Tag Archives: Lord of the Rings: Conquest

EA’s announced it is going to close more online servers for its games.

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Warner has taken the gaming rights contracted to EA back for the Lord of the Rings franchise according to Variety, and has no plans to renew the contract.

Originally, the license was set to expire at the end of March 2007, but was extended through 2008 so EA could finish up LotR: Conquest. The deal was also signed by Tolkien Enterprises.

It’a been suggested that the reason Conquest was generally panned was due to EA rushing Pandemic to finish before the contract expired. However, now Warner is itself becoming a major player in the game industry, it is safe to assume that any console releases will be handled by them in the future, says that report.

A Warner Bros rep declined to comment to Variety, but it is worth noting that Warner holds the rights to the Harry Potter franchise too — and that EA’s contract for all games muggle- and wizard-related doesn’t expire until 2011.

More through the link.

A second DLC pack for Lord of the Rings: Conquest is releasing for PS3 360 tomorrow, priced 800 MS Points.

It features three new hero characters, two maps and two new hero arenas.

More on IGN.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest demo’s been downloaded more than 1 million times from Xbox Live and PSN, EA’s announced.

The taster apparently debuted as the top demo on Live, ending a nine-week run from World at War.

The Pandemic-developed game released earlier this month.

Happy New Year. We’re glad we shut down over Christmas. You didn’t miss a whole lot.

By far the most important story over the break was news that Free Radical cut its workforce by 140 to just 40.

The developer was confirmed as being in administration just before the Christmas holiday.

Speaking to 1UP, Cameron Gunn of administrators ReSolve Partners said, “We made around 140 employees redundant yesterday, effective 31 December (the date up to which they had been paid). We’re still trading on with the remaining 40 or so employees, have advertised the business for sale and have received some strong interest.”

News broke mid-December that staff had turned up for work only to be locked with a notice on the door telling them to adjourn to a nearby hotel.

Free Radical aside, other noteworthy Christmas news included confirmation that Mistwalker JRPG Cry On has been cancelled.

“AQI decided to cancel the project after analyzing the current market environment and forecasts for the future. We deeply apologize for troubling those who were awaiting its release,” said a company rep.

Cry On was apparently part of “Hironobu Sakaguchi’s triumvirate of Xbox 360 titles,” says this 1UP piece (the other two being Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey), and for those of you who don’t know, the game “was to be an action-RPG featuring a Nobuo Uematsu soundtrack [and] character designs by Kimihiko Fujisaka.”

Full round up below.

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EA’s just confirmed that Pandemic’s Lord of the Rings: Conquest will ship on January 13 in the US and everywhere else on January 9.

“Players will finally be able to fight through Middle-earth along the frontlines of good or evil,” said Pendemic boss Josh Resnick. “And what The Lord of the Rings fan hasn’t fantasized about joining Sauron’s army to slay Hobbits?”

Absolutely none, obviously.

Full thing through the link.

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It’s on GamersHell in HD, and it’s bloody massive. Weighing in at 706Mb, the footage is actually amazing, showing what look to be some fairly faithful reconstructions of the battles from the New Line movies.

There’s even a bit at the end with Legolas jumping all over an oliphaunt. Flying things, running around things, the Gates of Mordor: the fantasy Battlefront adaptation has it all. Expect more from E3.

Crispy Gamer‘s published an interview with Pandemic’s Sean Soucy, Lord of the Rings Conquest’s lead designer, and the newly-announced “Battlefield with orcs” game.

“Conquest is a third-person fantasy action game set in the Lord of the Rings universe,” explains Soucy. “It’s an open-battlefield game in the vein of the Star Wars: Battlefront series. Gamers have certainly seen Lord of the Rings action games before, but nothing on this scale or with the variety that we offer. Anything you’d want to do in a Lord of the Rings game, you can do in Conquest. You’ve got the basic classes with melee, ranged and magic combat; you’ve got horses, wargs, trolls, ents, catapults, siege towers, heroes – everything from the epic battles you’ve seen in the films – and players actually get to control all these units.”

There’s a lot of specific detail through there, so take a look. The game releases for PC, 360 and PS3 this autumn, and will debut in video form on GameTrailers on June 20.

All after the link. Pandemic announced it’s Lord of the Rings titles this afternoon. Tons of detail here, courtesy of Eurogamer.de.

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Pandemic game director Eric ‘Giz’ Gewirtz has revealed a ton of information about the newly revealed Lord of the Rings: Conquest in this Eurogamer.de interview, including first word on 16-player multiplay, four-player co-op for the Story mode, good and evil campaigns and plenty more.

These quotes are translated from German (thanks Tanja!) so the odd word may be displaced here and there.

On the good and evil campaigns:

“We cover two complete campaigns. One for the good, one for the evil side. But for the very first time in a Lord of the Rings game, you are able to play the big bad guys by yourself (Sauron, Balrog etc.). In the good campaign you’re saving Middle Earth. The evil campaign features a brand new story. We tell the story how Frodo fails, how he dies and how Sauron gets hold of the Ring. The campaign itself starts close to the end of the Triology, and you have to help Sauron conquer Middle Earth. So, we’ve got a massive story for both of the campaigns.”

On the various modes:

“You can play multiplayer with up to 16 players. The solo campaign, on the other hand, is for up to four players co-op, over split-screen or just playable on your own.”

“Beside the campaigns, which you can play solo or co-op, we going to feature [many other] different modes. First of all we have Conquest mode, in which you got to hold several points, pretty much like the one from Star Wars Battlefront. Also, we have CTF and, of course, Deathmatch, with all the mighty heroes. On top of that we’ve got some funny stuff like, for example, Ringbearer mode. One player is Frodo, the others, being the Nazgul, have to catch him. The goal is to survive as long as possible. [Frodo switches roles with the Nazgul when he's caught] We’re really trying to expand the key gameplay.”

About the four character classes:

“Theres four different character classes we feature in Conquest. The Warrior uses different special attacks, some pretty mean throws and can set his sword on fire. The Archer has special shooting attacks, can set up traps and, if necessary, fight in close combat. The Scout is like a thief. He can be partially invisible, brutally attacks from behind, and uses bombs which causes area damage. The fourth class is the Spellcaster, which uses all sort of magic. He got several damage spells, is able to summon flame-walls and can heal the own troops.”

Read the rest through the link. Drop it through a machine translator if you’re not so good with German: you’ll get the gist.

Pandemic has finally laid the rumours to rest and announced The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, reports IGN.

As we reported earlier, the game will be akin to Battlefront, but with added orcs. Players will be able to choose between any of the key battles of the film and fight as either a melee warrior, third-person shooter archer, support class mage or stealth scout.

You’ll also be given limited access to the likes of Gandalf, Aragorn and Legolas.

There are loads of modes to choose from, and included are the scary, screaming Ringwraiths: it all sounds very promising indeed. More about all that stuff through the link, people.

The Lord of the Rings: Conquest us due out on PC, 360 and PS3 this autumn.

By Mike Bowden