Warner Bros. has just acquired online game publisher Turbine, the creator of Lord of the Rings Online. Lord of the Rings online is a massively multiplayer game where you can parade around as an elf and kill orcs in perpetuity.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Boston Globe reports that the purchase price was as high as $160 million, based on future earn-outs. That’s not likely to produce much of a return for investors, who put about $88 million into the company since 1994.

While the Lord of the Rings Online was a hit, it was a game that garnered an audience of hundreds of thousands of players who paid a monthly subscription fee to participate in a persistent online world. That’s a relatively small audience, considering Peter Jackson’s films and the books by J.R.R. Tolkien epic books have been enjoyed by more than 100 million fans.