Amazon’s Lord of the Rings MMO isn’t scaring off The Lord of the Rings Online. Developers from the long running MMO have held strong against the announcement of a competitor.
“[Lord of the Rings Online] is not going away”, confirmed developer Standing Stone in a forum post. “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…”
The Lord of the Rings Online launched way back in 2007 and has developed a stalwart following. Now, a new MMO is coming from Amazon – and while it’s still in the early stages of development, it promises to give players a fresh look at Middle-Earth.
“Bringing players a fresh take on The Lord of the Rings has long been an aspiration for our team, and we’re honored and grateful that Middle-earth Enterprises is entrusting us with this iconic world,” said Amazon Games vice president, Christoph Hartmann.
Hartmann also name-checks the 17-year-old Lord of the Rings Online, saying that it was “not a bad game” but that the new MMO will be “worlds apart” from its predecessor. He also confirmed that this is a completely new concept – not a continuation of its earlier Lord of the Rings game that was canceled back in 2021.
“It’s completely new,” he said. “The old project wasn’t very long [in] development. It’s not that it was a three-year project, it was a fairly small team working on a certain part of the game, but that was not a full-blown production.”
IGN’s review of The Lord of the Rings Online gave it 8/10 and said: “This version of Middle-earth is as good a place as any for those curious about MMOs to start, and provides enough depth for genre veterans to enjoy themselves. Though we’ll have to keep waiting for a truly new kind of MMO, we’re glad this game arrived to keep us occupied in the meantime.”
Want to read more about The Lord of the Rings Online? Check out our picks for the 10 best raid bosses of all time.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
About Post Author
