Lord of the Rings: War in the North announced by WBIE; Snowblind developing

If you've been nervously tapping your fuzzy Hobbit toes in anticipation of the project behind the trademarked "Lord of the Rings: War in the North," then prepare for a delicious second breakfast of information. Warner Bros. Interactive has officially announced the game which, as it turns out, is an RPG from Champions of Norrath / Justice League Heroes developer Snowblind Studios, due for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in 2011.

It sounds like it will be familiar gameplay to fans of those games, as well. Snowblind head Ryan Geithman calls it "a natural evolution of the acclaimed RPG gameplay that Snowblind has consistently delivered over the past years." In this online co-op RPG, up to three players will take part in the War of the Ring, visiting areas and meeting characters from the films and uncovering "unseen lands, story elements and characters from Middle-earth."

The game will receive a full reveal in PlayStation: The Official Magazine's May issue, which will be on shelves April 6. Head past the break for a trailer.

Reader Comments (31)

I am thoroughly impressed from what we have in front of us. I've enjoyed nearly all of Snowblind's games. Hope this does well!

Same here. The Champions series was pretty good, and so was Black Isle's Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series. Maybe Obsidian should pick up Dark Alliance. As generally small, straightforward games, they might be able to finish on time ;)

Wow they still keep squeezing some juice from that Lord of the Rings fruit

Considering the overwhelming breadth of the source material, we've probably got enough juice to satisfy a small family of fruit flies so far.

It's more like grinding the mummified remains of that oft-tapped fruit to dust at this point, but hey. As long as it sells, more power to 'em. Me, I could stand to go without seeing another hairy foot until The Hobbit hits theatres.

Here's come clarification on the word 'breadth' and it has nothing to do with bread.

"Length is the long dimension of any object. Not to be confused with Depth which is the property of the object that appears to go away from the observer. The length of a thing is the distance between its ends, its linear extent as measured from end to end."

via Wikipedia

Will there be off-line co-op too?

I really hope so.

Yeah, that was a big part of the fun with those games, couch co-op. The X-Men Legends titles were pretty decent for couch co-op as well.

I can't wait to join the fellowship of Scroto-Saggins.

Best laugh Ive had all day lol. Thank you.

Heck yeah, I loved their Baldur's Gate 1 and the Champions of Norrath games. Mash that square button hope something good falls out of those goblins! Mindless hack and loot fun.

Hope this game does better than a certain other lotr game so it doesnt get its servers cut off after only being out for a year...

Conquest servers have been cut????

@smooth

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/02/17/next-wave-of-ea-game-server-shutdowns-detailed/

Been looking forward to this since I saw it was first rumored.

Middle Earth Center has pretty good news regarding War in the North.
http://www.middleearthcenter.com/

I wish they made another game in the style of The Third Age. That was a surprisingly fun turn-based RPG.

were you playing the same game as me?
that game had a ridiculous difficulty spike, it went from lol easy to all of a sudden things got 7 turns in a row and raped your face

I always use a walkthrough for RPGs so I don't miss anything, so I wouldn't know about any difficulty spike.

Yeah I loved the Third Age at first but could never finish it as it suddenly got immensely harder with no indication that I should have been leveling up more.

THANK YOU SWEET BABY JESUS!

I've been praying for a Rings RPG ever since The White Council was canceled.

Do I have to perform some sort of dark arts ritual to fix my profile pic? Should I slaughter a fatted calf and offer it to the Joystiq Gods?

This is great news and all but I don't understand why they would use that generic music when they have the rights to use one of the greatest soundtracks of all time.

Weird. I started reading "The Fellowship of the Ring" today.

Lets keep up this string of icon errors.

I think that's a record.

A buddy and I put so many co-op hours into Champions of Norrath, probably our funnest MP experience. Hopefully this one stacks up to that.

Is it turn based? It's been a few years since I've been excited by anything LotR but this has a lot of potential, maybe I'll have to pick up that magazine.

No, it will be an action RPG, most likely in the vein of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath (since both were developed by Snowblind).

What in Eru's name is a cave troll doing in the sunlight?

GOD DAMN LOTR is awesome.

Lord of the Rings: War in the North announced by WBIE; Snowblind developing

Reader Comments (31)

Posted: Mar 18th 2010 12:11PM Spike Spiegel Humble Bounty Hun said

Posted: Jun 8th 2010 5:25PM (Unverified) said

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Posted: Mar 18th 2010 1:15PM freaparn said

Posted: Mar 18th 2010 2:22PM Marco le Polo said

Posted: Mar 18th 2010 12:21PM Prince David said

Posted: Mar 18th 2010 12:57PM Rory8 said

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Posted: Mar 18th 2010 12:22PM Shagittarius said

Posted: Mar 18th 2010 1:31PM Signature said

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Posted: Mar 18th 2010 3:55PM RANDOM G Joystiq Troll Slayer said

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Posted: Mar 18th 2010 1:37PM mxpowar said

Posted: Mar 18th 2010 4:17PM Riley said

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Posted: Mar 19th 2010 12:43AM maemikemae said

Posted: Mar 18th 2010 1:54PM RANDOM G Joystiq Troll Slayer said

Posted: Mar 18th 2010 3:53PM RANDOM G Joystiq Troll Slayer said

Posted: Mar 18th 2010 2:20PM Discotheque said

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Posted: Mar 18th 2010 4:18PM Marco le Polo said

Posted: Mar 18th 2010 2:57PM edofyingfilms said

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