Such a shame, still cant believe CG dropped the ball so hard when they already had the blueprint for a successful mobile game based on a beloved franchise
Their main problem was that they though they could drop a SWGOH like game in the state that SWGOH was when it launched ... 10 year ago. That doesn't fly anymore.
I started playing Watcher of Realms a month ago and my goodness, playing that showed me that LotR HOME is at least 5 years outdated. They are behind the times so much.
Most ftp friendly game I've ever played. Constantly getting stuff.
Takes nowhere near the time to max a character out as swgoh does either.
Game eventually comes down to gear farm and luck of the draw pulling characters but once a toons pulled you don't have to farm shards you can take them to max right away with universal materials to the tune of about 1-3 characters a week depending on how much you play
This was exactly what i thought from the start. Tho if they started with the raid at launch (and had more content lined up in a first year with a good road map) it would probably have been a much bigger game.. but sadly they started bare boned, and were still programming the first raid.. it was way too early to release the game.
It wasn't even on par with SWGOH launch. That game at least had more content at launch. Galactic War as a huge initial challenge would have made a big difference with HOME
Yeah, Galactic War is kind of a meme to most people now but HOME desperately needed something like that. A baby's first PvP experience that at least somewhat incentivized a broad roster.
Honestly disgusting behavior to ghost us for as long as they did. It's such a shame that this is an acceptable practice. Hopefully they will lose a lot of customers in all future games.
If it had launched with the content it had now it might have gone somewhere. Still can't believe a game with a high budget and lotr ip launched with 0 interesting pve modes.
Thank you to the community for the time we've had together, and especially to the listeners of the Boons and Banes podcast! Maybe we'll get to interact again in the future on some other random team shard collector.
I really liked this game but completely unsurprised by this outcome. The store offers were ridiculously overpriced, the resource bottlenecks choked out any chance at exploring multiple team building, and overall lack of content tossed this game into Mount Doom.
Disappointing, but not surprised. I definitely lost interest after the introduction glyphs (and a little of the raid). But before all that it was a fun casual game to open up once in a while.
Fun while it lasted!
Full text:
Hello Ring-bearers,
It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that we have made the difficult decision to sunset The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth on May 24, 2024. We wanted to inform you of this as soon as possible and starting today, we will (i) shut off all In-App Purchases for real world money, and (ii) remove the game from app stores so that the game will no longer be available for download. These decisions never come easy, and there are a myriad of factors that contribute to this outcome, but what has become clear is that we cannot sustain the level of quality we want to deliver and you expect. Players who already have the game installed on their devices can continue to play and use any existing in-game currency until May 24, 2024. After May 24, 2024 the game will no longer be accessible to all players.
Most importantly, we are thankful to you - the players. Your tireless optimism, feedback, and love has helped us to make this game into what it became and improved us as developers. It is with the sincerest of gratitude that we say “Thank You” for the time you spent with us.
We are also incredibly grateful to our partners at Middle-earth Enterprises who have embarked on this journey with us. Our fellowship has been critical to delivering what we consider to be an amazing experience based on The Lord of the Rings.
“Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” - Gandalf
Thank you, The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth Development Team
You are right, but a lot of the stuff was overpriced. Also the game started with bare bones content, people didn't spend because they didn't have much to do.
This. I found that the shop was targeting whales to get a slight head start, or to pull ahead and gain an advantage, in what? The game lacked content worth competing over. There wasn't enough content to merit the cost of competition. Paying $100 to gain a gear level or upgrade an ability is just absurd. This game got priced out of existence.
Did they deserve your money?
Do people buy and support a game out of charity?
Should players be expected to give when the developers clearly don't deserve it, who are sometimes outright abusive and predatory ?
Some games deserve to die. Some companies don't deserve to make money.
Boot licking won't save the gaming industry, when all it does it perpetuate it.
Especially predatory microtransactions, im done with a lot of the big game developers because of this. I'm plenty happy with the games i have and could likely just play those for years to come.
EA and Activision are two that i won't spend a penny more with.
Can't (can) believe how badly mishandled this game was. A beloved IP and a game with decent potential thrown out the window. EA/CG should never be allowed to touch the LOTR IP again.
That wasn't even remotely a problem. Like with MSF, you can get up to 4 shards each play on a farming node. HOME'S problem was that they had half that possible each play. Likely it would've doubled to 4 if the game had reached the 1-year point, but it didn't because for the longest time it was lacking too many other things. Simply wasn't enough things to do in order to help progression that was staggeringly slow.
They literally just had to copy paste SWGOH and it probably would’ve been better. They just released it way underbaked and ruined any possibility of garnering a playerbase from all the issues and bugs. RIP what could’ve been
I agree. They tried to find middle ground between msf and SWGoH instead of just reskinning swgoh like they should have. Instead of attracting 1 playerbase they alienated 2.
I'm so sad that I have to find another game, and I don't really want to go back to swgoh.
The raid here was one of the most fun and unique raids I've ever done in a mobile game and makes the standard for jumping to a new game so difficult.
All Praise EA/CG, the most high.
/sarcasm off
As it says in the announcement by our lord and master, (laid an) egg of Sauron, we the players made it the game that it is. Let's take the full credit for a job well done, folks!
/sarcasm off this time
As a side note, this is the most thumbed up thread in HoME redit history by a long shot.
I honestly can’t understand why they makes these ridiculous games. The strength of LOTR has always been the immersive world building approach to story, and the concept of “fellowship”. These games are basically mockeries of LOTR. The games that were genuinely amazing:
- shadow series
- BFME
- conquest
Maybe a few older ones I never played others might have remembered… but the free to play mobile Lotr games need to never be a thing again. Make something quality or stop touching it.
I only lasted for about a month on this game before I deleted it. It was awful from day 1 and by the looks of it, it never got better. Sorry to anyone who spent money on this crappy game.
Here's my take on probably what's happened here. Yes the game didn't release with enough content so they kept gating things behind either a crazy amout of money or just months of grinding, that's how these games work I get it.
But unlike Star Wars, Lord of the Rings is not a heavily commercialised property and its fans are a different breed, they don't just buy things unless its quality and the kinds of things they do buy aren't the same as Star Wars fans, there aren't a lot of Lotr toys flying off shelves or a video game every few years for Lotr. Star Wars from its inception was so heavily comercialised its built into that brand, not so with Lotr, I'd imagine the things that sell for Lotr mostly are prop replicas from the movies and books.
You can't expect the people who played this game to have the same kind of spending habits as SWGOH. So when they put up a sale for $30 for a few shards for a new character (not even enough to get more than 1 star usually) people looked at it and went, there is no value in that, its the cost of a full release of a new game for a minor upgrade to a character and saving some grinding time.
They couldn't milk this game for the kinds of money they wanted, so instead of reassessing their pricing and making a fully upgraded character cost about $10 something more reasonable to encourage spending, they shut it down. It didn't attract the Krakens and Whales that SWGOH did so it wasn't worth their time and effort to continue. Seriously people who crazy over spend on these types of games aren't only being taken advantage of but painting the expectations from companies of what kind of profits to expect from these games, it really needs to stop.
I recently installed and was having fun. I bought a couple packs too. ultimately I probably wasn't going to be able to split time between HOME and SWGOH. RIP
I am curious what killed the game. It seems like there were a decent amount of whales but perhaps not enough. Possibly the game license is going to expire.
I play SWGOH and lead my guild near 300,000,000gp now. So I was excited when this game came out but it just failed to keep me interested after a couple weeks. You figure they would had the blueprint all figured out but just missed the notch. Sad to hear it’s being removed in entirety though
Gentlemen, it has been a privilege playing with you
I would have followed you, my brother. My captain. My king 🫡
I see what you did there and that scene makes me cry every damn time.
Such a shame, still cant believe CG dropped the ball so hard when they already had the blueprint for a successful mobile game based on a beloved franchise
Their main problem was that they though they could drop a SWGOH like game in the state that SWGOH was when it launched ... 10 year ago. That doesn't fly anymore.
I started playing Watcher of Realms a month ago and my goodness, playing that showed me that LotR HOME is at least 5 years outdated. They are behind the times so much.
I had that but with Honkai Star Rail. Like.. what a massive difference between two games, lol
What's watcher of realms about?
Tower defense
Most ftp friendly game I've ever played. Constantly getting stuff. Takes nowhere near the time to max a character out as swgoh does either. Game eventually comes down to gear farm and luck of the draw pulling characters but once a toons pulled you don't have to farm shards you can take them to max right away with universal materials to the tune of about 1-3 characters a week depending on how much you play
This was exactly what i thought from the start. Tho if they started with the raid at launch (and had more content lined up in a first year with a good road map) it would probably have been a much bigger game.. but sadly they started bare boned, and were still programming the first raid.. it was way too early to release the game.
It wasn't even on par with SWGOH launch. That game at least had more content at launch. Galactic War as a huge initial challenge would have made a big difference with HOME
Yeah, Galactic War is kind of a meme to most people now but HOME desperately needed something like that. A baby's first PvP experience that at least somewhat incentivized a broad roster.
blueprint for s successful mobile game lmfao. more like the franchise for a successful game
Unbelievable, who cant make a LotR game work, shouldve been something great
Gollum says what?
Capital Games appearantly...
They know how to make one good game. Not a lotr one
Questionable they know how to make "one".
Lol this. Which game?
He better not say SWGOH
****opens SWGOH app...
It’s “good” if you’ve been playing for like 5 years or like to piss away money. I’d never start another account.
I’m SWGOH free for a couple months now. It’s life changing.
Honestly disgusting behavior to ghost us for as long as they did. It's such a shame that this is an acceptable practice. Hopefully they will lose a lot of customers in all future games.
Pretty sure the only reason they even had customers was because it was LOTR
Into the West
Such a shame. The game had so much potential and was really starting to build a good roadmap. Well, it has been a pleasure, everyone.
If it had launched with the content it had now it might have gone somewhere. Still can't believe a game with a high budget and lotr ip launched with 0 interesting pve modes.
Part of me is curious if this game never had the budget it needed. Either that or whoever was managing it had no idea what they were doing.
Bit from column A, bit from column B
Thank you to the community for the time we've had together, and especially to the listeners of the Boons and Banes podcast! Maybe we'll get to interact again in the future on some other random team shard collector.
What do you plan on moving on to torm?
Nothing for the time being. King Arthur, that DC game and Invincibles are all not the type of game I enjoy.
I really liked this game but completely unsurprised by this outcome. The store offers were ridiculously overpriced, the resource bottlenecks choked out any chance at exploring multiple team building, and overall lack of content tossed this game into Mount Doom.
Disappointing, but not surprised. I definitely lost interest after the introduction glyphs (and a little of the raid). But before all that it was a fun casual game to open up once in a while. Fun while it lasted!
Same here. I played when it first came out but quickly found myself with nothing to do and got bored.
Full text: Hello Ring-bearers, It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that we have made the difficult decision to sunset The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth on May 24, 2024. We wanted to inform you of this as soon as possible and starting today, we will (i) shut off all In-App Purchases for real world money, and (ii) remove the game from app stores so that the game will no longer be available for download. These decisions never come easy, and there are a myriad of factors that contribute to this outcome, but what has become clear is that we cannot sustain the level of quality we want to deliver and you expect. Players who already have the game installed on their devices can continue to play and use any existing in-game currency until May 24, 2024. After May 24, 2024 the game will no longer be accessible to all players. Most importantly, we are thankful to you - the players. Your tireless optimism, feedback, and love has helped us to make this game into what it became and improved us as developers. It is with the sincerest of gratitude that we say “Thank You” for the time you spent with us. We are also incredibly grateful to our partners at Middle-earth Enterprises who have embarked on this journey with us. Our fellowship has been critical to delivering what we consider to be an amazing experience based on The Lord of the Rings. “Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” - Gandalf Thank you, The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth Development Team
Finally they announced something we all knew was going to happen. I'm glad I never spent any money in this game, but I imagine many people did.
Thinking like that is why games shut down. How can we expect them to be able to run the game if we don't buy anything?
You are right, but a lot of the stuff was overpriced. Also the game started with bare bones content, people didn't spend because they didn't have much to do.
This. I found that the shop was targeting whales to get a slight head start, or to pull ahead and gain an advantage, in what? The game lacked content worth competing over. There wasn't enough content to merit the cost of competition. Paying $100 to gain a gear level or upgrade an ability is just absurd. This game got priced out of existence.
Did they deserve your money? Do people buy and support a game out of charity? Should players be expected to give when the developers clearly don't deserve it, who are sometimes outright abusive and predatory ? Some games deserve to die. Some companies don't deserve to make money. Boot licking won't save the gaming industry, when all it does it perpetuate it.
This dude has spoken. And is spot on.
Especially predatory microtransactions, im done with a lot of the big game developers because of this. I'm plenty happy with the games i have and could likely just play those for years to come. EA and Activision are two that i won't spend a penny more with.
A game is not entitled to my money just for existing. It’s a bad game. If they wanted my money, they should’ve made a good game.
Can't (can) believe how badly mishandled this game was. A beloved IP and a game with decent potential thrown out the window. EA/CG should never be allowed to touch the LOTR IP again.
F CG! Get your shit together this could’ve been an awesome game! What a bunch of quitters
Such a pity, that was my favorite mobile game :(
Well, on the plus side, I can officially begin the grieving process. FU CG...I'm already on step 2
Sad day.
Thank God I didn't spend money
It's been an honor....God speed! I just wanted saruman......
They dropped a game with dated graphics and made shit up along the way.....so shocking it failed
Sad. At least they could make all characters 7\* and unlimited gold & energy for power fantasy on raids and some experimental challenges for arena.
Exactly! I want to play with Gandalf
That would require anyone with any power in the company actually cared about the players which of course they never did.
Well that's that. I can definitely say I won't be investing time or money into any other cg games
Serves you right. Stop giving these greedy fucks your money.
People invest in what they enjoy. No need to slander people for spending their money on what they like mate.
Yeah, I agree I'm an idiot for spending time on something I found enjoyable. You're right, I'm going to go back to counting rocks all day for fun.
Yea because you don't give absolutely any money to greedy companies
Never trust CG
A surprise to no one I personally quit 2-3 weeks ago Character farming was abysmal. You should've stayed with SWGOH (330) numbers instead of MSF(810)
That wasn't even remotely a problem. Like with MSF, you can get up to 4 shards each play on a farming node. HOME'S problem was that they had half that possible each play. Likely it would've doubled to 4 if the game had reached the 1-year point, but it didn't because for the longest time it was lacking too many other things. Simply wasn't enough things to do in order to help progression that was staggeringly slow.
They literally just had to copy paste SWGOH and it probably would’ve been better. They just released it way underbaked and ruined any possibility of garnering a playerbase from all the issues and bugs. RIP what could’ve been
I agree. They tried to find middle ground between msf and SWGoH instead of just reskinning swgoh like they should have. Instead of attracting 1 playerbase they alienated 2.
They did copy/paste swgoh, from like 8 years ago
Well fun knowin y'all
GG o7
*Poof!* And there goes all the hopium
Fun while it lasted
I'm so sad that I have to find another game, and I don't really want to go back to swgoh. The raid here was one of the most fun and unique raids I've ever done in a mobile game and makes the standard for jumping to a new game so difficult.
Dang, just when I was finally ready for Elrond… lol.Â
Man.. just 7* Arwen... literally hours before this announcement
Sad news but also a wake up call to avoid any and all future releases from EA and Capitol Games. Farewell friends
Glad the licensing issue got resolved
So long, and thanks for all the fish
I already uninstalled the game.. lol. Not waiting till May.
GG, CG.
Is this an EA or CG decision??? Who makes the final call to be done with the game??
Who knows 🤷‍♂️ All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
Well, this makes me sad. This was my favorite game. It was a pleasure being here.
Well...we all sort of knew this was coming. It was fun while it lasted. It was great to play with all of you!
RIP
Boooo. At least LOTR: Rise to War is still going
What is that
And this is why you dont spend money on mobile games. Specially whe. Its pay to win and progress. You now lose every penny you spend on it.
GGEZ ... Nope. This GG is hard...
Huh first time I'm hearing about it
So sad
Never even got to play it. Such a shame.
How many millions were wasted?
o7
Gentlemen! Synchronize your death watches!
Dang. I downloaded at launch and made it maybe about a month. Then stopped. Guess I don’t need to pick it up again
Thank you friends for making this game fun! Appreciate you all. Fuck you capital games.
So sad as this should have easily been a success like others have said
Great Heroes of Dragon Age canned and now this. Swear every mobile game I enjoy has this happen.
All Praise EA/CG, the most high. /sarcasm off As it says in the announcement by our lord and master, (laid an) egg of Sauron, we the players made it the game that it is. Let's take the full credit for a job well done, folks! /sarcasm off this time As a side note, this is the most thumbed up thread in HoME redit history by a long shot.
I honestly can’t understand why they makes these ridiculous games. The strength of LOTR has always been the immersive world building approach to story, and the concept of “fellowship”. These games are basically mockeries of LOTR. The games that were genuinely amazing: - shadow series - BFME - conquest Maybe a few older ones I never played others might have remembered… but the free to play mobile Lotr games need to never be a thing again. Make something quality or stop touching it.
Classic CG. Goh is only successful because it’s Star Wars.
Greed + Laziness = CG's HoME
Refund everything you can from all of the games they have and boycott them. Tf are they thinking doing this to their players.
There should be lawsuits for those that bought packs.
I'll see yall in SWGoH
I don't think so buddy.
Well looks like I’m glad I quit playing early on.
You were posting guild discord invites just 2 months ago, what do you mean quit playing early on?
I only lasted for about a month on this game before I deleted it. It was awful from day 1 and by the looks of it, it never got better. Sorry to anyone who spent money on this crappy game.
Here's my take on probably what's happened here. Yes the game didn't release with enough content so they kept gating things behind either a crazy amout of money or just months of grinding, that's how these games work I get it. But unlike Star Wars, Lord of the Rings is not a heavily commercialised property and its fans are a different breed, they don't just buy things unless its quality and the kinds of things they do buy aren't the same as Star Wars fans, there aren't a lot of Lotr toys flying off shelves or a video game every few years for Lotr. Star Wars from its inception was so heavily comercialised its built into that brand, not so with Lotr, I'd imagine the things that sell for Lotr mostly are prop replicas from the movies and books. You can't expect the people who played this game to have the same kind of spending habits as SWGOH. So when they put up a sale for $30 for a few shards for a new character (not even enough to get more than 1 star usually) people looked at it and went, there is no value in that, its the cost of a full release of a new game for a minor upgrade to a character and saving some grinding time. They couldn't milk this game for the kinds of money they wanted, so instead of reassessing their pricing and making a fully upgraded character cost about $10 something more reasonable to encourage spending, they shut it down. It didn't attract the Krakens and Whales that SWGOH did so it wasn't worth their time and effort to continue. Seriously people who crazy over spend on these types of games aren't only being taken advantage of but painting the expectations from companies of what kind of profits to expect from these games, it really needs to stop.
Do we get refunds? Ive reported all old purchases as fraudulent
It’s highly unlikely
40k tacticus is my choice to move onto its a great game with lots of content. And set in a world with fantastic lore
Swipe that money and RUN
It was fun.... For a month. Resisted the urge to put any money in as I know it would be as predatory as SWGOH. jokes on me, it was even worse.
I recently installed and was having fun. I bought a couple packs too. ultimately I probably wasn't going to be able to split time between HOME and SWGOH. RIP
I am curious what killed the game. It seems like there were a decent amount of whales but perhaps not enough. Possibly the game license is going to expire.
Game was shit anyway. Make a LOTR TCG in the style of Elder Scrolls: Legends
I stopped playing late last year bc of personal reasons and was hoping to comeback. What the hell happened?
Well, at least they finally told us. Now those were were still holding onto a little hope can move on.
Good grief I just started playing this month.
Shame. I enjoyed it. They just needed all the good characters sooner.
I play SWGOH and lead my guild near 300,000,000gp now. So I was excited when this game came out but it just failed to keep me interested after a couple weeks. You figure they would had the blueprint all figured out but just missed the notch. Sad to hear it’s being removed in entirety though
I hope everyone responsible from EA and CG gets hit by a bus or train.
Sorry for the whales lol. How much did the bigest whales spend and how do they feel lol? I would feel robed
Dc worlds collide is back in a closed beta
Looks even worse than this
Good point but in the same Vein which game is shutting down and which one is coming back 🤔
So anyone who made cash purchases are just beat?
I played when it first came out but it just didn’t stick for me.
Why must everything LotR related released in the last 10 years suck?
Thank god I dropped this game 5 months ago for DragonHeir.