Amazon's upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO might not be ready for players to dive into the open beta till early 2023, if a recently dug up production schedule is any indication.
First spotted by WCCFTech, documents surrounding Tecent's buyout of Leyou detail the production plans by Amazon Game Studios, giving a timeline for phases of the MMOs development. As such, the team hopes to have a playable prototype ready by June 2021, a closed beta by end of September the following year, with its open beta slated for January 2023.
That's a fair bit away, in case you're keeping score.
This is by no means a definitive schedule as it stands now - this could have changed a bit, especially given how 2020 has gone for most game developers (Amazon's other MMO, New World, has been delayed multiple times this year, for example). It'll be interesting to see just how close the actual release windows of each of these phases sticks to the original production plan. Amazon is playing it pretty close to the chest, though we do know it will be free to play and set before the events of The Lord of the Rings proper.