Amazon’s upcomingLord of the RingsMMO has been cancelled, causing a mixture of feelings among fans. The MMO was announced back in 2018, with Amazon’s involvement revealed the next year, but not much was really known about the project itself, despite it presumably being in development for a couple of years, at this point.
Though not much was known about the ill-fated game itself, details about theLord of the RingsMMO’s cancellationseem to be pretty clear.
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Amazon’s Dispute With Tencent
Amazon was working on the project with Athlon Games, owned by Leyou, which was acquired by none other than Tencent Holdings in December of last year. This apparently threw the terms of which the game was being worked on into turmoil. This eventually caused the cancellation of the game, with the developers working on it moving onto various other projects.
While it’s usually sad news to hear a game has been cancelled, this one is especially sad for a couple of different reasons. Firstly, it’s aLord of the Ringsgame, and whileLOTRcontent is on the rise, there still aren’t a ton of different games based on the property, especially not on modern hardware. Secondly, it’s not because the game wasn’t necessarily meeting the expectations of the developers that it was cancelled, but for reasons involving company acquisitions and term agreements.
The Game Was Set Thousands Of Years Before LOTR
While the game was based in Middle-Earth, it actually took place thousands of years before the events of the books/movies. This would have left the events and characters of the game very much in the hands of the developer, for better or worse. It had the opportunity to be avery unique take on Middle-Earth, using characters and possibly even aesthetics that were all new to the world, and that could have allowed it to have something new and meaningful to add to that world.
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Not a lot of information on the game had been released, but the release window was.The Lord of the RingsMMO was expected to release in 2022, suggesting the game was pretty far in development. This isn’t surprising considering it would have been in development for at least four years at that point, with the resources of the absurdly massive Amazon behind it. With the game being cancelled, it remains to be seen whether or not fans are going to get any more information on what the game would have been, or if it’s going to die the quiet death of so many other cancelled games, never to see the light of a YouTube leak.
Amazon Has Struggled To Release Good Games
It is worth noting that, while Amazon has a truly insane amount of resources behind it, it’s yet to actually fully release a game that’s been well-received. Most of the time, these games are cancelled, like theLOTRMMO, but also likeNova, Intensity, Breakaway,andCrucible.While the reason for the cancellation behind the newLOTRMMO is disappointing, perhaps it was destined to happen, like with so many others.
