Turbine moves LOTRO and DDO to new indie studio, Daybreak publishes

With Turbine shifting focus to free-to-play mobile games, the studio has just announced that two of its MMORPGs, The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) and Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO), are now moving to Standing Stone Games, a newly formed indie game studio. Daybreak Games, previously Sony Online Entertainment, will be handling global publishing services.

Standing Stone Games is “staffed by people who have been working on DDO and LOTRO for many years” and will continue development and operations of these games.

While Daybreak Games doesn't have a bright reputation with its newer games such as the H1Z1 duo and Landmark, the studio is managing to keep older games rather nicely, such as EverQuest and EverQuest II, and to a certain extent DC Universe Online and PlanetSide 2. Let's hope LOTRO and DDO will get the treatment they deserve, as both are classics of the MMORPG genre.