The team working on Amazon's Lord of the Rings MMO is “still trying to figure out the story” of what the game will be, according to comments from Amazon Games CEO Christoph Hartmann in a recent interview.
Last year, Amazon Games announced that it would be creating a new Lord of the Rings MMO as part of a deal with Embracer Group. This announcement followed a previous deal between Amazon and Chinese company Leyou to create an MMO based on JRR Tolkein's seminal work. Leyou was later acquired by Tencent and the project was canceled, but the rights then reverted to Middle-Earth Enterprises and eventually found a home with Embracer Group.
Although the game was announced last year, Hartmann said in a new interview with IGN that the game is still in the development phase, so the team is still trying to find an angle to make the project stand out from what has come before.
“We’re always trying to find the idea, to find the hook, because we don’t want to just do the same thing again,” Hartmann said. “Even though it’s sometimes tempting with existing intellectual property, that’s not the goal of doing it.”
Hartmann went on to say that the team needs to find a “new twist” to make it “different from every other game out there.”
His comments about trying to stand out and not repeat what's already been done make sense given that there's currently a long-running Lord of the Rings MMO on the market, 2007's The Lord of the Rings Online, which is still receiving new content and updates.
Amazon Games has made a name for itself in the MMO space in recent years, with the release of New World in 2021 (soon to be re-released on consoles and PC as New World: Aeternum). It has also published and localized Korean MMOs like Lost Ark and the upcoming Throne and Liberty for Western audiences.
In the same interview, Hartmann called developing MMOs “difficult” because they are expensive to both maintain and continually develop new content in a way that keeps players happy, calling MMO players a “very dedicated audience” who “play a lot of hours.”
Amazon is “moving away from being an MMO-only publisher,” Hartmann said, citing the recent action-RPG King of Meat as an example. Hartmann also said he believes AI can help speed up and improve game development, but that the technology won’t “solve everything,” though it could help speed up development times and reduce costs.
This isn't the first time Hartmann has talked about the Lord of the Rings MMO. He previously said that the difference between Amazon's new MMO and the existing LOTRO would be like going from “black and white movies to color movies,” and that while LOTRO “isn't a bad game,” players will eventually move on.
Meanwhile, Amazon's The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power series will soon launch its second season, which will delve into Sauron's past. The Rings of Power will not be tied to Amazon's new Lord of the Rings MMO, the company said.