Image: New Line
Amazon is making another Lord of the Rings MMO, replacing the one it cancelled in 2021.
Amazon Games is officially making a new MMORPG set in the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings. The game is in early development at Amazon Games Orange County, the developer behind a separate MMO published by Amazon: New World.
Amazon Games is collaborating with Embracer Group, the latter of whom gained rights to the Lord of the Rings franchise when it purchased Middle-earth Enterprises in 2022. Amazon describes the new game as, “an open-world MMO adventure in a persistent world set in Middle-earth, featuring the beloved stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings literary trilogy.” This likely means that it won’t pull from any of the Tolkien Estate’s supplementary works, like the Silmarillion.
This untitled MMO will be released on PC and consoles, though exact platforms were not detailed. The game will be Amazon’s second attempt at making a Lord of the Rings MMO, after the company cancelled a separate MMO it had in development up until 2021. The project was set to take place in the same timeline as Amazon Prime Video’s The Rings of Power, the Second Age, but was axed due to disagreements between Amazon and Tencent.
It makes sense that Amazon is doubling down on making a Lord of the Rings MMO happen. The company has funnelled unholy amounts of money into creating a TV franchise out of The Rings of Power, and seems far too invested in the project to back out now. Amazon Games has enjoyed more success as a game publisher than a game developer at this point, but it’s nowhere close to giving up yet. Amazon Games is collaborating with Crystal Dynamics to make a new Tomb Raider game, and plans to publish another MMO called Throne and Liberty from NCSoft.
No release date has been confirmed for the upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO.
