The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king (aka LOTRBFME2ROTWK) is a real-time strategy video game published by Electronic Arts, The third part of the Middle-earth strategy game, based on the Lord of the Rings film series based on the book, directed by Peter Jackson. The Rise of the Witch-king is the official expansion to The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II, which was published by the same company and released in 2006, for Microsoft Windows. The Rise of the Witch-king was shipped to stores in the United States on November 28, 2006 and was officially released on November 30, 2006. The campaign allows the player to command the army of Angmar from its foundation and early attacks against Arnor, to the destruction of Arnor at the battle of Fornost. An epilogue mission allows the player to command the forces of Gondor and the Elves as they invade Angmar in retaliation for destroying Arnor. The story for The Rise of the Witch-king draws a great deal upon the Appendices at the end of the Return of the King to form a basis for the conflict between Arnor and Angmar. Many of the notes that Tolkien made regarding the war are used as missions in the games campaign and epilogue. Although the game closely follows Tolkien's writing, some events are modified to suit the gameplay (such as the palantír of Amon Sûl being destroyed rather than brought to safety at Fornost), or are omitted altogether (such as the flight of King Arvedui from the defeat at Fornost). According to the Guinness Book of World Records Gamer's Edition, this game has the longest title for a strategy game. Gameplay changes The game features a new faction, Angmar, bringing the total number of playable factions to seven. It also comes with a new campaign based on Angmar, consisting of eight missions telling the rise of the Witch-king of Angmar and the fall of the kingdom of Arnor. New units were added to all six existing factions, as well as both new and improved buildings and heroes. Every faction except Angmar also received an elite hero unit. Elite hero units have a small amount of health and deal a large amount of damage, but there are a small number of them in each battalion, and they only replenish their numbers at a healing structure.