Lord of the Rings Online developers leave to start indie team

The core team behind both Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online has left the Tolkien universe to found a new, indie game studio called Standing Stone Games, as announced on the LOTRO website. Turbine and Daybreak Games are communicating with fans/active players via the official Lord of the Rings Online site, saying that the games will continue to live on and that they will get improvements and more content in the future, however.

"The game teams responsible for The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) and Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) are now moving from Turbine to Standing Stone Games, a newly formed indie game studio," the post on the website says. "In addition, we've partnered with Daybreak Games to provide global publishing services. They've had a long, successful history developing and publishing MMOs, and we're happy to lean on their expertise."

The post also explains in a little more detail what this all means. "We're embarking on an exciting adventure as Standing Stone Games, a newly-independent studio staffed by people who have been working on DDO and LOTRO for many years. The teams remain very much committed to both games and are thrilled to continue development and operations of these games as an independent studio. This is an opportunity for us to bring about our dreams while still working on two of the biggest licenses in video games. It's a huge honour, and for you this means your games will continue to grow and improve. We love to focus on games with a high level of depth and scope, and we can't wait to show you what the future brings."

Are you a committed fan of either LOTRO or DDO?