"New World was a success for a month": Lord of the Rings Online fans aren't scared of Amazon's new LOTR MMO

gamesradar.com:

If there was one group of players likely to be surprised by yesterday's announcement that Amazon was working on a new Lord of the Rings MMO, it was likely to be fans of the current Lord of the Rings MMO. But for fans for Lord of the Rings Online, the new kid on the block isn't anything to worry about.

The Lord of the Rings Online launched in the MMO heyday of 2007, a time when games like World of Warcraft and Runescape were riding high among the best MMORPGs you could play. LOTRO didn't ever really challenge the biggest names in the genre, but it managed to live at a time when many other massively-multiplayer projects died an early death. Focused closely on Tolkein's work and the time period of The Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy, it's maintained a dedicated-enough playerbase to warrant new expansions more than a decade after its original launch.

But for an ageing game, a competitor this close to the original would be a potentially existential threat. Surely the market isn't big enough to sustain two different MMOs based on exactly the same property?

You might think that, but according to LOTRO fans, the Amazon Lord of the Rings MMO is nothing to worry about, at least for now. In the LOTRO subreddit, the top comment (opens in new tab) on a thread discussing the new game points out that "this is the second time Amazon has tried to develop a LOTR MMO." Their first attempt was cancelled in 2021 as a result of contract details between the game's developer, Leyou, and Middle-Earth Enterprises, then the LOTR rights-holder.

If Amazon's previous failure to bring a Lord of the Rings MMO to life wasn't enough of a sure thing, that comment also points out that a new game is likely many years away. Another fan points out that the time