Dropping The Lord of the Rings: War in the North the same week Bethesda unleashed The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in Nov 2011 was a brutal mismatch — like launching a canoe beside a cargo ship. Warner Bros. chose not to delay: Q4 targets and exec payouts outweighed any sense that timing mattered.
Christian Allen, the ex-game director, posted that the devs tried to talk management out of a head-to-head; those appeals failed. The game was essentially smothered by Skyrim’s media storm, got only token reviews, and saw minimal marketing support — sales faltered and Snowblind wound up merged into Monolith.
Players who noticed were mostly disappointed; the team, understandably, felt the hit.
In short: a solid-enough project, ruined by bad calendar math and corporate priorities.