Amazon Game Studios and Leyou have been working on a Lord of the Rings massively multiplayer online game for at least a couple of years now. That free-to-play MMO for both PC and consoles has now received some new details.
According to a post on ResetEra from the weekend, the Lord of the Rings MMO will enter open beta in September 2022 for only PC. The game will then land on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in March 2022. The final and official launch will take place around the holiday season of 2023 for all supported platforms.
The aforementioned production schedule was obtained from licensing agreements which surfaced online as part of the ongoing acquisition of Leyou by Tencent. Neither Amazon Game Studios nor Leyou has confirmed the release windows. The scheduled production phases are hence subject to change and should be treated as such.
Amazon Game Studios and Leyou make for an interesting partnership for the Lord of the Rings MMO. Amazon Game Studios for starters is working on a MMO of its own called New World which has been delayed into early 2021. Leyou on the other hand is the parent company of Digital Extremes, the developer of Warframe. There is certainly enough talent and ideas on both sides to make a Middle-Earth game come to life.
The Lord of the Rings MMO remains without any official details at the time of writing except that the storyline serves as a prequel (of sorts) to the events penned by author J. R. R. Tolkien in his trilogy of novels.
Take also note that the MMO has nothing to do with the upcoming Lord of the Rings television series from Amazon, which incidentally takes place long before the events of the main series as well.
