AIAS nominations for MMO of the year announced

You may have heard that the Academy of Motion Pictures announced their Oscar nominations (how about that Ellen Page? And I definitely need to see There Will Be Blood, as soon as my wacky work schedule allows me the free time) this morning, but the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences also announced their Academy Award nominations for videogames earlier this week, and they picked five nominees for MMO game of the year.

And the nominations are: EVE Online: Trinity, Guild Wars: Eye of the North, Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa, Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar, and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. I don't want to be a spoilsport, but I'm thinking that any of those others are going to have a tough time beating Burning Crusade-- Blizzard is still pretty far ahead of the game at this point. But it is interesting to note that three of the five nominees are expansions-- Tabula Rasa and LotRO are the two original games on the list.

Hopefully this time next year we'll see some more new names in the mix. The AIAS awards winners will be announced on February 7, 2007 in Las Vegas.

[Via Curse]