A whole new MMO!

[TheOtherTed]

 

Amazon Games and Athlon Games have teamed up to build a new LOTR-themed MMO!  This time, it's guaranteed 80% vaporware-free!  Probably.

[Techwright]

For a moment, I thought a Futurama MMO was in the works.  I would have been more excited.

 

Any MMO having both "Amazon" and "LoTR" in its discussion better prove to be 100% vaporware.

 

I actually would be interested in a LotR MMO if it covered a topic not previously covered, like say, the conflict in the east, or the First Age, or even projected into the Fourth Age, covering The New Shadow, a direction Tolkien started but then aborted.  These have gaps in the lore, some big, and gaps can mean great writing opportunities.  But whatever such project, it would need to be consistent in detail with the works of Tolkien and his son Christopher.  I feel two lifetimes spent in getting the details right should be respected.   I'm not terribly interested in a retread of The Hobbit or the events of The Lord of the Rings, and I'm certainly out if Amazon is involved.

[biostem]

Frankly, I find fantasy themed MMOs to be worn out at this point.  I like being able to play anything from a "peak human" with a sword and shield to an alien or guy in a power suit.  I'm also not a fan of how amazon handled the LotR IP, and am concerned that this game won't be able to "just be" a fun game, divorced from any real world politics and/or acting as one giant advertisement for future seasons.

[TheOtherTed]

2 hours ago, Techwright said:

Any MMO having both "Amazon" and "LoTR" in its discussion better prove to be 100% vaporware.

Amazon and Athlon danced this dance before, so I'd place money on them going two-for-two on the LotR vaporware front.

 

On that note, anyone know how New World is doing these days?

[Techwright]

22 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:

On that note, anyone know how New World is doing these days?

 

Not really.  My info is about 7 months out of date.  I had a couple of coworkers at my last contract that played it.  Their comment was that they liked it, it had some innovation, but they felt it was repetitive.  I don't recall if they clarified that comment.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

Keep getting punted New World when I'm on Amazon shopping. Not tempted.

 

1) Doesn't run on Macs and no plans to support or provide Wine-type hack for it.

 

2) Most reviews and boards mention the need for "grind" and/or "powerlevelling" before you expand into the main game and expand your character tree. If it's worse than Synapse, I ain't got time for that.

 

3) Botched the launch badly, with users queuing for hours or days to access a shard. Sure, many MMOs have faced over-subscription and queue issues.

But this is Amazon. AWS is the absolute rock-solid core of their business model these days. Having worked for a number of big orgs, there are plenty of times when one part doesn't know/care/will suddenly get shirty about what another part of the org's up to. But if they'd even hung out with the engies for coffee and some light nerdery, they should have had a decent idea of the resources required, and turning on additional server power should have been a phone call and a couple of clicks.