Amazon's in-development The Lord of the Rings MMO, not to be confused with the existing The Lord of the Rings Online, has been canceled, according to reports. Nevertheless, it appears Amazon is still working on a The Lord of the Rings game in collaboration with Embracer's Middle-earth Enterprises.
According to Eurogamer, Amazon's gaming division is "working closely" with Embracer's LOTR-focused division Middle-earth Enterprises to create a "compelling new game" set in Tolkien's fantasy universe.
In a statement given to Eurogamer, Amazon's head of games, Jeff Grattis, said that the company "continues to explore a compelling new game experience that does justice to Tolkien's world," as well as that it "remain[s] excited about the IP" it's developing alongside Middle-earth Enterprises.
That outlet previously published news that the MMO was almost certainly canceled after it had a skeleton crew working on it for a while prior to New World developers being switched to it following that MMO's demise. Amazon apparently was pushing hard to make an AI-generated game and pushed its devs hard on using the tech in development, but still wound up laying off all of them.
The death of this rumored MMO really began with last October's layoffs at Amazon Games, which is when New World was put on indefinite maintenance with no new content to be made for the title. Rumors circulated that the LOTR MMO was also impacted, but now it seems definite that it'll never see the light of day.
As for what else Amazon could be working on, it's basically anyone's guess. It could be a singleplayer game due to its past poor experience with MMOs or perhaps something else entirely. Maybe nothing will end up coming out at all.
We'll just have to wait and see where, if anywhere, Amazon goes with this IP.
The post It seems Amazon canned the Lord of the Rings MMO while somehow simultaneously working on a different LOTR game appeared first on Destructoid.
