New Amazon Game Studios Lord of the Rings MMO Open Beta Planned Early 2023

While Amazon Game Studios is the main developer behind the new Lord of the Rings MMO, the game was first announced by Athlon Games, a studio owned by Leyou Games, which was recently acquired by Tencent. After Tencent bought Leyou, some documents regarding plans for the company's future games were posted on their official website and in one document titled "Game License Amendment' from June 5th, 2019", a detailed production schedule was revealed with the game set to launch into open beta in early 2023.

You can see the highlights of the production schedule below:

While little is known publicly about this new Lord of the Rings MMO, it's good to see some kind of release date, even though its tentative at best. The production schedule also says that the console version is expected to launch 6 months after the start of PC open beta testing.

Here's a few things we do know about this new MMO:

• It will be free to play
• Set at a time long before the events of the Lord of the Rings, exploring aspects of the Tolkien universe never seen before (So well before the events of the Fellowship)

Amazon is also working on a new Lord of the Rings TV series set during the Second Age, but we don't know if that's at all related to the time period this new game will take place in.