The Lord of the Rings MMO?
Amazon Games announced a huge project in the works, that currently unnamed title being the newest Lord of The Rings MMO. The behemoth of a title could easily become the next big title, but it will need to impress the Tolkien fans too. Now it has been confirmed that this will be set in Middle-Earth with the help of working alongside the Embracer group allowing them to use IP. We have already covered the initial announcement in a previous article here.
When will The Lord of the Rings MMO be set?
As a Tolkien fan, this would be the main question raised regarding the upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO, and Richard Lawrence (Studio Director) had confirmed that the timeline is set within The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings Trilogy, however Richard Lawrence did comment that some part of the story may not be 100% accurate to the original to ensure the best gaming experience can be had. The timeline will be set within the years 2941 to 3019.
Will Lord of The Rings MMO be Free to Play?
With no confirmed price or even a release date at the moment, what we can expect is as it is being built on a new and improved Azoth Engine, an improved version of the engine New World was released on. Its safe to say this product may cost upwards of $40 including potential deluxe editions. However this is speculation as nothing has been confirmed as of yet.
Will Lord of The Rings MMO be Cross-play?
Richard Lawrence has confirmed that on release this title will be available on PC and development for both PS5 and Xbox. Amazon Games Orange County Studio are working on the Lord of The Rings MMO and has also confirmed that this project is is a full reboot with no used assets or designs in the previous title that was cancelled in 2021.
Who will Lord of The Rings MMO appeal to?
Christoph Hartmann (CEO) has mentioned that his team wants this title to be the biggest MMO to be released, He wants this to appeal to everyone including ‘non-MMO’ players.
“Everything is about instant reward, and since social media and internet and so on, that instant reward thing is so important” says Hartmann. “It has to be faster and faster”
“If you rely on people figuring out the mechanics very fast because it’s very similar to what they had done before, that’s great, but its all about the accessibility and very early having rewards so they feel progress. And then slowly letting them get better and better, and basically give them an option they can start at a different pace, and not getting frustrated, that’s what’s important”
This seems that the studio developing the Lord of the Rings MMO are going to be taking the best parts of the most successful MMO’s currently out there to make sure everyone has an enjoyable experience regardless of the genre they are used to playing. They also commented regarding the release of New World and the amount of content they had planned to release shortly after.
“People just literally burn through content and an incredible speed, We could not keep up with developing new content. We obviously need post-launch content. We look at the timeframe in our world where we have a lot of experienced people saying two or three months, but people burned through what we expected to take them two or three months in just one month”
This seems that they are making sure that the content will not burn up in a quick succession like New World had unfortunately experienced, this will allow them to plan more content ahead of schedule to ensure that there is plenty for everyone to experience before wondering what to do next.
What is the Release Date for The Lord of The Rings MMO?
There is currently no release date as this is in early stages of development, we are hoping to see another big announcement towards the end of 2023 with potential gameplay as early as Spring 2024.
Large scale battles and Player-vs-Player?
What we’re excited to see and hear more about this title is how they will capture the large scale battles that we all know and love within the franchise, Our experience with New World shows that this may need some work but the promising factor of a new and improved version of the Azoth Engine they may be able to capture these insane size battles. I for one hope they can pull this off, I can’t think of anything better than running into Hordes of Uruk-hai with my friends and living to tell the tale. With no current announcement regarding the scale and amount of Player-vs-Player interactions, we can only hope to hear more in the next announcements.
We’re super excited about this huge title and will continue to follow its development! In the meantime, why not take another look at some other MMO’s we’re covering.
