It was rough around the edges and some of the decisions EA made were specifically to create a game appealing to as wide an audience as possible. The original Battle for Middle-earth was a pretty good game.
Now that EA has the consolidated Tolkein licenses (meaning the movies and the books) together into one big deal, they have the fun of creating content outside of the movie progression while maintaining the great art style from the movies. As any fan of the lore knows, plenty was happening outside of Gondor and Rohan that most people don't really know about. The fiction EA is working with this time around is that of the northern lands of Middle-earth that wasn't the focus of The Lord of the Rings trilogy of books. The first question people ask when they hear about a sequel to EALA's 2004 RTS The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth is 'How can they make a sequel? The story has already been told.' The answer I suppose is that this isn't necessarily a sequel to the story, but a sequel to the franchise.
