Turbine may be slowly winning over the critics with Online, but the game is still a long way from the success the developer is hoping to achieve with this venerable IP. More over, it isn't just to contend with now, and Online are all eying WoW's crown with glistening fangs.

Still, Blizzard's opus remains the market leader, big wig Jeff Steefel telling VG247 that his team are unflustered, despite having to launch their Mines of Moria expansion in the same week as the Lich King add-on is to arrive for WoW.

"The way that we succeed is by focusing on ourselves and competing with ourselves, and that’s what we’re continuing to do with this," he enthused.

"It’s going to be interesting. It’s not just us and Lich King: there’s an EQ2 expansion coming out, there’s an EVE expansion coming out. I think it shows a change in the market, right? I think it’s going to be happening a lot now."

Steefel sees much change ahead for the genre: "The kind of players that play WoW regularly and the kind of play LotRO regularly, and the kind of players that play Warhammer regularly are different. We have a market now where people tend to move around between games.

"We’re less concerned than we would have been than we would have been in the days where there was one game out there and everyone played only that one game."

More on Mines of Moria, and Lich King, soon.

By Luke Guttridge