The Lord of the Rings RTS drops free DLC-sized fan expansion that adds 15 new missions

The Lord of the Rings fans can now pick up a huge fan-made expansion for Battle for Middle-earth II, adapting the entirety of Peter Jackson's movie trilogy into playable form as well as selected chapters from Tolkien's novel.

With several new The Lord of the Rings projects in development over the next few years, including an RPG from Kingdom Come: Deliverance developer Warhorse Studios, it's never been a better time to be really into Tolkien's Middle-earth series.

This also extends to older Tolkien-themed video games, such as the recent re-releases of The Lord of the Rings: War in the North and the Middle-earth: Shadow duology.

Fans are doing just as much as well, keeping older Lord of the Rings games alive through modding and other projects.

The big thing to get excited about this week is the new release of update 10.0 for the Age of the Ring mod for The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth II, adding in a load of new campaign missions along with other extra pieces of content.

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New content in Age of the Ring Update 10.0

Update 10.0 adds 14 new campaign missions covering The Return of the King, with pretty much every major event covered as well as some extra scenes sprinkled in. It joins The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers campaigns, which were already available in the mod prior to this update, to offer players a full seamless experience across the entire movie trilogy.

The update also adds a new mission to The Fellowship of the Ring campaign featuring Bilbo's party in The Shire, as well as a complete overhaul of the Khazad-dûm mission that appears later in the story. New difficulty settings, art, and audio have also been retroactively added across each campaign mission as well to further flesh things out.

The update also introduces BFME Online, new infrastructure for playing native multiplayer through the game's Online menu and Open Play lobby options.

Two more factions have also been added to the game: the Dead of Dunharrow and Sharkey's Boys. Both represent factions that appear in The Return of the King, with the former being the army of the dead who are summoned by Aragorn to fight at the Pelennor Fields, while the latter are the militia used by Saruman to sack the Shire at the end of the novel.

New maps which appear in both skirmish and online modes include Hringvoll, Rushwater Ford and Zhalai, while the team has also made reworks to Amathafa, Hammerstead, and several more maps.

Other quality of life improvements made to the mod include new models, art, and voicesets for dozens of units and heroes which appear across the campaign, skirmish and multiplayer modes.

Altogether, now is a fantastic time to check out the Age of the Ring mod, as the sheer amount of new content available is much higher than what's included in the original game.