Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment officially announced this week that it will be releasing a new multiplayer online “battle arena” (MOBA) game based on the Lord of the Rings franchise. The game is called Guardians of Middle-Earth, and it will be released on the Xbox LIVE Arcade and PlayStation Network sometime this fall.
MOBA is a term some companies use to refer to games based on the gameplay of Defense of the Ancients (DOTA). The games are a variation of real-time strategy games in which players control a single heroic character.
“The MOBA genre is wildly popular with PC players and we are excited to bring it to consoles through the lore of Middle-earth,” said Samantha Ryan, Senior Vice President of Production and Development at Warner Bros. “The heroes and villains of Middle-earth are crafted in a way that perfectly intersects with MOBA game features, allowing the development team to create guardians with deep skills and abilities for gamers to master.”
The game will pit teams of 5 players against each other in arenas set within Middle-Earth. Some of the more than 20 “guardians” players will be able to use include Gandalf, Sauron, and Gollum. Warner Bros. stated that the game will tie-in to the upcoming the upcoming movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Several new playable “guardians” will be released in conjunction with the film.