It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Amazon and Leyou canceling their upcoming Lord of the Rings MMORPG is unsurprising, but it is a bit depressing. However, it does make Bradford wonder what could have been, from both a pure MMO standpoint and as a die-hard Lord of the Rings fan.
Comments
I think it WILL be ready for closed beta come July 20 and I for one am really looking forward to it.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Oh well. Maybe someone will pick up where it may have left off some day.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Anyway...
I wouldn't declare this LOTR game dead yet. Amazon is out. That's for sure, but it wasn't theirs to begin with.
Everyone assumes that since Amazon is BIG they had the rights to develop it but in fact they didn't - it's Athlon/Leyou that acquired the rights to make a LOTR game from Middle Earth Enterprises. Amazon jumped on board as their partner a year later.
Continuing with a different partner is still a strong possibility.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
China's government is not meaningfully Communist in the economic sense, and has not been since Mao died in the 1970s. The other elites in the country saw very well that Communism doesn't work, and left an estimated 50 million dead in the largest slaughter in human history. That's why they moved away from it as an economic system, and that is what allowed China's economy to grow tremendously since then.
So FF and they are failing miserably,announce layoffs and cancel several games.Somehow they magically open up a new MTL studio...lol.So just like WASTING a boatload of money on the former 2K lead to be their vice president and hiring expensive mouths like Smedley they aim for PAST glory instead of intelligent decision making.
This new venture is based off hiring the Ubi guys from Rainbow Six.Do they think they can just now magically whip together a shooter and make money?
To me Amazon game studios looks like a joke ,no idea what they are doing but just doing it because they see so many getting rich off of gaming.Their initial thoughts remind me a LOT of Trion,big dreams,movies,toys,mobile,make several games,integrate them into Twitch our new big purchase.
Amazon is just a business looking to make business moves,they are NOT a good game studio/s.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Not sure why but that is literally what I thought haha. #WhenYouSurpriseYourself
The thing is communism for both China and Russia was that it made them easier to predict, they worked by a set of principles. Now they do not and I see no principles governing them now apart from self interest and geopolitics. The West has ideals and a capitalist framework, though it does not always follow those ideals or behave that capitalist at times. Recently Russia and China have both got worse and you have to ask is this as far as they will go? To me they will keep pushing the boundaries of what is internationally acceptable until someone pushes back.
Also it is useful to try to remember that the Russians feel betrayed by what happened to the USSR, they feel mother Russia deserves some revenge and you only have to look at Georgia and the Ukraine to see that in action. Meanwhile China sees itself as taken for granted, the superpower that is expected to do nothing on the world stage. With that in mind you can see why I think this situation will just get worse.
You know why though? The feels/power of money/currency itself. It's what has damned both Russia and China. Is the USA damned from it? No. The USA uses its currency as a control/debt scheme. The feels and power from the USA isn't from the money/currency itself its what power is derived after creating the debt with said currency.
It's like how we got landlords and property managers who are inherently evil people in the USA who every year raise rent. The government started to watch and take note and created a Bad Landlord Listing of all landlords who raised rent during covid.
See, because we don't have the same lust/power for money like Russia/China does, we can have morally grey areas and even good areas. (I mean evil individuals have a lust and greed and envy but our policies aren't setup that way. Evil will always exist and should always be killed when it pops up.)
But China and Russia, just need more and more. That's a raging beast with one eye, probably a missing leg, chained up against a wall waiting to die or at the very least go out with one last fight.
It is common knowledge that AGS has already spent over a billion dollars in their 'attempt' to make games but have failed to release anything that can be monetarily profitable.
Look at the Tencent business model and how they ONLY buy game companies with growth potential. Why would Tencent worth 715 billion USD who has an entire collective of game studios(many of them capable of creating a LOTR MMO) remain in a partnership with Amazon who in recent times is the greatest disaster/failure game company around? They gain nothing by staying partnered with them and in fact run the risk of having AGS screw things up and drag them down in the process. IMO they made the decision any smart person would make and cut ties with those AGS losers asap.
I also wouldn't doubt it if Tencent bought Leyou because they had the LOTR license. Could be that Tolkien trust or Saul Zentz or whoever feel like they dodged a bullet because AGS is no longer involved.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
China, on the other hand, has gotten much worse in recent years, and it's because of Xi Jinping. Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao were all capable leaders who did a lot of good for their country, even if they also did quite a bit of evil in the world. (Literally lifting hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty is a lot of good, no matter who does it.) Xi Jinping is not just a run-of-the-mill evil dictator. Unlike his recent predecessors, and also unlike Putin, Xi Jinping is far more evil than most dictators. He doesn't just harass a relative handful of people who annoy him. He has institutionalized it to harass nearly everyone that he can.
Right off the tracks...
Then some crazy old guy goes and says hey how many characters smoked pipes in Lord of The Rings. You know to get back on topic of some greedy company squandering this amazing IP with some cash shop crap.
Gaming is screwed. Probably why you guys are talking about countries and communism...
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/