While other MMOs face the fact and give up against WoW, which usually means shutting down or merging servers, LOTR Online developer Turbine has no such plans, according to VG247, where producer Aaron Campbell said that “If anything, The Lord of the Rings Online is growing. We have no plans to merge servers. And please don’t mention it, it makes me twitch unpleasantly”.

The exact number of subscribers to LOTR Online was not revealed, but estimates put it in the 500,000 range.

It seems this heyday of film-based games might be in its twilight hours as EA has suggested they’re shifting their focus away from licensed properties when planning for their future. “The bloom is really off the rose for licensed games,” said Games boss Frank Gibeau in an interview to the LA times. In the same interview he also confirmed that they’re not planning to release another Godfather game, although later an offical spokesperson came forth saying that nothing has been decided as far as the Godfather license.

This can only come as good news since along with some quality gems EA has mixed in a fair amount of generally terrible garbage. Devoting their resources towards their original properties means we’ll see more and better of those. Though the claim that something in the general mentality about licensed games has changed doesn’t hold much water.

It seems that Pandemic Studios, developer of Lord of the Rings: Conquest, has released the official PC requirements via the game’s official forums.

Below are said requirements:

System Requirements
===================

Lord of Lord of The Rings: Conquest™ requires at least the following:

FOR WINDOWS XP SP2 or Windows Vista
* 2.4 GHz Core Duo processor or equivalent
* 1 GB RAM
* A 256 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 3.0 – nvidia 7800 or equivelent
* The latest version of DirectX 9.0c
* A DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
* At least 6 GB of hard drive space for installation.

Read

Major Nelson has recently announced via his blog that the multiplayer demo for Lord of the Rings: Conquest has hit the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Below is an exerpt from his posting:

Demo: Lord of the Rings: Conquest™ Multiplayer Demo
Content: Lord of the Rings: Conquest™ Multiplayer Demo
Price: Free
Availability: All Xbox LIVE regions
Dash Text: Download The Lord of the Rings: Conquest™ online multiplayer demo and choose your side! Fight for either Good or Evil in the battle for Middle-earth!

Lord of the Rings: Conquest is currently under development by Pandemic Studios and will let players return to Middle Earth when it hits North American shelves for the Xbox 360, PS3, PC and Nintendo DS on January 13th.

It seems a new trailer for Pandemic Studios’ Lord of the Rings: Conquest has hit the web today. Featuring unique gameplay never before seen in a Lord of the Rings title, the above trailer takes you through some of the aspects included in the game.

If you’ve ever played any of the Starwars: Battlefront games you will be familiar with the selling point of LotR: Conquest, in the sense you can play on either the good or evil sides. Also included in the game besides a campaign mode is multiplayer which allows for up to 16 players to face off against one another in game modes such as death match, capture the flag, and the all new Ring Bearer. In Ring Bearer, one player take the role of Frodo, while all of the others play as a Ringwrath whos main goal is to kill Frodo, once Frodo is killed, the assasin becomes Frodo. Think kill the carrier.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest is expected to hit store shelves on January 13th, 2009 for the Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, Wii, DS, and PC.