THE LORD OF THE RINGS ONLINE
“I am ready to embark on my own journey through Middle-earth”
I deeply miss those brief few years when The Lord of the Rings had taken over the world. It wasn’t just the movies, but all the spin-off games too—those incredibly fun action-RPGs based on the movies, real-time strategy games like Battle for Middle-earth, and even the surprisingly great Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War. But of the dozens of games set in Tolkien’s fantasy universe, only one has successfully wormed its way into my brain and never left: The Lord of the Rings Online.
I’ve easily spent more time since its 2007 launch thinking about playing than actually playing it. I’m enchanted by the idea of a fully explorable Middle-earth, but MMOs are big, time-consuming games. Despite a few attempts, I just never got into as much as I want to. But with news that Amazon Games’ attempt at making a Lord of the Rings MMO was now dead, it got me thinking about this 14-year-old game and the tiny community that’s kept it quietly going for so long. It was time to try again.
