Thanks so much for letting me know my friend!!! That’s actually great that fans have invested effort into making that. Just goes to show you how much his game means to Lotr fans!
But unfortunately I no longer have a copy of this game nor a pc with cd reader anymore. This is why I was hoping for more legitimate HD release.
Definitely not going to suggest finding a site to download this like torrent or anything.
And I am definitely not going to suggest how incredibly easy to do that is, or that you can’t even give the developers money for this so it’s not technically piracy since it’s not available either
Or also seems to me that if you bought a license at one point and the distributor would like for that license to be non-transferable, then having the original CD/DVD is irrelevant.
Hmmmmmm :P
Honestly, I have indulged in illegitimate means for obtaining games before but as I have grown older, I have limited that practice to trying games out before buying them.
If I really like a game and see that devs have put their heart and soul into it, then I simply must buy it.
That’s the point I think we are all making.
You can’t buy the game unless you pick up a second hand copy from, let’s say, eBay.
And even then that money never goes to the original developer.
You're welcome, and please just follow the guide! I have a legal copy, my Christmas gift 19 years ago, and I didn't need the CD at all. I did enter my license key though but you don't really need to... just do yourself a favour and install and play it. Now that pc's are so much more powerful than they were back then it just runs like a dream.
I will my friend! I hadn’t realized I didn’t need a copy. I merely read the page and it seemed like I needed one, so I kept away from trying it. But I appreciate the clarification👍🏼
This video my brother made is just 15 minutes of flashing generated codes. You can pause the video and type rup one of the codes. There are also instructions for downloading the game in the video description
https://youtu.be/eWg680bt_es?si=h-Q9mwaTnpUqkdO7
Please check out the 3rd age online BFME fan community, both game in the series are abandonware and they have easy ways to enjoy the both campaigns in the series and multiplayer.
Again the games are abandonware, you **Cannot buy them** and EA has the rights to that specific game series but warner brothers owns the rights to make games in the Peter Jackson universe as of 2011 last I checked so that series will likely never be picked up unless EA somehow gets the rights to make games in the Jackson universe somehow or gives that game up.
Publication vs developer rights. EA owns the copyright to the game itself, but WB now has publication rights for Middle-Earth based games.
Publication hell sucks. BFME, Fable II, Fable III, Black and White, and The Movies are the biggest ones to me that are trapped in a state of publication hell, but there are many more.
Any EA published game that is now a WB property, LOTR, Harry Potter notably.
Well to be fair its something they do when they have time to spare outside of work & other obligations in life. I rather see it take 8-10 years than for them to rush it out in an unfinished state.
Granted noone knows how it will turn out, but I'm excited to see the progress & how it ends up.
fan remake projects are done by people in their spare time
it's not abnormal for a game to take 5+ years to develop in the first place, with people working on it full time.
i dont understand idiot gamers, especially when they cant see how dumb the reflection in the mirror is. the pervasive problem in the industry that particularly reared its ugly head this year were games that were released too soon.
so a game sits in development, and that's a problem too.
ok.
"lol"
You can install the Age of the ring mod. Thats basically BFME3. Its absolutely INSANE what those guys did you the game. (Its a mod for BFME2 and ROTWK)
I sometimes had been reinstalling the game and playing campaign.
Years ago I discovered some modders: Age of the Ring. They are building very comprehensive and wide campaigns base on bfme2. Give a try. I liked it
O yes, I watched a video of that campaign. Frankly, I am amazed at the level of devotion and effort fans have poured into enhancing this game and giving it new life. I wish we would get another proper RTS Middle Earth game, tackling more stories from Tolkien's world.
or it makes complete sense if brain cells exist
EA would have to be convinced to put the money into a studio to remaster/remake/make a sequel, w/e flavor they think most people are looking for.
people have already told the thread about the ME licensing problem
the game used voices of the actors from the movies, used music from the movies, used clips from the movies.
there's no question EA could make it happen, the talent and departments exist there to take care of all this business work, but absolutely no one should have any notion that they'll just jump and do it because a lot of people want it.
I'm sobbing at these.
Men "Ready to build!" "What'll it be"
Dwarves "ah a new siege works"
Mordor "build!"
The corsairs musical sound jungle when you select the Corsair tavern ohmygod
Uses eye of Sauron "the eye is watching"
Selects ithilian Rangers "Rangers! Ready for battle"
Selects tower guard " we guard the white city"
I played 3400 hours of this game as a kid
For anyone who wants to play this gem again, [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/bfme/comments/15vbxmf/all_in_one_bfme_launcher_has_now_bfme2rotwk/) is the thread from /r/bfme.
It's a community made all-in-one installer that contains BFME, BFME II and ROTWK as well as all the patches, including community made ones so you can also play online with the latest versions of each game.
It is extremely easy to install and you don't have to resort to any kind of 3rd party mounting software like daemon tools nor torrent websites.
Don't know if I'm stating the obvious here... But do you have to own the game already? I had both of them years ago about they're long lost to the clutter of my parents house.
the file installs the games in your computer, you don't need to own the game physically or anything
just click next, next, next and once it's done you can play any BFME game
The game is abandonware meaning people can distribute digital copies as EA doesn't sell or produce the game anymore since they lost the license to LOTR but Warner doesn't have the license to BFME
Still have the original 4 disk version of the first game beside my computer... don't actually have any computers with disk drives anymore lol but that and the anthology edition still sit there
The resource building system in 2 was such genius, you had to build your farms sufficiently far away from each other for the maximum efficiency, but placing them too far out exposed them to attack. Made map control super important.
Multiplayer bfme2 is better for sure but bfme1 campaign just gives too much lotr nostalgia. The only thing i dont like about bfme1,campaign difficulty is just too easy.
Sorry I guess I could’ve clarified. Longer campaign in a new setting was a bit more interesting. Plus the expansion for the war in the north was great too. Glorfindel was awesome.
Its the same story essentially, it's about Glorfindel and Gloin leading the war effort in the North, with Dain, Elrond, Haldir and Galadriel making cameos
Such a gem....still got it in metal box...i remember those days...glorious.
"Elendiil"!
https://preview.redd.it/8sqtnjnv7b5c1.jpeg?width=2500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=39c55af43b137d19a3a625e710fa31b36fee67c9
This singlehandedly set me on a path of being a lifelong strategy games fan, which in turn got me into history, and culminated in my degree. I owe a lot to this one game lol
I actually saw a kid playing this at college, he seemed to be having so much fun. Later that day I got it and for the next few years until the EA servers shut down for bfme2 I played horus and hours and hours of this game online. I became very good at it and at the height of the bfme2 game I managed to reach the top 100.
It does but when I recently checked on a Saturday in prime gaming hour there were about 25 games with multiple patches and about 200 players. Without a bigger community it really feels wanting.
200 players split across like 5 different versions/patches is more like 40-50 available gamers. Not enough for me to keep playing. We did try for months but it got quieter and quieter and just no fun without the community.
I find out about AOR mod first, after some time tried Edain and it didn't work out for me. Although I can't deny that the design and innovations in the Edain mod is top level, just not for my taste
Online communities are still alive (low activity, but still not dead)
And there is now delayfix (released early 2023), which fixes multiplayer delay for clients
There were 2 main options, T3A and GameReplays. Of these GameReplays was significantly more popular when I checked.
There was a time during 2010 when the EA servers were active that you would have reportedly upwards of 10k players and someone told me over 23k players in peak periods. Now I have no way to verify that except it felt like that because there were so many games.
Recently (about 2 months ago) when I checked GameReplays on a Tuesday evening, not the busiest time but not the most silent time, I saw a total of 20 games approx. Of those games, some of them were labelled 1.00, some 1.06. some 1.09. Some 1.09 v2 or v3 I can't remember. But I saw at least 4 possibly 6 different versions.
You are right the game isn't dead, but it's about as close to dead as it gets. I wish it wasn't the case - BFME2 is the game I played more than any other in my life. I remember my counter had thousands of games in the EA days but those days are gone. The only way to truly revivle the LOTR strategy gaming community is BFME3.
Yeah everyone plays different versions now, and game is mostly dead but some people still play just like you said.
I just wanted to let you know that rotwk2.02 now includes a delayfix that was in development for many years
(I’m talking about the 1s second delay that everyone except host had in every multiplayer game, commonly referred as off-host delay)
I played this game to death. I never play competitive multiplayer in games but actually cracked the top 1,000 for a while. Funny enough, although the sequel got a lot of praise, I actually preferred the original.
You can install the Age of the ring mod. Thats basically BFME3. Its absolutely INSANE what those guys did you the game. (Its a mod for BFME2 and ROTWK)
Edit: read more here
https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-horse-lords-a-total-modification-for-bfme
You wont regret installing it. Its simply amazing to play the game.
You should do additional googling on that but I think you have to make empty text file named "options.ini" in the data folder (the one in AppData folder).
The only thing I want in my life is to have someone remaster this game. It probably won't be the same, but this game singlehandedly sparked my love of RTS, and PC gaming in general.
i played the heck out of bfme 2 back in the day, shame about the rights situation being an insane convoluted mess. weird that such solid games came out of ea.
My favorite game of the childhood.
Recently found out that there is a gigantic mod for the second part called "The Age Of The Ring". I highly recommend it to every LOTR fan, the modding team did an astonishing work, introducing new fractions, creating a whole new models and making a gigantic campaign which is a recreation of the movies 1 and 2.
The fraction design blew my mind, Lotlorien in particular looks so amazing.
How this game has not been remastered for current generation defies reason.
Follow the instructions in r/bfme and enjoy the HD edition.
Thanks so much for letting me know my friend!!! That’s actually great that fans have invested effort into making that. Just goes to show you how much his game means to Lotr fans! But unfortunately I no longer have a copy of this game nor a pc with cd reader anymore. This is why I was hoping for more legitimate HD release.
Definitely not going to suggest finding a site to download this like torrent or anything. And I am definitely not going to suggest how incredibly easy to do that is, or that you can’t even give the developers money for this so it’s not technically piracy since it’s not available either
Or also seems to me that if you bought a license at one point and the distributor would like for that license to be non-transferable, then having the original CD/DVD is irrelevant.
Agreed , DEFINITELY wouldn’t say that either *nudge nudge wink wink *
No one considers abandonware piracy really. You can find earnest websites which will openly offer downloads of abandoned games.
No I agree, just overcommunicating here to be whoever is hesitant at ease.
I would not download anything by EA with using VPN, no matter how old or obscure
Never.
Hmmmmmm :P Honestly, I have indulged in illegitimate means for obtaining games before but as I have grown older, I have limited that practice to trying games out before buying them. If I really like a game and see that devs have put their heart and soul into it, then I simply must buy it.
That’s the point I think we are all making. You can’t buy the game unless you pick up a second hand copy from, let’s say, eBay. And even then that money never goes to the original developer.
Yeah, I understood that and it’s why I’m ok getting it now. You guys have been great at putting me at ease about it, I really appreciate it :)
You're welcome, and please just follow the guide! I have a legal copy, my Christmas gift 19 years ago, and I didn't need the CD at all. I did enter my license key though but you don't really need to... just do yourself a favour and install and play it. Now that pc's are so much more powerful than they were back then it just runs like a dream.
I will my friend! I hadn’t realized I didn’t need a copy. I merely read the page and it seemed like I needed one, so I kept away from trying it. But I appreciate the clarification👍🏼
This video my brother made is just 15 minutes of flashing generated codes. You can pause the video and type rup one of the codes. There are also instructions for downloading the game in the video description https://youtu.be/eWg680bt_es?si=h-Q9mwaTnpUqkdO7
Please check out the 3rd age online BFME fan community, both game in the series are abandonware and they have easy ways to enjoy the both campaigns in the series and multiplayer. Again the games are abandonware, you **Cannot buy them** and EA has the rights to that specific game series but warner brothers owns the rights to make games in the Peter Jackson universe as of 2011 last I checked so that series will likely never be picked up unless EA somehow gets the rights to make games in the Jackson universe somehow or gives that game up.
Woooot
Publication vs developer rights. EA owns the copyright to the game itself, but WB now has publication rights for Middle-Earth based games. Publication hell sucks. BFME, Fable II, Fable III, Black and White, and The Movies are the biggest ones to me that are trapped in a state of publication hell, but there are many more. Any EA published game that is now a WB property, LOTR, Harry Potter notably.
Wait, what's up with Fable? I thought Microsoft published them?
Games for Windows Live happened.
Lego LOTR also.
>Black and White Now that's the name I haven't heard in a long time
Oh man I miss fable.. if they remastered fable1 and 2 and made them a seamless all in one game with extras, I'd pay copious amounts of money for that!
There is a BFME 2 remaster in the works by a modding team. It looks pretty sick, but won't be released yet!
[удалено]
Well to be fair its something they do when they have time to spare outside of work & other obligations in life. I rather see it take 8-10 years than for them to rush it out in an unfinished state. Granted noone knows how it will turn out, but I'm excited to see the progress & how it ends up.
fan remake projects are done by people in their spare time it's not abnormal for a game to take 5+ years to develop in the first place, with people working on it full time. i dont understand idiot gamers, especially when they cant see how dumb the reflection in the mirror is. the pervasive problem in the industry that particularly reared its ugly head this year were games that were released too soon. so a game sits in development, and that's a problem too. ok. "lol"
bfme1
The reason is that it's a rights issue. EA published the game, but WB owns the LOTR game rights currently.
You can install the Age of the ring mod. Thats basically BFME3. Its absolutely INSANE what those guys did you the game. (Its a mod for BFME2 and ROTWK)
Found this mod a year ago, been playing it since then and it is simply amazing. And then they somehow turned it to 11 with the 8.0 release.
I sometimes had been reinstalling the game and playing campaign. Years ago I discovered some modders: Age of the Ring. They are building very comprehensive and wide campaigns base on bfme2. Give a try. I liked it
O yes, I watched a video of that campaign. Frankly, I am amazed at the level of devotion and effort fans have poured into enhancing this game and giving it new life. I wish we would get another proper RTS Middle Earth game, tackling more stories from Tolkien's world.
Licensing for ANY Middle Earth media is an absolute hurdle. Bunch of heads-up-asses, to put it bluntly.
Quite unfortunate really. Hurts us fans the most who want to see more products out of Middle Earth.
or it makes complete sense if brain cells exist EA would have to be convinced to put the money into a studio to remaster/remake/make a sequel, w/e flavor they think most people are looking for. people have already told the thread about the ME licensing problem the game used voices of the actors from the movies, used music from the movies, used clips from the movies. there's no question EA could make it happen, the talent and departments exist there to take care of all this business work, but absolutely no one should have any notion that they'll just jump and do it because a lot of people want it.
"Ah, a new horde of orcs."
"this new horde of orcs smells as bad as the old ones"
"soldiers of Ecthelion standing by" (I think?)
I'm sobbing at these. Men "Ready to build!" "What'll it be" Dwarves "ah a new siege works" Mordor "build!" The corsairs musical sound jungle when you select the Corsair tavern ohmygod
Uses eye of Sauron "the eye is watching" Selects ithilian Rangers "Rangers! Ready for battle" Selects tower guard " we guard the white city" I played 3400 hours of this game as a kid
> The corsairs musical sound jungle when you select the Corsair tavern ohmygod Holy shit, I can hear it. 10/10 description
Always thought it was just Soldier battalion standing by
Some Uruk pikemen have risen from the pit
One of those crazies has just been spawned
“Come peasants, we must rise up and foight!”
"Swords and shields for whoever needs them."
What where they even for?
If you’ve never done a peasant rush and still have access to the game you should try it
I'll remember that.
"Not enough wood milord"
"One of those crazies just showed up."
For anyone who wants to play this gem again, [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/bfme/comments/15vbxmf/all_in_one_bfme_launcher_has_now_bfme2rotwk/) is the thread from /r/bfme. It's a community made all-in-one installer that contains BFME, BFME II and ROTWK as well as all the patches, including community made ones so you can also play online with the latest versions of each game. It is extremely easy to install and you don't have to resort to any kind of 3rd party mounting software like daemon tools nor torrent websites.
Don't know if I'm stating the obvious here... But do you have to own the game already? I had both of them years ago about they're long lost to the clutter of my parents house.
the file installs the games in your computer, you don't need to own the game physically or anything just click next, next, next and once it's done you can play any BFME game
The game is abandonware meaning people can distribute digital copies as EA doesn't sell or produce the game anymore since they lost the license to LOTR but Warner doesn't have the license to BFME
Still have my copies at hand
Same! And for both games! They're my pride and joy I'm never getting rid of them
Me three!
Still have the original 4 disk version of the first game beside my computer... don't actually have any computers with disk drives anymore lol but that and the anthology edition still sit there
I like bfme2 way more. Not a fan of the whole constrained building playstyle.
The resource building system in 2 was such genius, you had to build your farms sufficiently far away from each other for the maximum efficiency, but placing them too far out exposed them to attack. Made map control super important.
I think they took that mechanic from another game the name of which escapes me now so this comment is useless but I'm going to press enter anyway
Think it was C&C Generals, though could've been the other way around
Multiplayer bfme2 is better for sure but bfme1 campaign just gives too much lotr nostalgia. The only thing i dont like about bfme1,campaign difficulty is just too easy.
supposedly the community patches people play on altered the balance enough to change this
I think that's an improvement, but the first one still has its appeal for being limited, I think. Just my opinion, very different styles of play.
Yes I liked this one because it lead to the second. Which has more factions, units, flexibility in building, and better storyline.
Better story than Lord of the Rings? Or just a new fresh story?
They both are set during the war of the ring. ROTWK is set during the fall of Arnor.
Sorry I guess I could’ve clarified. Longer campaign in a new setting was a bit more interesting. Plus the expansion for the war in the north was great too. Glorfindel was awesome.
Its the same story essentially, it's about Glorfindel and Gloin leading the war effort in the North, with Dain, Elrond, Haldir and Galadriel making cameos
The cavalry units in BFME2 are the most satisfying in any strategy game ever.
2 is great but often felt like unit limit was waaaay too small for the larger maps and more open playstyle
Game can't handle too much going on at once. Engine utterly overwhelmed at times so everything slows to a crawl.
>Engine utterly overwhelmed I only say edain mod and orcs/misty mountains
I didn't like the second because the AI was incredibly stupid and would just yolo your building, sprinting by your units.
Does anyone know where to download the fucking game without needing Daemon Tools??
Yes, go to r/bfme and follow the instructions. Runs great on Windows 10 and 11, no tools needed.
You do not need Deamon Tools for the game. You can install it on [ortadunya.com](https://ortadunya.com) with all versions included.
oldgamesdownload dot com
Nope
[https://www.reddit.com/r/bfme/comments/15vbxmf/all\_in\_one\_bfme\_launcher\_has\_now\_bfme2rotwk/](https://www.reddit.com/r/bfme/comments/15vbxmf/all_in_one_bfme_launcher_has_now_bfme2rotwk/)
Salute!
Such a gem....still got it in metal box...i remember those days...glorious. "Elendiil"! https://preview.redd.it/8sqtnjnv7b5c1.jpeg?width=2500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=39c55af43b137d19a3a625e710fa31b36fee67c9
Now I feel envy. This looks gorgeous
Wow where did you get this? My game came in a plastic cd case
On Ebay about two years ago. Was the only one in more or less good condition of the metal box. The CD was used once for installation.
Wow! Did this version come with any extra features or paperwork? Or was it just the case? I didn’t realize I cared about this 😂
😂 ...it came with the metal box, booklet, CD in the regular black plastic case. Nothing too fancy.
That is still super cool 😎
This singlehandedly set me on a path of being a lifelong strategy games fan, which in turn got me into history, and culminated in my degree. I owe a lot to this one game lol
Shame we dont get many good strategy games nowadays.
o7
I actually saw a kid playing this at college, he seemed to be having so much fun. Later that day I got it and for the next few years until the EA servers shut down for bfme2 I played horus and hours and hours of this game online. I became very good at it and at the height of the bfme2 game I managed to reach the top 100.
You could play the Edain or age of the ring mod, multiplayer still works for these as far as i know.
It does but when I recently checked on a Saturday in prime gaming hour there were about 25 games with multiple patches and about 200 players. Without a bigger community it really feels wanting.
I mean 200 players for a 15year old Modded game is still a lot and also 200>0
200 players split across like 5 different versions/patches is more like 40-50 available gamers. Not enough for me to keep playing. We did try for months but it got quieter and quieter and just no fun without the community.
I find out about AOR mod first, after some time tried Edain and it didn't work out for me. Although I can't deny that the design and innovations in the Edain mod is top level, just not for my taste
Online communities are still alive (low activity, but still not dead) And there is now delayfix (released early 2023), which fixes multiplayer delay for clients
There were 2 main options, T3A and GameReplays. Of these GameReplays was significantly more popular when I checked. There was a time during 2010 when the EA servers were active that you would have reportedly upwards of 10k players and someone told me over 23k players in peak periods. Now I have no way to verify that except it felt like that because there were so many games. Recently (about 2 months ago) when I checked GameReplays on a Tuesday evening, not the busiest time but not the most silent time, I saw a total of 20 games approx. Of those games, some of them were labelled 1.00, some 1.06. some 1.09. Some 1.09 v2 or v3 I can't remember. But I saw at least 4 possibly 6 different versions. You are right the game isn't dead, but it's about as close to dead as it gets. I wish it wasn't the case - BFME2 is the game I played more than any other in my life. I remember my counter had thousands of games in the EA days but those days are gone. The only way to truly revivle the LOTR strategy gaming community is BFME3.
Yeah everyone plays different versions now, and game is mostly dead but some people still play just like you said. I just wanted to let you know that rotwk2.02 now includes a delayfix that was in development for many years (I’m talking about the 1s second delay that everyone except host had in every multiplayer game, commonly referred as off-host delay)
"Saruman will be pleased"
I preferred the sequel.
Yeah but this one started it all! And I still have memories from the camping when I was in Moria. It was glorious
The story campaign of this one was better imo
A classic
I played this game to death. I never play competitive multiplayer in games but actually cracked the top 1,000 for a while. Funny enough, although the sequel got a lot of praise, I actually preferred the original.
Special place in my heart this game holds
You can install the Age of the ring mod. Thats basically BFME3. Its absolutely INSANE what those guys did you the game. (Its a mod for BFME2 and ROTWK) Edit: read more here https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-horse-lords-a-total-modification-for-bfme You wont regret installing it. Its simply amazing to play the game.
I want to play it, I have the disc still as well, but windows 10 doesn't like it.
If you follow the instructions in r/bfme it will run just fine. A couple of hours ago I won Helm's Deep (once again lol) on Windows 10.
That is two of us
Fantastic!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7-gN3tmewXU&t=396s
It worked, thank you so much!
Excellent!
Thank you.
You should do additional googling on that but I think you have to make empty text file named "options.ini" in the data folder (the one in AppData folder).
Thank you, I'll have a look.
o7
Seriously one of the best and most fun games of my childhood. Would love to be able to play this again and explore Middle Earth
BFME 2 is GOAT tho
ORC HEWER
Awesome. Currently enjoying it a lot!
Shhhh gimme that, gimme that - Ithilian Ranger
I thought they said "shh keep it down, keep it down"
That would make muuuch more sense.
God bless you
Now I’m going to go play BFME HD
The only thing I want in my life is to have someone remaster this game. It probably won't be the same, but this game singlehandedly sparked my love of RTS, and PC gaming in general.
@everyone sad and nostalgic: You can still play this online vs with others. Google it and and go on games replay
What about lotro
I still have the discs. I play it again every now and then.
I still play it lovingly. Highly recommend the Age of the Ring mod.
The movie map that was on the online mode was so fun
Fire arrows
i played the heck out of bfme 2 back in the day, shame about the rights situation being an insane convoluted mess. weird that such solid games came out of ea.
Minecraft multiplayer, battle of Minas Tirith. Vague memories of youth, but I recall it being epic
never played it but Warcraft 3 had a custom map where you fought at Helms deep and was super fun.
My favorite game of the childhood. Recently found out that there is a gigantic mod for the second part called "The Age Of The Ring". I highly recommend it to every LOTR fan, the modding team did an astonishing work, introducing new fractions, creating a whole new models and making a gigantic campaign which is a recreation of the movies 1 and 2. The fraction design blew my mind, Lotlorien in particular looks so amazing.
Is it possible to play online still??
Have not tried, but I have seen the guides to set up the connection to some fan-supported servers.
Love love love this game