Amazon's LotR MMO Isn't Going To Replace LotRO - And It Shouldn't Try To | MMORPG.com

System · May 2023

Amazon's LotR MMO Isn't Going To Replace LotRO - And It Shouldn't Try To | MMORPG.com

Much of the talk this week around Amazon's new Lord of the Rings-based MMO is what it means for the existing Lord of the Rings MMO, The Lord of the Rings Online.

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Sovrath · May 2023

"The amount of Middle-earth that is explorable in The Lord of the Rings Online is mind boggling"

Yeah but the problem is that in a lot of instances (no pun intended) you have to be on a specific quest in order to access an area. It's not much of a world if you have to be on a quest in order to do anything.

Standing Stone Games has spent years creating this world. I would love them to branch out a bit and not tie everything to theme park quests.

Nanfoodle · May 2023

By the time this new LotR MMO launches it will have been up to the Devs to decide how the LOTRO handle their game, if it will be relevant if LOTRO is still worth playing. Amazon will be at this for 4-7 years. Thats the normal cycle for a new MMO. So I'm not sure who we would blame if LOTRO falters if in 4-7 years from now if it will stand as a game worth playing at that time.

OG_Solareus · May 2023

What do game studios do before they close.. they promise nothing will happen when x,y or z too make sure paying costumers keep paying up until the end. To ignore this time old tradition specifically in mmos's is kind of blind love imho.

As someone who's paid for a life time subscription and has been permantely banned, I hope the worst for SSG and all the best for Amazon. Shoot I even installed New World again, if see someone yell LotR montras, probably me

goldboyy45 · May 2023

Hopefully people realize that with some luck and a great team this Lotro MMO will be out at minimum in about 6 years...with some setbacks you're looking at 8-9 years if it's not cancelled. I have zero clue why this article even exists as nothing is coming for many years. Forget about the Lotro MMO sigh

ominator · May 2023

I remember New World, the game. Seems Amazon has learned zero from that experience, and continues to flounder their alleged abilities to make MMO's when in reality they had and have no clue.

Dattelis · May 2023

Speculation is nice, but how about letting it release first....? New world wasn't even going to be a mmorpg when it was officially announced, then ended up getting overhauled in like 2 years. So with AGS' track record of either cancelling titles or overhauling them before launch, its best to wait and see until it actually releases.

Tiller · May 2023

It will replace it, but it will do a bad job doing so. Kinda of like how SWTOR replaced SWG.

Kratier · May 2023

after your last lotro article i tried to reinstall d&d online and its still broken.

maybe standing stone games will go and update their clients and launchers and improve their ui and new user experience a bit. thatd go a long way.

Yeebo · May 2023

There is no way in hades Amazon is going to produce something as faithful to the books as LoTRO, at least if their horrifically bad TV show is anything to go by. Even if they did, it will take them ages to build out as much of the world as LoTRO has now. For a long time to come LoTRO will be the only option for visiting a lot of iconic locations from the books.

That said, if SSG doesn't get off of their behinds and make it so that the game is at least as easy to get up an running on a modern PC as an average download from Good Old Games, LoTRO is going to die to slow attrition of the player base. You shouldn't have to go through a checklist of a dozen potential fixes just to be able to play the game on a modern PC. Even if you weather through that BS and get it running, you have to severely lower your resolution on a 4K monitor just to make the game playable due to lack of UI scaling. It's beyond idiotic.

I have missed two anniversary events in a row now because I wasn't willing to put in the time it would have taken to debug their terrible client on a new installation.

Ehliya · May 2023

How Amazon handles magic in their LOTR game will be key. LOTRO went off track a bit, where they ended up with classes that didn't make sense in the lore, like Dwarf rune-casters, and they made two classes - Loremaster and Minstrel - that were more or less mages under a different name. They also made it so the "races" in the game were merely cosmetic. A 2-foot tall hobbit guardian could stand at the gate of Helm's Deep against Saruman's hordes just as well as a six foot tall human guardian.

It is a long-standing problem not limited to LOTRO, but you saw it in the original SWG - everyone wants to cast spells like Gandalf and force choke people like Vader. So you fall away from the lore to make "magic" more common, whether of the fantasy or sci-fi variety. And because no one wants to play "gimped" character, the choice of race/species has little real impact on play.

I don't care how pretty Amazon's LOTR is, if it turns out to have standard fantasy MMO classes, powers and weapons, might as well call it Black Desert of the Rings.

Angrakhan · May 2023

So... first of all we have YEARS to wait before this thing is even playable. On top of that it's Amazon which gave us ... New World. Very pretty, but riddled with bugs to this day. I wouldn't mothball your LOTRO characters just yet. I will say I agree with Hartmann that the bar is pretty low to improve upon LOTRO's visuals. However, LOTRO has plenty of time on their hands to adjust if they chose to make the investment. The ball is in their court, really. They already own the fanbase.

Chaserz · May 2023

A good deal of speculative prediction in this piece.

Tokken · May 2023

Hopefully the new game has better graphics than LOTRO!

Valentina · May 2023

I don't think it was meant to be shade, people still watched black and white films even after technicolor came on the scene, and people still watch old black and white films in 2023. I think he was trying to convey that they will be different experiences, and yeah they will be developing a vastly more detailed world/environment than LoTRO currently has and that isn't an insult it was an answer to the question and what his goals with it are, with respect to sharing the same space with LoTRO.

JeroKane · May 2023

It's Amazon Game Studios, so 99% chance it will never release and die in development, like most of their other games attempts.

In all those years they only managed to launch New World and it was a complete mess and failure.

Also, after the huge backlash and failure of The Rings Of Power TV series. One has to start wondering how much money and time Amazon wants to still throw at this IP. Especially if they don't get any better viewer traction with Season 2.

BrotherMaynard · May 2023

JeroKane said:

It's Amazon Game Studios, so 99% chance it will never release and die in development, like most of their other games attempts.

In all those years they only managed to launch New World and it was a complete mess and failure.

Also, after the huge backlash and failure of The Rings Of Power TV series. One has to start wondering how much money and time Amazon wants to still throw at this IP. Especially if they don't get any better viewer traction with Season 2.

They would be better off investing into AI-made shows instead. The result would be incomparably better.

JeroKane · May 2023

BrotherMaynard said:

JeroKane said:

It's Amazon Game Studios, so 99% chance it will never release and die in development, like most of their other games attempts.

In all those years they only managed to launch New World and it was a complete mess and failure.

Also, after the huge backlash and failure of The Rings Of Power TV series. One has to start wondering how much money and time Amazon wants to still throw at this IP. Especially if they don't get any better viewer traction with Season 2.

They would be better off investing into AI-made shows instead. The result would be incomparably better.

The problem, just like with their Wheel Of Time TV series, aren't the actors, but the writers with over-inflated ego's that piss on the IP and source material and think they can do better and make such radical changes that it no longer has anything to do with the IP and books/source material at all, other than slapping the IP name on said TV series.

Th exact same thing happened with Netflix and their Witcher series, which resulted in departure of lead actor and resulting backlash of the fans. Again, here too the writers are the culprit, with open hostility to the IP and source material. Why even hire such writers in the first place, if they don't like the IP and source material?! /Facepalm

HazenXIII · May 2023

Tiller said:

It will replace it, but it will do a bad job doing so. Kinda of like how SWTOR replaced SWG.

Exactly

Viper482 · May 2023

OG_Solareus said:

What do game studios do before they close.. they promise nothing will happen when x,y or z too make sure paying costumers keep paying up until the end. To ignore this time old tradition specifically in mmos's is kind of blind love imho.

As someone who's paid for a life time subscription and has been permantely banned, I hope the worst for SSG and all the best for Amazon. Shoot I even installed New World again, if see someone yell LotR montras, probably me

Perma-banned lol, that doesn't happen to good players. Glad they are doing the right thing.

Erinak1 · May 2023

I think Amazon should try releasing a functional game before they start shit talking other games. It seems weird to me that this guy seems so focused on saying how much better their game will be when they have nothing to show for it. Maybe it will be better, maybe it'll be worse. Maybe it'll get cancelled before anyone ever sees anything of it. It's a little early to be marching to battle of the LOTR MMOs, in my opinion.

olepi · May 2023

I wonder if the new game will be an arcade-style action game like New World, with three powers available at any one time. Will they just create some standard action hero crap and slap a LOTR label on it like Rings of Power?

Sovrath · May 2023

OG_Solareus said:

What do game studios do before they close.. they promise nothing will happen when x,y or z too make sure paying costumers keep paying up until the end. To ignore this time old tradition specifically in mmos's is kind of blind love imho.

As someone who's paid for a life time subscription and has been permantely banned, I hope the worst for SSG and all the best for Amazon. Shoot I even installed New World again, if see someone yell LotR montras, probably me

"um" why did you get permanently banned? Your paying for a lifetime sub means nothing if you are doing things that get you banned.

Scot · May 2023

"It's a little exaggeration if I say it's going to be like black and white movies to colour, but that's the approach I want to take."

Amazon's game, if it ever comes out (just look at the track record) will look better. But will it play better and have the gaming systems and content that it needs to be the new wearer of the Iron Crown of Lotr? I really doubt it will, look no further than NW, indeed it may die if the second series of the TV show has checkered viewing figures like the first series.

But it could still be a big problem for Lotr until it comes out, the hype will be immense and we won't know what the game is really like until a few months after the reviews, as always. So I am concerned that one of the best MMORPG's out there is not hit badly by this.

Nanfoodle · May 2023

Scot said:

"It's a little exaggeration if I say it's going to be like black and white movies to colour, but that's the approach I want to take."

Amazon's game, if it ever comes out (just look at the track record) will look better. But will it play better and have the gaming systems and content that it needs to be the new wearer of the Iron Crown of Lotr? I really doubt it will, look no further than NW, indeed it may die if the second series of the TV show has checkered viewing figures like the first series.

But it could still be a big problem for Lotr until it comes out, the hype will be immense and we won't know what the game is really like until a few months after the reviews, as always. So I am concerned that one of the best MMORPG's out there is not hit badly by this.

I agree, its sad when any game sunsets but they do have 5-8 years to make a game plan to make sure they stay relevant and worth playing. I hope they do just that.

Scot · May 2023

Nanfoodle said:

Scot said:

"It's a little exaggeration if I say it's going to be like black and white movies to colour, but that's the approach I want to take."

Amazon's game, if it ever comes out (just look at the track record) will look better. But will it play better and have the gaming systems and content that it needs to be the new wearer of the Iron Crown of Lotr? I really doubt it will, look no further than NW, indeed it may die if the second series of the TV show has checkered viewing figures like the first series.

But it could still be a big problem for Lotr until it comes out, the hype will be immense and we won't know what the game is really like until a few months after the reviews, as always. So I am concerned that one of the best MMORPG's out there is not hit badly by this.

I agree, its sad when any game sunsets but they do have 5-8 years to make a game plan to make sure they stay relevant and worth playing. I hope they do just that.

One concern is that they think they can out do Amazon's game by being more "modern", while I accept certain things could change for the better they need to keep what remains of old school design.

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