Amazon Games and Embracer Group, have announced that a new Lord of the Rings MMO is in the works and will be released worldwide for PC and consoles. The game is still in early stages of production, and a release date has not yet been announced.
Amazon Games, or more specifically its subsidiary team, Amazon Games Orange County, will be handling the development. It's a studio best known for the MMORPG New World, a game where players primarily control the economy and territorial dominance. At the time of its release in 2021, It was one of the most-played games on Steam (with more than 650,000 concurrent players at one point, and a humongous number of hours invested).
As for Embracer Group, it is the current owner of Middle-earth Enterprises (acquired by Embracer last August), which owns the worldwide rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, as well as other works by J.R.R. Tolkien.
New World did well at launch, but according to Steamcharts, its concurrent player count appears to have dwindled this year to less than 20,000 players at the time of this writing, as it suffered from many balancing, technical, and content issues (which players have enumerated before to the developers).
However, the core action gameplay was still fun and had the capacity to grow, and Amazon Games hasn't been sleeping on it. The developer has continued to update and revise the content, tweak the experience grinding and PvP systems, and listen to player feedback. Now, New World has a solid roadmap for 2023 (with a breakdown here), so we can expect the upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO to be treated with the same level of care and passion.
Christoph Hartmann, Vice President of Amazon Games, intends for the game to bring a "fresh take" to the world of Middle-earth, according to the press release. He also mentions that he's pleased with Amazon's ongoing relationship with Embracer after their Tomb Raider collaboration in December (which is also reportedly part of a future shared universe).
In addition to New World and the aforementioned Tomb Raider project, Amazon Games also has the multiplayer games Blue Protocol and Throne And Liberty in the works, as well as original online IPs from Disruptive Games (Diablo II, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, and Godfall) and Glowmade (made up of Fable, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Battlefield veterans).
Embracer Group also has big plans to release four AAA games in the current fiscal year, as recently revealed in its latest financial report.