Lord of the Rings Online developer assures fans it will not be replaced by Amazon MMO
Standing Stone Games and Middle-Earth Enterprises have "every intention of growing and supporting this community"
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The developer behind The Lord of the Rings Online has told its players the game is not going to be scrapped in the wake of Amazon announcing it is working on a similar product.
On Monday, Amazon Games revealed it has signed a partnership with Middle-Earth Enterprises – which controls the rights to JRR Tolkien's works – to develop and publish a new Lord of the Rings MMO for consoles and PC.
On Wednesday, LOTRO developer Standing Stone Games posted a message on the game's official forums on behalf of itself and Middle-Earth Enterprises, assuring that the long-running MMORPG is "not going away."
"Like you, we, and our partners at Middle-earth Enterprises are huge fans of LOTRO," the company wrote. "It is beloved, it is sixteen [years old], it is evergreen. LOTRO is like the long-lived Ents, Elves and Dwarves; and we mere mortals, are the stewards of LOTRO and its community. Standing Stone has every intention of growing and supporting this community. The road goes ever on."
The message follows days of notes from "excited and concerned community members" in response to the Amazon announcement.
We spoke to Amazon Games VP Christoph Hartmann about his ambitions for the new project, who told us he hopes to make this "the largest MMO out there" and emphasised that the title needs to be "first a game, and then a reflection of the books second."