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Amazon have reportedly cancelled their Lord Of The Rings MMO, again

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Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
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Amazon have reportedly cancelled their Lord Of The Rings MMO, again

Another attempt to turn Tolkien into a massively multiplayer game may have met a premature end, amid layoffs at the studio behind New World.
www.rockpapershotgun.com www.rockpapershotgun.com


Amazon have cancelled their second attempt at a Lord Of The Rings MMO as part of recent mass layoffs, according to a now-former senior gameplay engineer at Amazon Games.

The engineer in question is Ashleigh Amrine, who announced that she had lost her job on LinkedIn yesterday. "This morning I was part of the layoffs at Amazon Games, alongside my incredibly talented peers on New World and our fledgling Lord of the Rings game (y'all would have loved it)," she wrote. I've reached out to Amazon for comment.

Colonial fantasy New World has already been confirmed to be ceasing development, following the recent Nighthaven update, as part of a company-wide shift away from MMOs. Amazon will keep the servers warm through 2026, and say they'll give six months notice before making any changes that render the game unplayable.
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Amazon's first LOTR MMO was a collaboration with Chinese company Leyou, announced in 2019. It met an unfortunate end in 2021 thanks to an apparent contractual dispute, after Leyou were acquired by Tencent. Amazon revealed the second LOTR MMO in 2023, after partnering with new Middle-earth rights-owner Embracer. They called it a "persistent open-world MMO adventure", spanning the events of The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy, but beyond that, we've never heard much about the project.
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They essentially killed New World and its studio, so this wouldn't surprise me.

Weird though, LOTR MMO seems like the most obvious thing ever, but they can't seem to get it off ground. Looks like their game development ambitions are being put out to pasture.
 
Honestly, this feels like only the 2nd time I've ever heard about this Lord of the Rings MMO, and both times have involved the game possibly being cancelled.
 
Funny thing is that they could have had this game ready few years ago (probably for Rings of Power season one premiere), by 3rd party dev. Instead they thought that they don't need any other studio and will do it by themselves.

They don't have any game made and the dev already made two (actually even four) games.

On the other hand, they have a very strict license for LotR MMO so maybe it's for the best.
 
Ellis said:
When was the last LOTR game that was actually good. PS2 ?
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The RTS games, Battle for Middle-Earth, were pretty cool. Also War in the North was decent and quite fun in coop, plus there's also the LEGO games which while simple it's still pretty nice.

But yeah Return of the King is probably still the king of the LOTR games. But I haven't played the Mordor games.

Sure hope that game Embracer is working on is good, the franchise deserves it after all the shit that's come out recently.
 
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TintoConCasera said:
The RTS games, Battle for Middle-Earth, were pretty cool. Also War in the North was decent and quite fun in coop, plus there's also the LEGO games which while simple it's still pretty nice.

But yeah Return of the King is probably still the king of the LOTR games. But I haven't played the Mordor games.

Sure hope that game Embracer is working on is good, the franchise deserves it after all the shit that's come out recently.
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Lord of the Rings Online (LoTRO) was quite a good and underrated game.
 
If it was like the TV show then GOOD!

Thats Good Donald Glover GIF
 
TintoConCasera said:
The RTS games, Battle for Middle-Earth, were pretty cool. Also War in the North was decent and quite fun in coop, plus there's also the LEGO games which while simple it's still pretty nice.

But yeah Return of the King is probably still the king of the LOTR games. But I haven't played the Mordor games.

Sure hope that game Embracer is working on is good, the franchise deserves it after all the shit that's come out recently.
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Shadow of Mordor was fun, and unique with it's nemesis system. Shadow of War was more of the same, and originally loot boxed to hell. That was all removed and the game is fine. It looks prettier, but is missing the soul of the first one.

Lord of the Rings Online which is still being new expansions is also an amazing game. They have a weird license centered around the books, if Tolkien mentioned something they use it. They created regions based on areas mentioned in passing, but unlike Amazon's show, the writers understand and love Tolkien. And the new lore from the game fits in and is interesting rather than repulsive. Anyone that's a Tolkien nerd really owes it to themselves to try the game. There's some extreme deep drives with obscure things. The only issue is the base game sent you out to Angmar and lots of interesting lore with the Witch King. But the first expansion was Moria and directs players there instead, then following the path of the fellowship and hitting Mordor. So there's lots of things to explore, but they are dead zones, with raids you can solo due to power creep. I really hope all new MMOs follow Guild War 2's evergreen content concept where you have horizontal progress, but it makes players play in all areas and all content is still worth doing even 13 years later.
 
A lot of lord of rings games out there and they all suffer from high pressure to be great the fact is there's not one AAA lord of the rings game
 
Gp1 said:
Lord of the Rings Online (LoTRO) was quite a good and underrated game.
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That they refuse to update the UI for anyone with any kind of modern monitor! Ruins the game imho. Looks ass on 4k and dropping my resolution to 1080p makes it look weird
 
Was it the New World folks making this? A shame, they got that game into a good state and I would have liked to see what they could do after acquiring all that experience.
 
Lotr realy needs some sort of open world rpg, be it a more traditional rpg or action I dont give a fuck, just give it the care it deserves and please no he/him, namby pamby forced woke shit, if so then may all the God fuck the devs who make it.
 
New MMO's are on life support. It's the ones we currently have that are only ever going to exist.

This echo's what we've been talking about in the State of MMORPG thread (https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-state-of-mmorpgs.1692999/)

I truly believe that if you have an interest in playing a MMORPG, the perfect one already exists. The older the game, usually the better because you have a community of very dedicated players with vast knowledge.

LOTRO already exists, Amazon wasn't going to create a better game than that.

EverQuest Legends releases this summer, great starting point for those of you looking for a MMO to play.
 
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Anyone voluntarily selling the rights of Tolkien classics to a company founded by Joe Exotic's less campy brother is either a whore or retarded.

More likely both.
 
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I would have thought they would have gotten some big names behind the IP. That's never the case or at least one I'm aware of. They're all so mediocre or uninteresting. It's like video game movies. The source material is right there, but whoever designs it is out there in no man's land. They want to make their own plate of obscure crap.
 
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