The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring is a 2003 Lord of the Rings Real-Time Strategy game developed by Liquid Entertainment, creators of Battle Realms. Though overshadowed by the later The Battle for Middle-earth and its sequel, War of the Ring still remains a decent game of its own. Unlike the aforementioned other games, War of the Ring is based on the books rather than the films (though there are still a few references to Jackson's trilogy).
This game gives examples of:
- The Alliance: The good side consists of the races of Arda not aligned with Sauron.
- All Webbed Up: Some rangers in the Pursuit of Gollum mission have been webbed up, kill the spiders and cut them loose to get the on your side.
- Baseless Mission: There are some, including The Pursuit of Gollum and Helm's Deep.
- Boisterous Bruiser: Dwarf Axe-Throwers and Shieldbreakers. And Gimli.
- Combat Medic: Beornings can both heal allies and cut down orcs with their axes. Aragorn can also use his healing skill on his allies.
- Construct Additional Pylons: The good side uses traditional buildings for population, but the evil side uses slavemaster units.
- The Corruption: The evil side must build their structures on corruption, which is spread by war posts summoned by slavemasters. The Lord of the Nazgûl (the Witch-King) has an ability that allows him and nearby wraiths/nazgûl to teleport to any corruption on the map.
- Dark Action Girl: Saleme the Haradrim huntress.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Your instructor in the evil tutorial is one of these.
- Dual Wielding: Dwarf Axe-Throwers fight with two axes if they get in melee range, and Haradrim Slayers use twin scimitars.
- Elite Mook: Orc Captains are equipped and trained to handle much more than regular orcs.
- Expy: The Beorning unit is pretty much the Druid of the Claw with the
Serial Numbers Filed Off. As it has the ability to heal units, and can turn into a bear to be a better melee unit. - Giant Mook: Trolls are among the dark side's biggest regular units.
- Giant Spider: The spiders of Mirkwood, serving the evil side. Shelob also appears in one mission as spider five times bigger than a regular spider unit.
- He Knows About Timed Hits: The fourth wall is absent in the tutorials.
- Hero Must Survive: Almost always present in campaign missions.
- Hero Unit: Both sides have them, representing major characters in the story. They are summoned with Fate points (except in the campaign), and usually have abilities unlockable with further Fate points. Like in Warcraft III they become more powerful as they level up and can be re-recruited without experience loss if slain (unless empowered with the Heroic Legacy good side Fate power).
- Hold the Line: The Helm's Deep mission consists of several, culminating in a ten-minue stand against Saruman's army before reinforcements arrive.
- Lost Superweapon: The Ancient Catapult of the dwarves early in the good campaign. Not as old or lost as most examples, but certainly a superweapon.
- The Lost Woods: Mirkwood, with the murderous demonic spiders and unholy servants of Sauron infesting it.
- Ominous Black Speech Chanting: The One Ring inscription is chanted in the intro, and during the evil campaign.
- Protection Mission: The Lórien mission has two huge mallorn trees that can keep the orcs out of the forest. In order to reactivate their power the Fellowship must first take control of both and then protect them until they power up (beware, the timer resets if you lose one of them).
- Summon Magic: The good side can summon an ent, the evil side a balrog.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Normal units have one of three weapon types, each one effective against another in a classical rock-paper-scissors cycle. Heroes have their own, effective against all three normal types.
- Tech Tree: Your Stronghold/Fortress of Mordor can be upgraded several steps, each giving access to more buildings, including buildings where you can research upgrades for a particular group of units.
- The Undead: The evil side can train wraiths, those slain by dark magic like Morgul-blades. They are weak in combat, but are invaluable support units for their detection ability (and later also the ability to conjure obscuring darkness). The Lord of the Nazgûl can use one of his abilities to turn one of them into a nazgûl (with a limit of eight at any one time), and bring them with him when he uses his shadow walk ability to teleport to areas affected by The Corruption. Gameplay and Story Segregation prevents any of the nazgûl from actually creating wraiths, though.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Beornings can shapeshift into bears.Gimli: 'Tis a man-bear!
- When Trees Attack: Huorns and summoned ents fight the forces of Sauron for the Free Peoples.
- Worker Unit: Present on both sides, behaving like worker units typically do.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: The two main resources are Food and Ore. There is also Fate, used to recruit heroes and use certain powers.
- Zerg Rush: The evil side's goblin units are both cheap, fast to train, and weak, as well as trainable from the resource dropoff building. Perfect for a rush.
