LOTR: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king

This is not just an expansion on characters and story, though; basic gameplay is being tweaked and hopefully improved on as well. Battling in the Risk-like War of the Ring mode, in which individual skirmish modes are factored into a greater world-encompassing campaign, should be more satisfying with the planned addition of "full army persistence." The game will now remember the size and makeup of your army and carry it over from fight to fight. And another irritating quirk from the original game- well, from the RTS genre in general- is also being addressed; namely, the tendency for carefully constructed battle formations to get all mixed up again when they move due to different marching speeds. In Witch-king, finally, units assigned to stay together will actually stay together, the faster units matching pace with the slower ones.

These are not huge changes, clearly, but it's encouraging to see the developers listening to their fans' feedback and crafting an expansion around that feedback. Heck, they're even adding a Troll class to the Create-A-Hero feature, simply because it's what players of Battle for Middle-earth II requested.

We'll have more on this and other Rise of the Witch-king newness (such as what changes are being made to the already existing races and heroes) as we get closer to the holidays and the expansion pack's expected release.

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Charlie Barratt
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