fantasy MMORPG” direction, but have not been able to land on the consoles so far. In Asia, efforts to develop such a game were mainly interrupted by the mobile hype from 2016/2017. In Europe, practically no MMORPGs are developed in these dimensions anymore.

    Amazon has proven that they can go in the “open world/action MMORPG” direction with New World.

    The new Lord of the Rings game now has 3 advantages over New World:

  • The team and the technology are tried and tested – they already have a game on the market and have already survived the first difficult weeks after such a release
  • The new game has an even bigger market potential than New World because Amazon is now thinking about PS5 and Xbox Series X, both consoles on which MMORPGs have a huge demand but with no supply apart from The Elder Scrolls Online and Black Desert
  • Lord of the Rings is one of the biggest brands in the world and for that reason alone it guarantees huge attention

    • When could the game come out?? That’s the fly in the ointment. If the game is now in an “early development stage”, you can probably expect a release between 2028 and 2030 at the earliest.

    If you want to look around for a new MMORPG until then:

    The 5 new MMOs and MMORPGs for 2023 with the best prospects

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