There was supposed to be a new, major MMORPG set in The Lord of the Rings in the coming years. Now Amazon has apparently fired many of the developers, and for MeinMMO editor Sophia Weiß, the dream of the next big hyperfixation is gone.
On October 28, 2025, Amazon dropped quite a bombshell: 14,000 employees had to go – primarily from the areas of Twitch and MMORPG development. Shortly thereafter came the bad news that New World is being discontinued after four years. The game was actually doing quite well recently.
Just two days later, I received my personal nightmare news. A now-former senior developer from Amazon Games hinted that the young MMORPG set in The Lord of the Rings was also affected.
Since no new MMORPG release could convince me lately, I had actually been looking forward to this game, especially with my recent fascination with Middle-earth. And by the way, I wasn’t alone: We wanted to know which MMORPGs you were looking forward to, and this prematurely buried Lord of the Rings game tops the list.
Out of frustration, I simply installed the original MMORPG set in The Lord of the Rings over the weekend: Lord of the Rings Online. It’s a bit old-fashioned, but it makes me really happy right now.
One post to rule them all has sufficed to start a new obsession
I grew up with Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films and watched all three Hobbit movies in theaters. But I only properly immersed myself in Tolkien’s world this summer.
An absolutely irrelevant post on TikTok introduced me to a blonde elf named Glorfindel. And as a not-yet-book-reader, I naturally wondered who that was. I booted up my PC, Googled, and have not been able to get out of the hole since.
I am currently slowly but steadily reading The Fellowship of the Ring
in English and already have the other two books at home. I want to tackle The Silmarillion next. With each passing day, it becomes clearer to me how vast and detailed Tolkien’s world is. There is incredible potential for games like this MMORPG.
And now Amazon is just killing the game off before anyone has seen anything of it. More or less out of spite, I downloaded the one game that could come close to the Amazon project over the weekend: Lord of the Rings Online.
A reaction out of spite to soothe the soul
Lord of the Rings Online is a free-to-play MMORPG in its basic version, which can be downloaded via Steam or its own launcher. The game has been online since 2007 and is therefore only about three years younger than World of Warcraft. Currently, there are 12 expansions, known as Volumes
, and the Kingdoms of Harad is set to be released in Fall 2025. The subscription is optional, and there is a larger in-game shop.
I initially just dove into the main game via Steam. It already gives me what I hoped to get from the Amazon project: I walk through Middle-earth and complete quests for Elrond, the lord of Rivendell.
Honestly, I was prepared for it, but the game looks exactly like the release year it was launched in suggests. For my eyes, spoiled by games like Final Fantasy XIV, that was of course unusual. But my desire for Middle-earth content was greater than the graphics snob within me.
Character creation was really fun right from the start. There are of course humans, hobbits, dwarves, and elves – but each with choices for origin and background. I ended up choosing an elf from Mirkwood.
The game also jumps straight into action: I am shown how to walk and attack. And then I’m already tasked with defending a library alongside Elrond.
I haven’t progressed very far in Lord of the Rings Online yet. But even the first two hours give me all the Middle-earth feeling I’ve been hoping for from a Lord of the Rings game for years. After Elrond, I even met his son Elladan, whom I now know also never made it into the movies.
In the coming days, I’ll just work my way through the game piece by piece. I haven’t seen much of the MMO content yet, but already the RPG part makes me happy. If the amount of canon lore doesn’t decrease, I’ll probably be hooked until CD Projekt presents me with The Witcher 4.
A beautiful game with creative monetization
It seems I’m not the only one feeling this way right now. While the game is currently not experiencing any major increase in players, at least on Steam, there is again discussion about it on Reddit. Redditor DodgyDogma writes, for example, that he is currently trying out the MMORPG and is having a huge amount of fun with it.
Lord of the Rings Online evokes nostalgia for the good old WoW days in him. He praises the retro graphics, the great community, the level content, the world, and the unique classes.
In the comments, the monetization is mainly discussed, which seems to leave a bad first impression:
My first impression was “huh, this game’s P2W” then basically 2 years later being like “I financially support this game whenever I feel like it, just on a whim”. All enhancements are purely optional, you get permanent benefits for subscribing just for 1 month, premium currency is extremely easy to earn.
Sticking with LOTRO long enough to get used to all its aspects was one of the best commitments in my gamer’s life, it became my cosy home MMORPG.
Sumorisha (via Reddit)
Personally, I haven’t hit the free content wall yet and haven’t dealt with the payment system either. I just wanted to be in Middle-earth and explore for now. I’ll deal with everything else later.
However, I will probably continue to think wistfully about the canceled Amazon MMORPG for quite a while. The what could have been
will not let me go for now. Seriously – we didn’t even know the setting yet.
What if we could have explored the lost continent of Beleriand? Discover the woodland realm of Doriath? Or confront the armies of Sauron’s actual master Morgoth. I would really like that right now. Who wouldn’t want to go to try and save Gondolin alongside Glorfindel. Yes, I now know about him.
Of course, I’ve also looked at other games set in Middle-earth. But I need a game that not only looks like Middle-earth but also feels like it. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor or the survival game Return to Moria just weren’t story-heavy enough or too foreign to canon for me.
Lord of the Rings Online is currently pressing all the right buttons. I hope it stays that way for a while. I’ll report back in half a year on whether it could keep me long term or if I jumped ship. In general though there is no shortage of MMORPG alternatives, even if they are not Tolkien themed. Soon, there will be new supplies from China: How much MMORPG is actually in Where Winds Meet, the MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz knows.
