Amazon is (again) developing the Lord of the Rings MMO

company announce They are working with the Embracer Group on a new open world MMO that will be set in a “static world of Middle-earth.” Embracer is a media company that owns the intellectual property rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Development will be handled by Amazon’s Orange County studio, the same team behind another MMO, New World, which launches in 2021. The game is described as being “in early production,” with no release date details given while According to Amazon, it will be released on PC and consoles.

This will be the company’s second attempt at a Lord of the Rings MMO. The first was announced in 2019 and canceled two years later. And while Amazon is behind the expensive Lord of the Rings TV series The Rings of Power on Prime Video, the company says it has “no connection to the upcoming MMO being developed with Amazon Games.”

This news comes as Amazon continues to make its presence felt more and more in video games, especially when it comes to game publishing. In addition to developing a new world, the company also released Smilegate’s Lost Ark (similar to Diablo) while working with Bandai Namco on the upcoming online Blue Protocol universe. Meanwhile, last year Amazon announced a deal with Crystal Dynamics to publish the next Tomb Raider game. Like Lord of the Rings, Tomb Raider is another property under the Embracer umbrella.

New LOTR comes to add to a very busy time for gaming in Middle Earth. EA has just released the mobile title “Heroes of Middle-earth”, and the action-adventure game Gollum is also expected to be released this year. Weta Workshop, the special effects company behind the Lord of the Rings films, is making a game set in Tolkien’s fantasy world. Meanwhile, the original MMO from Middle-earth, The Lord of the Rings, is still online, gathering thousands of users every day.