Lord of the Rings MMO by Amazon will be a thing again

Amazon will not let one cancellation hinder them from their dreams, as they heed the call of the Ring with yet another Lord of the Rings MMO.

Amazon Games once again announced that it will be developing a new The Lord of the Rings MMORPG, three years since a similar project ultimately got canceled when the studio Amazon was working with, Leyou, was acquired by Tencent, which was not that keen on pushing through with the project.

However, things looked up when Middle-Earth Enterprises, the owner of the license for The Lord of the Rings games, was acquired by Embracer Group. Embracer Group is much more receptive to the idea of working with Amazon to produce a LotR MMORPG game – and so, when Amazon Games vice president Christoph Hartmann called some friends in Embracer for a chat, it was quickly agreed decided that Amazon Games would be granted a second chance at the LotR MMORPG.

Hartmann wishes to make this game “the largest MMO out there,” an ambitious vision that quite fits the grandeur of The Lord of the Rings. It's worth noting, however, that Lord of the Rings Online is still going strong, so Hartmann, Amazon, and Embracer Group definitely have their work cut out for them.

But even then, Hartmann thinks that whatever Amazon will work on will be compatible with what others would deem as a rival product. In an interview with GamesIndustry.Biz, Hartmann says that “I think they actually can co-exist. Even the most likely scenario is… for people just to move over, because the other one is an old game. It's not a bad game, but the industry moves on at some point, and it's a long time from their release to ours.”

Fans would definitely keep a close eye on this. Amazon Prime's Rings of Power Lord of the Rings series received mixed reception from fans – many being happy that there's a show that puts the books into a spectacle that the overproduced series made, while others felt that it strayed too far from the source material.

Meanwhile, Electronic Arts, also in partnership with Middle-Earth Enterprises, also produced a Lord of the Rings title recently, called Heroes of Middle-Earth, and is a gacha mobile game. If you're interested in that, take a look at our thoughts about the game here.