The Lord of The Rings Strategy Battle Game - Online Community

Online Community

Prior to the closure of Games Workshop's official forum in November 2006, the site had 3000 forum posts per day and well over 300,000 registered users. Since then, the Online Community has moved onto a large number of unofficial websites and forums for Lord of the Rings players, many of which were already in existence before the closure of Games Workshop's forums: these include "The Last Alliance", with over 6400 registered members (Rebuilt in 2009 due to the host deleting their server for financial reasons), "The One-Ring", with over 5000, and "The Palantir", with over 2400 members. Collectively, the members of these websites have produced high quality articles for the public, namely on The One-Ring, whose acceptance standards are very high, in greater quantity than on the official site, and White Dwarf has commented on the community as having a "huge wealth of material". Many smaller multi-topic forums, primarily intended for The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, also exist.

On 1 June 2005, Games Workshop launched their annual UK-based Worldwide Campaign under the name "The War of the Ring Online Campaign", featuring The Lord of the Rings for the first time. The Campaign was deemed "a fantastic rollercoaster", with 3007 registered participants. Games Workshop also introduced the "Wrath of Umbar Roadshow", with custom-built Corsair models and gaming boards being brought to various cities in the United Kingdom. When the Campaign formally ended on 8 September, Good emerged the victor. The combined total of the 14 weeks was 27239 recorded wargames. The Forum closed shortly after, giving way to a smaller Canada-based Campaign with the same name.

Hobby websites have been key in organising sides in the Worldwide Campaigns, and indeed in creating their own campaigns and competitions, such as the "Campaign of LoTRs", a collaboration between the two websites The Dark Council and Cheeseweb.

Another notable side of the community is the influence of its reaction to the company's products: many Tolkien purists, for example, reacted against the company's rendition of the Swan Knights of Dol Amroth, with some choosing to convert their own, impacting the hobby and the sales of the products. When Games Workshop subsequently showed the planned release of the Men-at-Arms of Dol Amroth, it was suggested that they had taken the response of the community into account.

In September 2007, the game was also referenced in an edition of "Larry Leadhead", a webcomic which deals with miniature wargaming culture.