The trailer covers just about everything you need to know about the game. Choose good or evil, play through massive battles for the fate of Middle-Earth the way you wish to play, etc. It's actually not that much different from the trailer that ran back in October, only this time around there are helpful words to help you digest all of the epic they're throwing at you on the screen.

Still not sure if I should get this or not. Considering I would play the game online with you folks, I suppose the question I should ask is are you guys planning on picking it up, or would I be stuck with a bunch of snooty, non-Kotaku readers?

The Warden is loosely based on Haldir - the well-coiffured elf who overacts his way to death in the Battle of Helms Deep (movie version). A tank character at heart, the Warden can create long combo chains to deal huge amounts of damage or destroy multiple opponents. At least one of his combo moves seems to be shouting really loudly at his opponent. I like to imagine that he is saying something like "Yo momma's so fat, she tried to fit Grond with batteries."

The Runemaster is based on the character of Galadriel - only without the crucial 'resembling Cate Blanchett' perk which could be devastating if deployed against the right opponent. Rune masters can hurl around intricate looking magic composed of glowing runes or work as a healer - but not both at the same time.

Pandemic's attempt at Battlefrontin' the LOTR franchise, The Lord of The Rings: Conquest, is looking rather pleasing. I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising that bits of this trailer look so cinematic - much of the third film was essentially a really well done cut scene, after all.

Notable features here: 1) it does look a bit odd seeing Middle Earth wizards actually doing magic of the fingerzappy death ray variety 2) That Ent looks a lot more like a really angry pot plant than I remember from the films.

Sadly, they have plumped for the more prosaic (and, lets be realistic, more practical) option of a website where you can sign up in the hope your name gets plucked from the wizard's hat.

The Mines final-stage beta is invite only, but you can apply for consideration at the official site. As well as the titular underground complex, the expansion will contain a couple of new character classes, hundreds of quests and Balrogs.

Invites Open for Mines of Moria Beta [Wired Game|Life]

We wanted the Locust to be intelligent savages; they're like the Uruk-hai in LOTR, only with guns...The Uruk-hai would organise themselves, line up and then storm in - even though they look like horrible monsters. That's what the Locust essentially are...

Obviously LOTR was in many ways a dream proposition...[but] when we started the project, everyone was saying, Peter Jackson??

[Producers] brought up to EA 16 minutes of the movie...After they saw that...everything had changed.

25 years ago, the original movie Tron was pitched to us. We go up to BV studios...they had this promo why we should pay the rights for Tron. "Tron is going to revolutionize the way movies are made"

9 months later when the movie came out. The script wasn't very good. They ran out of time. It wasn't supposed to be black and white. Ultimately our team broke our hearts trying to build those games. We had no support. We were ignored. That can and still does happen today.

And you thought movie licenses made things easy! Ha!

As of this posting, the open beta officially kicks off in two and a half hours, so I'm sure the client download is nice and speedy right about now. Good luck with that! Michael Fahey

Lord of the Rings World Tour Page - Thanks Eniratcen!

Electronic Arts renewed the license to create more games within the world of Lord of the Rings, the company announced today.

The deal with New Line Cinema means the company will be releasing new LOTR titles this year, EA said.

"The Lord of the Rings is an incredible canvas to create epic games," said Frank Gibeau, EA's executive vice president and general manager of North American publishing. "We look forward to our next project with New Line Cinema and Tolkien Enterprises scheduled to ship in 2008."

"We have a long history of making great games with EA and are thrilled to extend our longstanding relationship," said David Imhoff, New Line's senior executive vice president of worldwide licensing and merchandising. "We look forward to working closely with EA to create even more compelling Lord of the Rings adventures in the future."

Can't wait for that Lord of the Rings driving game. Brian Crecente

If you log into XBLA right now and check out the demos, you should see that Electronic Arts' have released a demo for their Tolkein-inspired RTS game, Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth II.

A PC version's also been released, but obviously, the real benefit of a demo here is for the 360 version, as it will allow you to figure out if the much-vaunted intuitive console control scheme is anything less than three to four times as maddening as a mouse and keyboard would be. Florian Eckhardt