{"id":87597,"date":"2026-08-14T09:20:43","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T13:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=87597"},"modified":"2026-08-14T11:36:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T15:36:51","slug":"the-lord-of-the-rings-war-in-the-north-dev-warned-warner-bros-not-to-go-up-against-skyrim-back-in-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/?p=87597","title":{"rendered":"The Lord of the Rings: War in the North Dev Warned Warner Bros. Not to Go Up Against Skyrim Back in 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<section data-transform=\"mobile-ad-break\">\n<p>Cast your mind back to November 2011, and two big fantasy games based on established IPs came out pretty much at the same time: Bethesda\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/games\/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim\">The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim<\/a>, which went on to sell over 65 million copies, and Snowblind Studios\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/games\/the-lord-of-the-rings-war-in-the-north\">The Lord of the Rings: War in the North<\/a>, which failed commercially.<\/p>\n<p>In retrospect, it was perhaps unwise for publisher Warner Bros. to release The Lord of the Rings: War in the North in the same week as Skyrim, given the extreme hype Bethesda\u2019s behemoth enjoyed ahead of launch. But that\u2019s exactly what Warner Bros. did \u2014 despite, it seems, the advice not to do so that it received from at least one high-ranking developer it had on its books.<\/p>\n<p>Christian Allen was the design director on the WB Games Seattle leadership team at the time, working on the likes of Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Mad Max, and F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn. He noticed this week\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/the-lord-of-the-rings-war-in-the-north-legacy-edition-gets-shadow-drop-on-modern-consoles-and-pc\">surprise Aspyr-developed re-release of The Lord of the Rings: War in the North across PC and console<\/a>, and it sparked something of a trip down memory lane.<\/p>\n<section data-transform=\"ignvideo\" data-slug=\"the-lord-of-the-rings-war-in-the-north-legacy-edition-official-launch-trailer\" data-loop=\"\">\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Serellan\/status\/2087601408380228005\">a series of tweets<\/a>, Allen said that he tried to convince the powers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cast your mind back to November 2011, and two big fantasy games based on established IPs came out pretty much at the same time: Bethesda\u2019s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which went on to sell over 65 million copies, and Snowblind Studios\u2019 The Lord of the Rings: War in the North, which failed commercially. In&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":87599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-external"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87597"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87601,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87597\/revisions\/87601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/87599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgvote.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}