LEAVE A COMMENT - are you optimistic or pessimistic about LOTRO’s future??

There are a lot of problems with the media fervour created by the EG7 report (which did not give the details or context necessary to understand exactly what that decision was about). 1. The cancelled plans were largely about the console port, not the graphics updates or performance improvements. Indeed, even the console port is potentially still on the table if they can find a different approach, according to the Executive Producer Severlin. That is a very different picture to how this was painted by many in news reports, etc. 2. The graphics updates are still happening, albeit gradually rather than in one big update. We've seen some of that this year with revamped player avatars for the Race of Man and the cosmetic refresh to the Last Homely Home, and arguably the improvements we'll see in Corsairs of Umbar (with new water textures, waves, and an entirely new biomes) fall under this category too. These kinds of changes will continue next year and in future years, with more avatar revamps, new lighting and shadow tech, as well as upgrades to DX12, 4k support (including UI scaling and icon up-scaling), among other things. Improvements to earlier low-fidelity textures are likely also. 3. Performance updates are also still happening, with several Engineers working on these right now. While these come slower than we'd like, they have already chipped away at some inefficient ways of doing things behind the scenes, and hopefully all of these fixes will snowball into noticeable improvements in the relatively near future. Other improvements coming include 64-bit servers, a new launcher, 2FA, and something that may make European players happy. The recent Store update was also a necessity, not for cosmetic reasons, but because of outdated technology, and it is significantly faster than the old Store. 4. LOTRO continues to deliver major updates and expansions on a regular basis, with one of the biggest expansions just a week or so away. This is on top of a feature-packed year that largely surpassed the promises made in the Letter to Players earlier this year (with, among other things, the new Race of River Hobbits and Lyndelby Housing not even on that roadmap). This is the very opposite of "life support", and I think many players of other MMOs would be jealous of the amount of updates and content LOTRO players continue to get after 16 years. 5. There is far too much unfounded doom and gloom about LOTRO's future with the upcoming Amazon LOTR MMO. Aside from the fact that that game is likely years away (and LOTRO may turn 20 before that even launches), both games will likely take such drastically different approaches that they will both be successful in their own ways. Sure, Amazon's game will have better graphics (though LOTRO looks remarkably good for its age, as I think anyone who plays the upcoming expansion will attest), but the gameplay will likely be comparatively simplified (with fewer skills for combat, for example), and the world will be significantly smaller. At the end of the day, MMOs need lots of content, existing and new, to keep players engaged, and that is a major strength LOTRO has, with 16 years of regions, systems, classes, etc. added to the game. Amazon will have a tough time competing with that. Finally, we should look to DDO, LOTRO's sister game from SSG, as a good example of how a popular license can go to another developer (Neverwinter, in this case) and yet the older game can still survive and thrive. Sure, player numbers won't be phenomenal, but DDO also gets yearly expansions and multiple other updates per year, among other things, which shows that this can still happen for LOTRO when there's a direct competitor out there. I have heard cries about LOTRO dying since even before it launched, with yearly "it'll be gone this time next year" predictions for the past 16 years. While eventually the game will sail into the West, with a further decade or two of ideas for content, and lots of the map still to fill in, plus the feature-packed year of 2023 (which largely already factored in EG7's decision much earlier than the public presentation), there are a lot of reasons for players to be very optimistic about the game.

You lost me at giving Amazon any benefit of the doubt after proving they don’t know or care about the lore at all.

I'm not trusting Amazon to create a good LOTR MMO after the joke of a show that they made... they'll have to do some serious work on that

Imagine if they just remade LOTRO in Unreal Engine 5 - they could even keep everything else in terms of content.

My father and I played LOTRO for about 7-8 years straight from the original Angmar beginnings. Great times, lots of fond memories.

I love lotro. If there was only one mmorpg that I could play (on a desert island or some shit) lotro is it. I agree with your points about Amazon and a new lotr mmo. I am cautiously optimistic about it, but lotro is the gold standard for respecting the source material. I hope they continue to improve the game and it keeps bringing new players in.

I’m optimistic. The community is bomb. Also there is no way that an LOTR MMO by Amazon will launch with half of the features that Lotro has. Loving the new Content and Mariner class. Excited.

Missing your content - hope you are well!

The only part of LotRO Remastered that is cancelled is the console port, the rest will be slower without external (outside of SSG) investment but SSG is still committed to graphical improvements. While I am disappointed that EG7 pulled back from the investment I'm also not surprised, financial groups are focused on money above all. If anyone is curious what LotRO's Executive Producer has to say about it here's his answer from a recent Q&A: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/l5NhgNWFmpvLeY0.htmlsi=DP6NRKlEunLS8E4V&t=1790

Lag is an ongoing concern. It had gotten pretty good for awhile there. The last month, it’s crept back in the last month. I’m afraid that’s due to folks coming back to prepare for Umbar. That probably means it’ll be back with a vengeance. Hopefully I’m wrong on that because that might mean the the first few months of the expansion will be rough :(

I am optimistic, just wish they had more backing to do what they want to do..I think they are doing pretty well for the small team they have

I love LOTRO just the way it is. Maybe I'm just old, but it has given me some great memories. It's like life was simpler back then, and the love that was put into this game, to me, is still there. I love new graphics like every one else, but to me, LOTRO is just special.

I think that amazoon will probably benefit lotro as I predict many will be dissappointed by it, but want to try a lotr mmo and therefore thy try the classic one. Star Wars BF 2 2005 also received a multiplayer revive as EA failed with star wars bf 2 in 2017.

Have played this since the beginning, my first MMO and still playing. So sad they wot remaster this :(

one of the best things they could do is spend time improving their plugin api framework and let the community make the huge enhancements that could be made with such ability. their current api is pretty terrible though some amazing people have built some great plugins. One, two developers, a full year of effort ($300k salary + overhead for 2 roughly) and a lot of life and improvement could be breathed into this game

i don't play lotro but among the franchise mmo's (swtor, lotro, sto) i feel lotro has the brightest future.

Given the Rings of Power it is very difficult to be optimistic about an Amazon Lords of the Ring game.

The Turbine engine code is not multi-threaded optimized, meaning any graphics improvements that put further stress on the CPU would result in more lag client-side.

I played it from 2006-2011 and had a fantastic time. I just returned a few weeks ago and I really hope there is still a future for LOTRO. This game has such a special place in my heart and I've enjoyed coming back to it so much.

Ayyy it’s been a while! Good to see you mate

So there is a new bug, more of an effect of bad servers, that's rearing it's head in LOTRO: people refer to it as the "loading screen of death". Basically once you get to the character selection screen, pick your character, and press "enter middle earth", the game stalls and soft crashes on the loading screen. This, as stated by a LOTRO support person, is a direct result of old crappy servers on lotros end. The solution isn't always the same for different people. Some folks can simply log onto a different alt and that will reset everything, some people have to log onto a different server, some people have to delete the user preferences folder, and some people, like me, have to RESET AND RESTART THEIR ENTIRE NETWORK. Meaning every time I want to log in to LOTRO, I have to turn off my computer and everything on my network (wifi), unplug my router and modem, wait 120 seconds (and not one second less), restart the modem and router, wait for that to bootup, the. Turn back on my computer. Doing anything out of order or earlier than 120 seconds and I have to restart the whole process from the beginning. I love lotro. I've played for over a decade. But I cannot subscribe to a game that makes me do this every time I log on, sometimes I even have to do this when I switch characters. Unless they fix this, LOTRO will die quicker than Amazon can cancel the next game they've planned.

THE INTERFACE IS IMPOSSIBLE TO READ! I'm 63 years old and I love Lord of the Rings but the LOTRO user interface is 20 years old and it doesn't scale. They are so eager to be "inclusive" but don't seem to care about older people with bad eyesight. Shame on them for not fixing this! If I can't see the game, I can't play.

If they could fix that dumb stutter the game suffers from it be alot better.

Lotro Classic.

I know the day is coming when I can't access the game anymore. I love this world, I love everything about LOTR, and I will be VERY sad the day that is no longer available.

my biggest issue was the slow levelling. doing quests for hours , and barely seeing the xp bar move. i quit wildstar for the same reason. and if the levelling process is grindy, how will the endgame be?

Standing Stone Games has been very quite about anything EG7 has said/stated, however last week during a Q&A Livestream serverlin (LOTRO's Executive Producer) said he was going to answer a hard question and this was first time they even directly talked about EG7 plans, basically said the scope of it was way out of bounds for them and therefore canceled, but nice to hear from head of SSG themselves on it.

Oof. Given what Amazon has done with the IP so far, I'd be VERY cautious 😬 Will they make a good MMO? Potentially! Will it be lore-accurate? Probably not lol

Arkenstone is pretty healthy we regularly have 6-800 ppl online during peak

if amazon's Iotr mmo wiII be as Iore accurate and as fun as their series Iotro has nothing to worry about

00:05 The aniamtions are amazing... I love it

do i spy... a PRS in the backround?! gimme that music gear review

As a new LOTRO player I'd say the character models need updating and the free to play needs to be more generous. Only 2 slots just leads to you deleting characters to try new classes but then you feel less invested in the game.

The only thing that prevented me from sticking with lotro for more than a month was no euro servers. I didn't enjoy a cross-continental latency.

The level cap is a huge problem for me and some of my friends at the moment. 140 or whatever it is/will be is too much. I won't even buy the new expansion and can't play the new class because I refuse to pay for an expansion I might never actually get to play at the rate I'm chugging through the content and levels. It's taken me a good half a year of casual play to get to level 80 and Rohan with exploring, trying out new classes, crafting, etc. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing, but when your new expansions are gated behind a HUGE grind to get a character high enough level to play it, it's going to put a lot of people off Other MMOs either ditched increasing level caps, or made it so you play the game on one character, or, and something I think LotRO desperately needs, had a level squish. At the very least, they could take a leaf out of FFXIV's book and make the epic story quests give a lot more EXP than regular quests as a way to speed up levelling a bit for people that want to play and enjoy the story.

So I would like to try lotro. Never played it before but I absolutely love Tolkien’s works, having said that is there a community in discord or wherever that I can join? I’d like to be able to play with other people if possible.

I really hope it doesn't go away because I only just found out its still going strong!!! I'm planning to come back to the game next week after being away since 2012!! I've been so excited that I think about it everyday lol. So i truly hope things are not about to get bad for my beloved LOTRO

Daybreak is pretty much just maintaining games at this point. I would not call LOTRO on life support since its getting an xpac - ie devs are working on the game (very suprised when i came back and saw the Mariner class!) I think the next route for LOTRO needs to be evergreen parts of the game. old raids/events need to be touched on and allow for scaling with player level (or the reverse like ff14) I'd also say that LOTRO could definitely try hardcore servers - theres already people attempting this in game because of the titles. Another thing to be done is merging servers to consolidate the player bases. Anyway, loving the game as a 50~ Captain on Arkenstone

I started when I was fourteen back in 2008. I came back two years ago and I've not stopped. It feels like an actual world, and the community is amazing.

Just want my Skyrim lord of the rings game that respects the lore and the world.

The UI is unplayable for me on 4k Monitor. Its also not on the road map for 2024. Sad because i use to play it years ago.

I'm going to be a little pessamistic about this Amazon version of LotRMMO. They really screwed up with Rings of Power. I see them doing the same with the MMO.

Hey welcome back Brother! Great vid man! I know I miss all your streams, but I'm always working when you stream. I'm hoping Amazon will bring Middle Earth to life. Seeing Khazad Dum with modern graphics would be amazing!

As someone who actually 'doesn't' play LOTRO, I NEVER hear about it, at all. For just about an hour ago, I thought "Oh yeah, LOTR has an MMO, let me just see if it's still kicking" and I found your video. The player-count will keep dropping when the game isn't getting advertised at all. I'm a MMO player first and foremost and I rarely ever hear about lotro unless I see "Top 10 MMO lists". They are not promoting their new expansions at all, so I would have never known they were ever even released.

the minimum for a good restart, LOTRO needs 1. united server 2. update graphic and sound 3. cross-platform support

Sauce on the remaster cancellation caused directly by the Amazon announcement? Was that only an assumption? 🤔

Unless I'm mistaken the potential cost to a new player to obtain all of the zones/quests is a hefty sum to put it mildly. This in and of itself is a barrier to entry for many and lessons could be learned from other companies when it comes to the barrier for entry in relation to the required cost to the player. If I'm mistaken then I'd love to be corrected but new players would be looking at approximately $140 usd just for the basic editions of each expansion/content pack... and that's without Umbar taken into consideration. The barrier to entry is constantly increasing for new players. At least for those who are looking to invest in a new MMO experience.

Well, for me LOTRO will always have a special place on my heart. I love the end game and the community on that game, but let be honest SSG can't handle this game. Server lag is a problem since lv 120 was the cap, the class balance is bad for years and the game is full of pay walls even to the players that have the last expansion and monthly pay the VIP membership. They literally make you pay for one big expansion, one mini "expansion" and want you to buy the high end raid. The game is on full monetize mode these days, milking the player base that love this game. Its sad, but the time has come, lets wait for the Amazon MMO.

I only need a reworked UI!!

Aint no way this game wouldnt also run on Switch! I would love to play this on my Switch!

Maybe another Company could be found to invest into LoTRO then? I probably won't get into any Lord-of-the-Rings-Game, that doesn't offer an immersion into Tolkien's Lore since the Series on Amazon I could only "endure" when I reframed my perception and telling myself, it's an entirely completely Story being told and not anything related to the World and Books we all love and know. Implausibility of Characters and not very imaginary plots will not be countered by cool Special Effects, after all! But, I guess it's the "Zeitgeist" of our Times: "shiny, sparkling appearances" trying to distract from the hollowness of everything and many people even (sadly so)! Yet, no World can persist (even the *real* one!) only on shiny surfaces, that crumble all too quickly when challenged... I would hope and wish for the Game to be remade - if not by the current "Guardians" of it, then maybe there will be found new ones...who knows? Also, I think @DeanFWilson is correct in pointing out, that Graphical Updates are launched, but incrementally (much like WoW did back in the days, if I remember correctly?). And the new Human-Character Editor (accessible either on Character Creation or any Barber in-game!) is really looking *awesome* a.f.! I just hope it's gonna be implemented for Beorninger, Elves and all other Species/Sub-Species, too (I don't like "Race" really - it's something, that's officially only supposed to be used for Animals these days where I live).

I played Lotro years ago. I had to stop once the cash shop was being pushed in your face with everything. The devs refuse to change or update anything recommended that have been known to be issues for years. I live Lotr...I think Lotro is just going into its "dying" days sadly.

Greetings from Germany. I love your videos and your fancy shirt 😊

God I wish they would fix the engine and clean the lag, it's still really bad in England at least where I am 😭

where is part 2

This is a similar situation where as Starwars galaxies was overshadowed by The old Republic, unfortunately this is the way of (IP)'s though admittedly SWG had its problems with its remake halfway through that discouraged many players returning. Today there are so many new MMO's coming out keeping your player base intact and interested is a real issue.

The remastering would have been amazing for the game. You feel this games age when you play it.

I loved LOTRO many years ago. I've played New World close to 4k hours since beta. It's come so unbelievably far in two years. If AGS can pour everything they've learned from New World into their LOTR game and stay true to the lore, then it'll be an incredible game. I'll only be sad because it'll mean the end of New World.

I think the pessimism set in when EG7 said they couldn't see how they might recoup the cost of a 30 mil LoTRO revamp when they have access to one of the world's most highly valued IPs. AGS (Amazon Game Studios) is not nearly as well positioned as they make themselves out to be. I would say they are at least 5-7 years away from any serious offering, and given the way they have monetized New World in the past few months, you can expect a hot mess of buggy microtransaction overhyped features with a development team that believes they know better than their players. They are consistently short on PvE content, unable to meet their own release dates, and unable to balance their core systems and game mechanics. They claim to have learned from past mistakes, but they don't. They just believe in themselves way more than they should. Except their landscape / botanical artists. Whoever they have doing that is producing pure bliss.

I still think that this Game looks beautiful as it is. Ofc there are old character models for npcs that could be revamped. But for the rest? I think - and this is no offense - that people nowadays are spoiled with good graphics despite the fact that many good looking games today have horrible story and gameplay elements. Imo this is not the case for lotro. There is one Major problem that needs to be fixed and that is lag. The problem with that is just that the gamecode is too old and to hard to get around for the devs nowadays to make significant changes to the games systems. SSG , compared to other studios, is fairly small and they re trying their best to still make great content and fixing issues - even if it comes down to -sometimes- making the game even more unplayable, because the code causes then problems on other things in the game. Allthough, i think that amazon cannot and will not deliver either a good story, nor good gameplay that is significantly better then most MMO's nowadays. Also the arrogance of this studio makes it even more likely to me that this will just be another cashgrab on the back of LoTR Fans, same as RoP. They even called it out, that they wont stick to the books AND that they dont even care about lotro and the community despite having nothing to show of (of course because their just in planning stags). They think everybody will just hop over and thats it. The problem they will have is when the story and lore is not respected, people wont stay long. And also they will not be able to hold a community that you have in lotro rn and that growed for many many many years. Oh and btw. Remember NewWorld? That game wich had big ambitions for the market and is now just like any other new mmo, that lost its players after a few months ? The game whee you couldn't even swim kekw?😅

Most important was to implement diverse characters. At least we got this now. 😂

I'm so nostalgic for this game, having played it since I was 8 or 9 years old (now 21 lol), I honestly just hope that they ultimately find a way to create an offline version of the game, because yeah eventually this game, like most online games, will lose enough players that SSG doesn't see profit and has to stop running the servers. Even though SSG is awesome at supporting the game and producing content for it, at this point I just want them to release something that can be archived and played forever haha (selfish, I know). Glad Echoes of Angmar exists :)

IIRC: they are gonna be working on the graphical/ui/performance enhancements overtime, it's just not a priority, and a console port just isn't possible

I really hope the Amazon lotro doesn't come out . Amazon only made bad games so far and they will shut down the original lotro .because they don't want to run 2 mmos based on the same thing. it's like when starwars the old republic came out .and they shut down star wars Galaxy

Great video

This mmo will never die!

To be honest when they originally announced that they would remaster it, I thought it would be a hurcelean task, and I didn't really care for it, because the game is what it is. I think if they wanted to make changes moving forward it would be way better. For example the graphics of Umbar are really stunning, especially how they did the waves, colors etc. I personally think that LOTRO is here to stay, but raiding is probably dying out. Fewer people are returning to do endgame content, because of how the botched up going almost 2 years without new content. Raiders moved on to other games with new content constantly dripping out. left a like.

Amazon would do better if they paid lotro to do it’s original remaster plan and then add massive new expansions while letting them handle it so it stays true to form and lore

Maybe do a new expansion that rolls these out slowly

I don't WANT the game to be remastered. I really hope they release the source code so we can keep to our old memories.

I do not believe for a second that Lotro is going to die or that Amazon will kill the game it's like saying this will be the next wow killer, and wow is still alive and doing better now that it's under new management. SSG is not milking it's player base as you can do deeds to unlock content if you so choose. as far as the bundles and expansions go they need to make money somehow sure it is expansive to get the ultimate bundles but you have to consider the amount of work those developers go through to make those items it's not simple coding. Also I do not believe they milk the player base if any company does it's going to be Amazon I am almost willing to bet anyone on that to prove me wrong. My two cents here.

Been playing w wife for 16 years, now. From an investor's standpoint, a graphics upgrade probably won't draw enough people. I was miffed but I understand. Also unfortunately, I don't think I'll be buying anything after Gundabad. Wife's most recent is Mordor. We just don't play it anymore and honestly, it isn't necessarily about the game. Life is demanding and time is short.

I have never had an issue with the graphics. After-all, graphics don’t make a game. Even so, lotro has always been a charming game appearance wise. I’d personally just look into the engine stability issues/ sever issues.

how do you even play lotro on console?

companies do not look at the numbers like that they dont say ok the game made us 200m lets spend 30 m to overhaul it and hope it pays off they say ok well if i pay 30m right now to overhaul will i make that 30mil back in the future and the truth is most likely even with a pop boom 30m will be a loss for em

Your mmorpg news videos are excellent. Keep em coming.

I tried to not get my hopes up in case this happened.

Man, that's a fancy shirt

They say they looked into the numbers... But coming up with a 30M$ number out of their ass for a 3 stage overhaul remaster towards the game and they say returns wont happen or profits I should say.. Is just short sighted. It's going to be harder to add onto the current game as it is and take longer to do patches onto older content if they dont clean up and overhaul the foundation. It also drives away new players from ever getting past level 20 because the newest zones they added for "story" reasons was just a ploy to keep new players engaged enough to get past that 20-30 lvl gap. Their excuse that 30M$ could be used to make a whole new game is also out of their ass because a new game can cost up to 100M$+ to fund/make. Let alone a new MMORPG if they choose to. Cancelling this is such a short sighted mistake they'll soon regret when they are forced to shut down servers and crunch everything to 1 mega server for NA/EU players to enjoy whatever time left the game has and drive the rest of their fans away for good. I was banking and hoping at least a performance patch would get done so I can return because the FPS drops in random zones and the cluster/GRID lvl system they have in place for connection/ping is so bad if you are the only person in a zone leveling then the server allocates resources to other zones making yours feel like you're playing at 500 ping until more players join you. Guess I'm sticking to WoW classic or find something else to sink time into.. This is beyond sad.

Did anyone truly believe they were going to overhaul the graphics on such an old game??

They just shot themselves in the foot. Unfortunately. Really sad news.

If they cannot be bothered to fix the lag then this game is doomed to be a low count fan game only and wont get the true numbers it deserves rip lotro

Honestly I'd sign up for a monthly subscription today if it was avalible on Xbox

Frankly, the only updates I'd care about is an update where you don't have to pay for every expansion separately

it sucks but it was written on the walls for yeaaarss. Anyone who thought otherwise was unfortunately kidding themselves or just super out of the loop.

Whatever; Amazons teaming up to make a new LOTR MMO sooo....we'll see how that turns out. I'm hopeful

Standing Stone Games would do well to position LOTRO in the same category as "WoW Classic" and sell it like that versus whatever Amazon comes up with. At that point, they can just run it as F2P classic. But in no way should they just throw in the towel.

Was really hoping this game came to console.

Cautiously optimistic, although equally disappointed about the cancelled remaster. Appreciate you buddy! 🥰

I thought Amazon Games now owned the rights to Lord of the Rings IP and is making a new LotR MMO for themselves?

2032 is LOTRO RIP date. We have another decade :D

amazon + tencent = transaction simulator mmo

Bright, I love you.

I love this game, my all time favourite MMO. That said, they need to do something serious, that probably involves investing money, about the latency experienced by players outside the US. Some classes like the warden are just not ideal to play with how things are currently, and that's putting it mildly. And even if that issue was sorted, the game still really is showing it's age. At the very least, they need to do something about the UI so it looks like it was actually meant for modern systems and not for a resolution of 1024x768. It's just not really good by 2023 standard. It is a real shame, as the storytelling and gameplay are really enjoyable.

WOW also same graphics just little improvements

Amazon is making a LOTR mmo. In the meantime, the only MMORPG worth playing today & going forward for the next 3 years minimum is New World. It is night & day better than it used to be. Best MMORPG on the market, everything else feels 20 years old in comparison.

Even though LotRO is and will remain the best game in this area (the only true one!), there were simply too many flaws in the game or on the server. Lags are only one point of many. The battle system is anything but fluid and the animations of the characters are rather mediocre. The beauty of the world cannot compensate for everything. I stopped at some point despite a good story. I still wouldn't want to play a new Amazon MMO in Middle Earth. I don't have as much time as I did back then either :)

I don't want the new lotr mmo to feel like a mobile port or play like New World, so if it looks/feels like either I'm out.

My hopes died today... No counter to Amazons shitt!