Now that we’ve gotten the bad taste of the bloated Hobbit film trilogy out of our mouths (along with the weird orc slavery of the Middle-earth video games) things are looking up for Lord of the Rings fans. We’re getting a biopic of author J.R.R. Tolkien and Amazon is preparing a new streaming show set in an unexplored era of the fantasy universe directed by J.A. Bayona.
But that’s not the only adventure Amazon is planning in Middle-Earth. The company is also working on a new Lord of the Rings massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
If you recall, there has already been a Lord of the Rings MMORPG. The Lord of the Rings Online was released in 2007 at the height of the World of Warcraft craze, but like everything else it failed to dethrone Blizzard even after ditching its subscription model. Years later, Amazon Game Studios, along with Leylou Technologies and Middle-earth enterprises, is taking another crack at this idea in an upcoming free-to-play game for PC and consoles. Of course they say it will be based on the original books and not the movies but come on.
Even though I don’t care about Lord of the Rings, this project interests me just as a big sign of life from Amazon Game Studios. Beyond owning Twitch, Amazon has a lot of gaming talent under its umbrella and even developed its own Lumberyard engine based on Crytek’s famous CryEngine. But so far the retail giant has little to show for it. The same development team is also apparently still working on an original colonial MMORPG called New World.
“Tolkien’s Middle-earth is one of the richest fictional worlds in history, and it gives our team of experienced MMO developers, from the same studio developing New World, tremendous opportunity to play and create,” Amazon Game Studios VP Christoph Hartmann said in a statement.
So prepare your fellowship and look forward to Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings MMO. For an upcoming Tolkien video game that’s a little more small scale check out the upcoming Gollum game. And here are our favorite Lord of the Rings toys.
