LOTR MMO Dev Working on Console Title

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Lord of the Rings Online developer Turbine, traditionally a PC gaming developer, has confirmed speculation that it is at work on a console MMO.

Turbine communications director Adam Mersky told Kotaku that the company is "actively developing a title for console."

Mersky did not specify further what the title would be, or whether it would make use of licensed properties like previous Turbine efforts Dungeons and Dragons Online (PC) or Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (PC).

The company, which recently received a $40 million equity financing investment from Time Warner, intends to utilize part of the funds to fuel the new project. Mersky noted that the company has already seen considerable expansion.

"We've hired over 60 people since the beginning of the year," he said. "The people that invested in us, Time Warner... one of the media giants, getting into the MMO fold, and that's obviously a big deal."

Turbine's aim at console development follows the announcement of restructuring at Sony Online Entertainment, which reorganized in effort to bring more of the studio's efforts to Sony's PlayStation 3. Other released and upcoming MMOs, such as Funcom's Age of Conan (PC, X360) and Cryptic Studios' Champions Online (PC, X360), will be pulling double duty on both PCs and consoles.

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    June 10, 2008 3:25 PM

    hey, use the money and make a REAL AC2.

    pls?

    • reply
      June 10, 2008 4:17 PM

      That would be nice just because the lore isn't tied down and it also had a fairly unique environment. Building off of an existing ip can give you solid ground, but also be extremely limiting. Turbine has hinted at that issue with lotro, but Mythic has been quite up front about it while working on Warhammer.

      Asheron's Call really deserves a true sequel. Hopefully they bring over the old skill/level/school system too. It was a solid system and there was no need to drop it in AC2. Imagine if a small team has been working on AC2 since the start of 2006, when it was shut down, populating the world with proper towns, npcs, quests, and lore.

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        June 10, 2008 6:41 PM

        AC2 was such a disappointment :( Parts of the system I really enjoyed, and some of the game was rock solid awesome, but in the long run It just made me miss AC more

    • reply
      June 10, 2008 10:53 PM

      I'm the one person that loved AC2 more than any other MMORPG. Not sure why, but I just took to it.

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