Not sure whether this is really good or really bad timing: less than a week after Wrath of the Lich King, the second World of Warcraft expansion, went live, new expansions to Lord of the Ring Online and EverQuest 2 have been launched.

Mines of Moria, the first expansion to LOTRO, raises the level cap from 50 to 60, extends the game's storyline by six more books, and adds two new character classes. The Shadow Odyssey is the fifth expansion to Everquest 2 and adds 20 zones, a new mission system, and a slew of class-specific achievements. Odyssey also includes the content from the previous four expansions. There's probably a lot more to both expansions but that's a run-down of the "big" stuff (or so I assume).

At this point, it's clear no MMORPG out there is going to catch WoW but it's often overlooked that an MMO can have only a small fraction of WoW's subscriber base and still do pretty well. The fact that LOTRO and EQ2 are still doing well enough for their respective developers to keep churning out new content is a sign of good health. The conventional wisdom is that you don't want to release your game in the immediate vicinity of a monster competitor but in this case, pushing out new content right after Lich King offers current subscribers reason to stay put.