Anonymous edits have been disabled on the wiki. If you want to contribute please login or create an account.

Warning for game developers: PCGamingWiki staff members will only ever reach out to you using the official press@pcgamingwiki.com mail address.
Be aware of scammers claiming to be representatives or affiliates of PCGamingWiki who promise a PCGW page for a game key.

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
This page is a stub: it lacks content and/or basic article components. You can help to expand this page by adding an image or additional information.
The Battle for Middle-earth II
The Battle for Middle-earth II cover
Developers
EA Los Angeles|Danger Close Games|EA Los Angeles
Expansion BreakAway Games
Publishers
Electronic Arts
Engines
SAGE
Release dates
Windows March 2, 2006
Reception
Metacritic 84
IGDB 81
Taxonomy
Monetization Expansion pack
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Bird's-eye view
Controls Multiple select, Point and select
Genres RTS
Themes Fantasy
Series The Battle for Middle-earth
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II on HowLongToBeat
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II on IGDB
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II guide on StrategyWiki
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II on MobyGames
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II on Wikipedia
Icon overlay.png
Icon overlay.png
The Battle for Middle-earth
Subseries of Middle-earth
The Battle for Middle-earth 2004
The Battle for Middle-earth II 2006

Warnings

SafeDisc DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see Availability for affected releases).
GameSpy online services have been shut down (see Network for solutions).

Key points

Frame rate is capped at 30 FPS.
GameSpy online server browser deactivated on December 31, 2010 due to Electronic Arts losing the Lord of the Rings license.[1]

General information

T3A:Online - fan-hosted multiplayer server replacement
BfME II section on GameReplays.org - home to the unofficial 1.09 patch
BfME II: HD Edition
BfME II RotWK section on GameReplays.org - home to the unofficial 2.02 patch
BfME II RotWK HD Edition

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
CD key
 SafeDisc v4 DRM[Note 1].
Windows
EA app (unavailable)
EA app
Windows
SafeDisc DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected releases).
This game is no longer available digitally. It was taken down from digital stores, as Electronic Arts lost the Lord of the Rings license at the end of 2010.
Physical copies used to activate on Origin, they no longer do[4].

Demo

The free demo can still be downloaded here or here.

Monetization

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
The Rise of the Witch-king
Windows

Essential improvements

Skip intro videos

Skip intro videos
  1. Go to <path-to-game>\data\movies\
  2. Delete or rename CS01.vp6, EALogo.vp6, TE_LOGO.vp6, NLC_LOGO.vp6 and NewLineLogo.vp6.
For languages other than English the EA logo file played is a localised version extracted from the archive file <path-to-game>\lang\LanguageName.big. To remove the video you would need to edit this file, for instance with a custom tool such as FinalBIG (at wagnerma.de/yinger/showdownload.php?detail=1).

Official patches

  • Patch 1.06 is the latest official patch for the base game.
  • Patch 2.01 is the latest official patch for The Rise of the Witch-king.

Unofficial 1.09 patch (BFME2)

Does not require the disc.
Adapts the main game interface for widescreen resolutions and fixes a lot of the bugs and imbalances left after the official 1.06 patch.
Includes a patch switcher for switching between the official 1.00 and 1.06 versions, as well as 1.09.
Breaks compatibility with the Rise of the Witch-king expansion.

Unofficial 2.02 patch (RotWK)

Does not require the disc.
Adapts the main game interface for widescreen resolutions and fixes a lot of the bugs and imbalances left after the official 2.01 patch.
Active multiplayer community.
Requires the BFME2 1.09 unofficial patch to be deactivated to run.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows %APPDATA%\My Battle for Middle-earth(tm) II Files\options.ini
%APPDATA%\My The Lord of the Rings, The Rise of the Witch-king Files\options.ini

Save game data location

System Location
Windows %APPDATA%\My Battle for Middle-earth(tm) II Files\save
%APPDATA%\My The Lord of the Rings, The Rise of the Witch-king Files\save

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
EA app

Video

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
 
 Use Battle For Middle Earth 2 Camera Fix.[5]
Multi-monitor
 
 Use Battle For Middle Earth 2 Camera Fix.[5]
Ultra-widescreen
 
4K Ultra HD
 
Field of view (FOV)
Use Battle For Middle Earth 2 Camera Fix.[5]
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
Frame rate is capped at 30 FPS; removing cap increases game speed.[6]
High dynamic range display (HDR)
See the glossary page for potential alternatives.
Color blind mode
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Keyboard and mouse prompts
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
French
German
Italian
Norwegian
Polish
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Thai

Issues fixed

Game not starting on Windows 7 and later

When first starting the game after the installation the game instantly crashes with an error.
Manually creating options.ini[7]
  1. Locate the default folder for the options.ini at %APPDATA%\My Battle for Middle-earth(tm) II Files and %APPDATA%\My The Lord of the Rings, The Rise of the Witch-king Files
  2. Right click, create a new Text Document and name it options.ini
  3. Open your the file and insert the following lines:
AudioLOD = High
FlashTutorial = 0
HasSeenLogoMovies = yes
IdealStaticGameLOD = High
Resolution = 1024 768
StaticGameLOD = High
TimesInGame = 6
Make sure to change the Resolution value to your preferred resolution.
4. Save your changes
5. You should now be able to start the game normally

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Notes
Local play
LAN play
Online play
Official servers have been shut down.[8]

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 9.0c
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Multiplayer GameSpy Shut down in 2011.

System requirements

Windows
MinimumRecommended
Operating system (OS) XP
Processor (CPU) 1.6 GHzIntel Pentium 4 3 GHz
AMD Athlon XP 3 GHz
System memory (RAM) 256 MB1 GB
Storage drive (HDD/SSD) 6 GB
Video card (GPU) Nvidia GeForce 3
ATI Radeon 8500
64 MB of VRAM
DirectX 9.0c compatible		Nvidia GeForce 7800
128 MB of VRAM
Online mode requires 512 MB of system RAM.


Notes

  1. ↑ This version of SafeDisc DRM does not work on Windows 10[2] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.[3]

References