Athlon Games has announced that it will be partnering with Middle-earth Enterprises, to develop and publish a free-to-play massively multiplayer online video game based on The Lord of the Rings, the landmark fantasy literary work of J.R.R. Tolkien.
The game will be set in the world of Middle-earth during the years leading to the events of The Lord of the Rings, and aims to provide Middle-earth fans throughout the world with a new, immersive game experience for epic exploration of the Tolkien universe.
According to the press release, the development and publishing of this new title based on The Lord of the Rings will help further the Group’s goal of creating top quality console and PC games that have global appeal and expand the Leyou Technologies Holdings Limited’s footprint in the West.
Middle-earth Enterprises is a division of The Saul Zaentz Company with headquarters located in Berkeley, California. Middle-earth Enterprises owns exclusive worldwide rights to motion picture, merchandising, stage and other rights in certain literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien, including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Middle-earth Enterprises has been producing and licensing films, merchandise and stage productions based on these Tolkien works for more than forty years.
Unfortunately we don’t have any additional information about this new LOTR MMO game, and there isn’t any ETA on when it will be out. We’ll be sure though to keep you posted!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Hopefully current one stays open.
They say it does not affect their licensing, but of course it will be competition.
stopped reading at F2P and MMORPG 🙂
Sounds perfect for the PC peasant community
I don’t know what the poor people will do if consoles die out. They can’t afford a PC or they would already have one instead of a sh*tty console. I guess they will have to go back to what they were doing before consoles were available. Sitting around in circles and smacking rocks together and telling each other it’s fun :p
Most MMO’s run a F2P model the entices non-p2w microtransactions.
I’ll take it despite being f2p, hopefully it will be good and not completely awful. The old MMO was fantastic and had some pretty damn good role-playing. Probably the best I’ve played since Star Wars Galaxies closed down.
er, still going pal! We’ve had the whole journey up to and including destroying the ring of power and now we’re exploring the ‘hobbit’ area in the aftermath. More to come!
Oh sh*t it’s still going? I thought they closed down. I may have too look into it when I get home from work.
yes lol, never got close to closing down, not sure why you thought that? Apart from making the new content a bit on the manically difficult side, the story is great as always.
Turbine gave it to a new gaming company called Standing Stone Games so that it could continue. it’s past Mordor now.
If you want a GOOD Lord of the rings experience
get mount and blade warband, and get the last days of the third age mod
clocked in dozens of hours, still fun to this day
other good lotr games, war of the ring, BFME, the third age (FF ripoff)
the two towers, return of the king and other good OLD games are still superior to this
online only shekel grab
again, when Warner bros took the rights to publish games
they went full shekels and turned the franchise into utter garbage.
and most of these old games can be easily obtained from your local “bay” or used on Ebay for small sum
Well you’re missing Lord of the rings online.
12 years old MMORPG. it is to this date the MOST accurate representation of middle earth. (The books, not the movies).
To the point that a friend of mine, when I was looking for an area to complete a quest (we didn’t have any marker for quests back in the days, you had to actually read the quest and search). Well that friend told me where I would find the area for the quest simply because that’s where it’s supposed to be according to the books.
And I’m not talking about a major zone here, it was a brigand camp, early lvls.
That’s how accurate LOTRO is.
And now, 12 years later you can walk from the shire to Mordor with only like 3 loading times.
Wait, what about LOTRO? I still play that!
me too
I would prefer real time strategy
I’m always surprised now when a new MMORPG is announced for an existing IP, even F2P. How many do they think they can get? 300k? 400k? It’s just not a huge thing anymore. And being free-to-play, if they’re going to offer spending like Trion does for Neverwinter, well then they can forget it. Very curious decision to even attempt this project in this 2018 and beyond MMO scene.