Amazon’s New World team is making a The Lord of the Rings MMO

By Tomas Franzese May 15, 2023

Amazon Games Orange County, the development team behind New World, announced that it is making a The Lord of the Rings MMO for PC and consoles.

This game was made possible thanks to a deal between Amazon and the Embracer Group-owned Freemode, which is the parent company of The Lord of the Rings stewards Middle-Earth Enterprises. This isn’t the first time Amazon and Embracer Group have partnered either, as Amazon Games is set to publish the next Tomb Raider game from Embracer-owned studio Crystal Dynamics. This also isn’t Amazon’s first attempt at making a multiplayer game based on The Lord of the Rings.

Previously, it collaborated with the Chinese company Leyou on an MMO set in this world, but it was canceled after Leyou got acquired by Tencent. Now, with Middle-Earth Enterprises under new ownership, which Amazon just so happens to be friendly with, it has become possible for Amazon to make a multiplayer game based on The Lord of the Rings once again.

EMBARGO 5/15: The key art for Amazon's upcoming MMO based on The Lord of the Rings. — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Amazon describes its upcoming The Lord of the Rings 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 game seems to fall in line with the string of MMOs that Amazon has been behind lately, which includes New World, Lost Ark, and upcoming titles Blue Protocol and Throne and Liberty. It is unrelated to The Rings of Power, the big-budget television show that Amazon Studios produces.

As the game is in “the early stages of production,” according to Amazon, we don’t yet have a release window for it. In the meantime, there are going to be a lot of other games based on The Lord of the Rings to play, including EA’s mobile game The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-Earth and Daedelic Entertainment’s action-adventure game about Gollum.

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Tomas Franzese is a Staff Writer at Digital Trends, where he reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…

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