Developed by Athlon Games and Amazon Game Studios, a brand-new Lord of the Rings MMO is in the works right now and recent reports say that the developers are aiming to release the game by 2022.
The parent company of developer Athlon Games is Leyou, which was recently acquired by Tencent. As a result, the expected release window for the otherwise mysterious free-to-play title was disclosed during a financial filing that took place recently.
According to TheGamer, the financial filing mentions that the new Lord of the Rings MMO could be released “from Q4 2021 to Q1 2023.” In other words, there’s still a chance that the game could launch by next year or early 2023. However, many analysts believe that the most probable release date will land somewhere in the middle — 2022.
The information we know about this game is very limited. As a matter of fact, this newly-discovered release window is only one of the few details we know about it. Among other things we do know is that the new Lord of the Rings MMO is allegedly a free-to-play game that’s set before J.R.R. Tolkien’s books.
As most of us know, the highly-popular series of movies and existing video games are based on the events of those books. As such, it’s indeed very interesting to see what Athlon and Amazon believe took place before the main story’s events.
We expect that the Lord of the Rings MMO will introduce new lands to the fans, along with new creatures and people. This makes sense given how the franchise is huge already, and we’re sure that Athlon and Amazon would want their game to stand out.
In fact, Athlon Games began looking for a senior character artist earlier this year. Specifically, they were looking for someone who was capable of creating a unique art style that stands out at first glance.
The new Lord of the Rings video game was initially announced by Athlon in 2018 when the developer secured a deal with Middle Earth Productions for it to work on the new game.
When it was initially announced, Athlon didn’t reveal who it was going to work with in order to publish the game in countries outside of China. This changed in 2019 when Amazon went public about its partnership with Athlon.
That being said, fans of the franchise were somewhat confused about this upcoming MMO because there’s already an existing MMORPG based on Tolkien’s books entitled Lord of the Rings Online, which was released in 2007.
Lord of the Rings Online was originally developed by Turbine, but it later passed the game on to Standing Stone Games. It has been adopted by numerous publishers throughout its existence too — beginning with Midway Games then Warner Bros. At the moment, the MMORPG’s publisher is Daybreak Game Studio.
As for its plot, Lord of the Rings Online takes place after Frodo and his companions initially left the Shire. However, the roleplaying game mostly follows brand-new storylines and introduces new characters.
With that in mind, many are wary about what the new MMO could bring to the table, especially since there’s already an existing title with a fairly decent playerbase. In any case, all we can do is wait for more information.
