Amazon is making a new Lord of the Rings MMO game

Unless you’ve been hiding in the goblin-filled halls of Khazad-dûm for the past year or so, you probably know that Amazon is spending a balrog-sized amount of money to create a Lord of the Rings set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, back when Sauron first forged the One Ring.

And while that’s certainly exciting, and could possibly give Amazon an edge in the coming streaming wars, the show isn’t the only LOTR-related project Amazon is involved with. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Amazon Game Studios will be partnering with Athlon Games to create a free-to-play Massively Multiplayer Online game based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s work.

In a press release that flew way under the radar back in 2018, Athlon announced it was developing the game with Middle-earth Enterprises, a division of the Saul Zaentz Company, which owns the worldwide exclusive rights to specific elements of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The various film and TV and game rights related to Tolkien’s stuff are infamously complicated, but the upshot is that even though Amazon is bringing this game to market, the game won’t have anything to do with its Lord of the Rings show won’t be connected.

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Although it sounds like Athlon’s game could be set vaguely in the same time period. According to the press release, the company’s goal is to create a game set in “the world of Middle-earth at a time long before the events of The Lord of the Rings, exploring lands, people and creatures never seen before by fans of the Tolkien universe.”

Amazon Game Studio Vice President Christoph Hartmann is psyched to work on the game. “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,” he said. “We have a strong leadership team in place to helm this new project, and we’re actively growing our team to help build this incredible experience.”

The new game is not a sequel or prequel to the 2007 MMO Lord of the Rings Online, which is still running and free to play. Members of the new creative team have worked on industry-defining MMOs like Everquest and World of Warcraft.

There is no target date set for the game’s release, but it will be available on PC and console.

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