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LOTR: Shadoes of Angmar.

This is what we feared: a crap World of Warcraft clone with hairy hobbit feet; a superficial theme park trip through Tolkien’s Middle Earth; another lifeless, old-school MMO relying on the fantasy world’s biggest license for mass appeal; a game that fails to do justice to either Lord of the Rings or Turbine’s heritage as a world-class MMO developer.

Here is what we’ve got: an excellent, third-generation MMO that’s not shy of taking inspiration from the mighty World of Warcraft, but that has a few great ideas of its own; a game that explores and expands Middle Earth in ways that Tolkien might never have intended, yet still captures much of the spirit of his creation; the first fantasy MMO that can actually give Blizzard’s behemoth a run for its money.

Read the rest here.

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