Hobbits everywhere woke up yesterday to signs across the Shire declaring that it was for sale. And not just that neighborhood, either; all of the rights to make video games and movies in the Lord of the Rings IP are going up for auction.
The current rights holder, Saul Zaentz Company, is selling off the movie, TV, and game rights. The company acquired these back in 1976, and the expectation is that whoever purchases them today will be set back at least $2 billion.
Considering that Amazon is making a highly publicized TV series called The Rings of Power, there has been some speculation that the giant corp will snatch this up.
Of course, the big question for Lord of the Rings Online players is, will this upcoming sale change anything for the MMORPG? One of the companies over LOTRO is Middle Earth Enterprises, which is a division of Saul Zaentz Company. That is bound to change soon.
EG7, Daybreak, and Standing Stone haven’t publicly commented yet, including what current licensing agreements it has secured for LOTRO — and for how long. There certainly is a whole lot of anxious speculation on the part of the playerbase, however, but it all boils down to “we’ll see what we’ll see.”
