According to new documents available on Leyou’s site, the Lord of the Rings MMO will get it’s beta open to the public in early 2023. The game was originally announced in September 2018 by Athlon Games, which is owned by Leyou.
It is worth mentioning that this MMO is not the same as The Lord of the Rings Online that already exists. Leyou was recently acquired by no less than Tencent and some files with the company’s future plans appeared on its official website. The leaked information dates from June 5, 2019 and provides some very specific dates for the development process of the next title.
In January 2021, the developer expects to have the full outline of the game’s story and narrative. On June 1 of the same year, the expectation is to have a playable prototype, while for the following year we could have a closed beta, more specifically at the end of September 2022. And, finally, the open beta would be available on January 1 of 2023.
Despite this, we haven’t had new information about the LOTR MMO for a long time. Therefore, it is possible that the plans made in 2019 have seen some modifications, although we will have to wait to find out more about it.
The little we know about this Lord of the Rings game is that it will be free and that it will take place at a time long before the LOTR events that we know about. In terms of platforms, the game is expected to come out on PC and be released on consoles a few months later, although there is no official confirmation of this.