Move over, Azeroth! It was reported last week that Turbine Inc.'s The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar title had been UK's top-seller. What wasn't mentioned - and has just come to light today via an NPD market report - is that LotRO had beaten some rather formidable odds on its way to the top, by way of Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft MMORPG.

Going into details on last week's top five, we find LotRO's standard pack at the top spot, with the game's special edition release taking second place. Third and fourth place are occupied by WoW and its Burning Crusade expansion pack, with the fifth-largest selling PC game being The Sims 2: Seasons expansion pack, released last March.

What isn't clear is if this NPD report is based on numbers from the UK region alone, or if it also includes sales from North America - LotRO was released to both regions on April 24. Whatever the case, it's good to see that LotRO is off to a strong start, while WoW is enjoying strong sales even after being up and running since 2004.

Let us take a few steps back and stop talking about the enslaving lure of World of Warcraft. For now, we will focus our discussion on the holy trinity. Nope, we didn't suddenly become religious and had an attack of holiness. What we're talking about is the holy trinity of MMORPG, or RPG for that matter when the word massive isn't connected to online gaming yet.

Before, probably in the time of the original Dungeons and Dragons, there were originally only three class roles: tank, damage, and healing. The first role is the one who takes all the punishments while the second role is for dishing out, well, punishments. The last one, on the other hand, is responsible for keeping the team alive as long as possible.

Make no mistake about it, but these three original roles are still very much present in WoW. The Warriors and the Fighters are obviously the tanks of the game. The Mage and the Rogue classes are obviously the DPS group, while Shamans and Paladins take care of the healing process.

Blizzard unmistakable tried to work around this trinity by coming up with hybrid classes than can perform various roles in different instances. Just look at the Druids, they can be any of the three depending on what their team requires of them. But when you really think about it, all of these are still based on the Tank/DPS/Healing triumvirate.

If you really want to know why, Blizzard pointed out that it wants to give every class the option to go all the way to 70 solo. Hunters could totally focus on crowd control duties but after some time, they will be forced back into one of the original roles. The truth is that the triumvirate of roles has worked fine since time immemorial and tinkering with it could prove to be disastrous or - if you insist - craptastic.

"DarkAge of the WarcraftStrike". That's a fictional MMO that Turbine Entertainment executive producer and creative director Jessica Mulligan used as an example during her rant at the Austin Game Conference. According to her, there are some MMOs that use the WoW formula, and end up as nothing but WoW copycats.

Which brings us to our question: Are all MMOs the same? Tobold asks the same question in his blog. And with the proliferation of WoW copycats out in the market today, you can't help but wonder the same thing. After all, there's a nugget of truth in Mulligan's claim.

According to Tobold, there's a general flow to MMO gameplay: start in a city, take quests and missions, slay some monsters, gather loot and eventually sell them. However, Tobold adds that even though most MMOs subscribe to this structure, each MMO game focuses on particular details, which makes them different from one another.

For example, WoW is known for being PvE-centric, while games such as Lineage and EVE are known for their excellent PvP features. Then there's the gameplay: Does this MMO have a more difficult gameplay than the other? More importantly, there's the question of the setting, which I believe lies most of the game's appeal. After all, we have sci-fi MMOs, "historical MMOs" (remember the upcoming "Shakespeare MMO"?), and the more popular fantasy MMO. Of course, each world offers something different (the "Matrix world" is different from the one in "Star Wars"), which makes more games appealing, and more addictive, depending on your taste.

So, according to our source, "in the end, no two MMORPG are really the same". And we here at QJ definitely agree with him. What do you think?