Well, this is a bit awkward
Monolith took a crack at making a multiplayer online battle arena experience for consoles with Guardians of Middle-earth. It was an admirable attempt — and I enjoyed the game quite a lot for what it was, which was a trimmed-down take on the genre — but it simply didn’t attract enough players. Waiting in lobbies for ten-plus minutes gets old real fast. And while Guardians wasn’t half bad, it certainly wasn’t worth constantly waiting around for.
Now, the inevitable is happening: this console-centric MOBA is headed to PC on August 29 by way of Zombie Studios. There are different tiers being offered, but the base game is $14.99 and includes Gandalf, Galadriel, Thráin, Gollum, Hildifons, and Legolas. For the record, there’s 36 guardians in total, so it’s not the most generous of offers.
What does come as a nice surprise, however, is that players who bought the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 version of Guardians before August 15, 2013 will get the base game for free on PC via download code. I’m hopeful this release can catch on to the point where there’s at least a stable community, even if it doesn’t become massively successful like its contemporaries.