


The Vendetta missions tasked players with killing an orc captain who had killed another (human) player from their friends list. This also ends the ability to import one’s Nemesis or Follower from Shadow of Mordor into Shadow of War, although Shadow of War’s online support is not affected. With it, players could play in a sandbox environment, with all skills unlocked, against the biggest orc enemies they had built up over their main playthrough. The Nemesis Forge feature was added to Shadow of Mordor shortly before the 2017 sequel Middle-earth: Shadow of War. That means the 2014 game’s Nemesis Forge and Vendetta missions are no longer available to players. While the Mordor games were last in the news following Warner Bros.' hotly-discussed decision to patent the Nemesis System (making it impossible for any other studio to use it), this was a good reminder for an interesting idea Monolith brought to the table, and we can only hope there's more where that came from.WB Games announced on Thursday that it had quietly disabled online services for Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor just two days prior.

Stephens' background with the Middle-earth games makes him a good choice for helming an open-world game, and the genre is as popular as ever, with games like Assassin's Creed Valhalla and the upcoming Biomutant offering players huge worlds to play in. EA wants to unveil more about the studio at a later point this year. She also confirmed the studio is still in its early days, figuring out fundamental business questions such as the size of the studio and the focus of its games. In an interview with, EA senior vice president Samantha Ryan, who is also the former president of Monolith productions, called the action-adventure genre "hugely important" to the games industry, and hopes the new game will introduce new players to the genre.
