LotRO going Free-to-Play: Turbine should be ashamed!

wait. hasn’t turbine been selling that stuff all along? just in the form of a monthly sub?

and holy crap this was funny: “Your communities will now be inundated with the free-to-play crowd which will infiltrate and destroy you from within.”

i’m with the first comment. this has to be satire.

m3mnoch.

Yeah, I’d agree with Ethic on this one.

Nah its not a joke. Keen is still feeling the burn from that whole Allod’s debacle a few months ago I think. =)

Turbine has shown they can handle the F2P model correctly with DDO, a game that was on the brink of death before they took the gamble in making it F2P. I’m also pretty sure Turbine is not nearly as evil and prone to price-gouging as Allod’s dev was. They should be able to go the route of having an outstanding product with optional F2P products that enhance their game and not down the path of supporting a merely ‘ok’ game that squeezes you into spending cash to progress.

Personally I’ve always wanted to play Lotor but couldn’t justify subbing to it and WoW at the same time. I’ve tried the free trial a few times and enjoyed myself, its a good back-up game for when you want a change of pace. I’m hardly alone in this scenario so I fully expect Lotor to experience a lot of success this fall.

Seems like a good idea to me, as long as they follow DDO’s model.

DDO is much better now that it is free to play. There is a wrong way to do free to play but Turbine did it RIGHT. I’m glad to see that they are extending this to LotRO, and I hope other MMOs start to emulate the VIP F2P model.

Yes, this doesn’t look that bad to me. If you subscribe, you still have access to the same things as you did before. The game was getting kind of stagnant, so hopefully an injection of new players and revenue will breathe some life into it.

Is this fallout from Warner Bros. acquiring Turbine?

I have a lifetime sub to LotRO, altho have not been active recently due to time constraints and having more friends active in WoW. LotRO always seemed to have the best community … I’m apprehensive that now when folks on the RP servers gather to play some music and enjoy themselves that the griefers will be out in force disrupting the activities. 🙁

“I know I’m not the only one out there who sees it this way.”

But you’re the only one in your own comment section. Obviously you’re in a minority. I’ve had a LOTRO sub for about 2 years, but haven’t played much in the last 3 months. Most of the problem is that any zone under 50th level is completely barren. I’ve played for hours during primetime when there were fewer than 10 players in the Trollshaws. Before they revamped the Epic quests to make them soloable I had completely given up on finishing them.

If F2P doubles the number of players, it’s already a huge win.

I agree with Keen and I am worried the game will be flooded with trolls that will turn general chat into “LOTRO vs. WOW”. Not even Rivendell will be safe from the murloc joke.

Keen, people don’t want to see your point because your points are the ramblings of a drama queen. Seriously reread your post. This move is a great move. Worked well for DDO, will work well for LOTRO.

Besides, you want to know what Turbine’s #1 mistake was? Lifetime subscriptions. I’m pretty sure a big motivator for this was the # of people who did lifetime subs, which drained Turbine of income they could be making now.

LOL! Someone got burnt by a crappy F2P game!

But seriously, I do not think this will make the experience worse for subscribing users. Subscribers will have everything they used to have, plus access to buy extra unnecessary crap through a cash shop with cash shop credits alloted monthly. I can think of at least two elephant-sized MMOs right now with a subscription+cash shop model that are not F2P, but noone says it will RUIN the game, or THE DEVS SHOULD BE ASHAMED!$(*&@! etc (EQ2, WoW).

Saying DDO’s F2P success can’t be emulated in LOTRO because it is already successful is pretty ridiculous. DDO’s VIP pass is literally all you need if you like paying a flat fee monthly, and this should be about the same. If anything, this will make them more money, boost population, and continue to provide subscribing users with the full experience. Sure, a point could be made about attracting a “less mature F2P audience”, but I don’t think the community on DDO is suffering at all, or immature.

If you say you are only talking to our P2P players, then they will be more than happy to pay for VIP to play this game, which makes a lot of the points you tried to knock Turbine on moot. Here’s what it looks like from a P2P/VIP perspective:

•Selling PREMIUM CLASSES
So far, this only includes classes from the expansion packs. If you have the expansions, you have these already. VIP would have these anyway.

•Selling PREMIUM CONTENT (ie: quest packs and more)
VIP has all content.

•Selling “Items”
None of this crap is necessary to play, or even play well, and 500 points a month is more than enough to expand bank space, or buy xp pots or whatever.

•Actually selling the right to 30 days of customer service (#’s 10 and 11 in the FAQ)
VIP’s have this included, this point is moot.

•Selling Monster Play as a VIP Premium Feature
This was addressed on their forums as implemented this way in order to limit overcrowding of the creep side in the moors. I am not really fond of this, but their explanation may make sense as creeps outnumber freeps already. VIP will have this, so it doesn’t matter to a VIP.

So, where is the downside for your P2P player other than a possible dip in community quality?

I agree with Keen. DDO is a different game with a different culture: you cannot make it a one-size fits all example that will fit all games. It also was given a pass because people realized it was either this or the game dies. Heck, most people argued that F2P made it more attractive because it was such a bad game that it wasn’t worth a full sub fee.

I don’t really see why the need to do so for LOTRO. It’s a minefield in any game: what if they sell consumables to “fix” radiance requirements? What if the f2p swell in population leads to a resurgence of RMT and shout/whisper/spam bots, or mucks up the economy? It’s just a lot of risk for no real reason imo.

If you have to because the game is unprofitable i understand, although I wonder how many people will convert to subs. This just seems to me to be a cash run.

As if anybody escapes the WoW comparisons these days, especially with all the free trials that are around.

I understand the concern, but I think JeremyT hits it on the mark. I’ve played tons of microtransaction games and several subscription ones. Most microtransaction games are indeed like Allods, where you have to fork over the money regularly just in order to play successfully at all, and the money equates to or goes above the regular subscription cost and is for a one use item, or at best it’s an item that lasts 30 days. This new system for LOTRO has me interested (though I agree with your concern over the customer service point)because I’ll be able to play as I like doing content as I like. If I want to pay to get a class (one of the classes that didn’t come with the original game anyways) I can drop the cash and have that class permanently and it’ll cost me 20$ to have that class and the basic game and I won’t have to pay a single dime more if I don’t want to, since I jump around from game to game very often, this is a good thing for me. Even if I pay more than a monthly fee for a few months I won’t feel cheated if I don’t play so many hours a day every week, and when I want to I can come back, not have to pay a dime more, and have access to everything I bought from the game store. I won’t lose the ability to access what I’ve paid for because I’ve stopped dropping 15$ a month.

As far as the community concerns, that could happen to be disintegrated, but it could also attract mature players who simply did not want to take a gamble on yet another subscription based MMO.

Keen, as much as you praise the subscription based model, from what I’ve read of your blog, most modern mmo’s that have a subscription based model do little to impress you. Heck, before the Allods Game Shop stupidity you were impressed by the core content of the game. Around the MMO community people are feeling cheated by subscription based MMO’s, and there are people like myself who sometimes feel “It’s a good game, but will I play it enough to warrant subscribing?” I suspect, assuming they don’t screw up horribly, that LotRO will continue turbine’s success with the F2P model.

LotRO and DDO are not the same games, but in my times playing LotRO’s trial the world was clearly pretty and well crafted but it also felt desolate and empty because there were hardly any players in the starting areas. MMO’s are social games, and if LotRO cannot keep the lowbie areas busy, there won’t be many new subscriptions. And like with DDO, turbine will still develop content for the game, much of it will be for a fee yes, but it will guarantee continued content growth and if it isn’t worth it people won’t buy it and turbine won’t make the profit they’re trying to get.

In the end we’ll have to wait and see the final outcome I guess, but I’m optimistic on what this’ll do for LotRO and the MMO industry in general.

it’s just a philosophical difference about what an mmorpg should be. it’s fine that the difference exists, but it sucks to be on the losing side of it. and we are on the losing side.

it’s the citizen vs consumer concept. the citizen wants a world to live in, to contribute to, to work in, build relationships, to mirror life. the consumer wants a game to play, whenever they want for however long or short they choose. it’s not like one is more “right” than the other but they have yet to feasibly coexist in the same game.

the f2p model obviously is for the consumer. that’s fine. the frustration sets in, however, as the citizen runs out of options.

I dunno, this post is classic “knee-jerk” reaction. The sky is falling! It’s the end of the world! …and yet there’s absolutely -zero- evidence of any of this happening.

Seriously show me which A-class MMO turned F2P and became all this evil that you’re describing up there. Come on.

I understand Allods burned you, but LOTRO was not designed from the get-go to be F2P , so just the game AS IT IS offers amazing value for gamers.

PS: Don’t forget who bought Turbine recently*….it’s not like they don’t have cash…they CAN do this and pull it off.

*Warner Brothers for those that forgot…

I don’t want to say too much on the specifics of this whole issue or state my personal opinions considering I, too, was burned by Allods (but the Allods community page led me to find this blog), but there is a point of debate I want to address, and a question I want to ask:

Question: Keen, you say, “Look at the application of this model and how it changes the game.” But you never blatantly give your opinion on what that is, exactly. That feels like saying, “If you think about it you’ll see the truth,” but then never stating what the truth happens to be. It feels like more of a hollow feint than an actual point of thought. I don’t mean this to be belittling. So I ask, how do you see the big-picture of the game changing because of the microtransaction model from DDO? (Yes, from DDO, because that is also a Turbine game and they’ve basically said, via outlining the fine points, that LotRO will be using DDO’s microtrans model.) I’m interested in hearing what you mean when you say that, because you said it in your blog and in a couple comments here.

My point of debate is more of a commentary on something you’ve said and reiterated. It doesn’t quite seem fair, infact it does seem narrow-minded of you, to say, “If you’re not agreeing with me, then you’re not the audience I’m addressing.” Which is essentially what you’ve said in a few comments. That feels like a cop-out. Instead of trying to address their points and poke holes in their arguments to further the validity of your own you’re brushing them off as, “not the people you’re addressing.” That completely side-steps any sort of dialogue on the issue on the grounds that they don’t see LotRO exploding in the next 6 months. This just seems like an intellectual faux-pas, and a poor form of discussion. I’ve only been reading this blog for the past 6 months, but I know you’re more intelligent than that.

I’d recommend you read one of these comments (preferrably one that don’t include childish flaming), step back, breathe, and try to formulate a calm, rational response free of emotion, buzz-wordery or, as people here put it, “doom-and-gloom”. Though I personally would define “doom-and-gloom” to be opinions full of emphatic, negative adjectives. Your argument can paint a negative picture without the figurative soap-box. 🙂 In any case, I’d try to limit them a smidge to give your responses an air of impartiality. Even though we know what your opinion is. 😉

That is all.

Just saying…

The fact remains that you will be wrong. LOTRO will succeed just like DDO has, Free Realms has.

This is the best thing they could have done. The game was not doing THAT well. If anyone can point me to data that shows otherwise, I will believe it.

For now…best move Turbine.

It’s funny how a game being FTP changes your feelings about things like RoM’s cheesy graphics, or LoTRO’s aweful running animation, because who cares – it costs me nothing to log in! I will now play LOTRO casually and maybe pitch them $5 here and there, which is more then they are getting from me now.

I agree Wren and Keen. I took me until getting to the end of these comments to realize “I don’t get it.” because I’m not one that should. I’m not the “target market” of this post. I have a family/job (so limited time) etc, WoW was my first “MMO” and I only play that honestly for the PvP and treat it like MMO counterstrike. So I don’t understand exactly what your concerns are.

But I do think I understand what you are trying to say and I respect that. It’s just not for me.

Ok, I think most of you here are not seeing the big picture…

This is a growing trend in the industry. The problem isnt simply the fact that the games are free to play, its the baggage that comes with it. Namely ultra casual players that have no real investment in the game. Some of them are fine upstanding people, but the community suffers all the same because, as the poster above said ” I played it for a month, it was great”. A month and gone, happens a lot in a f2p model. You cant build a solid community when there isnt a stable player base.

The second aspect that f2p brings is lack of development. Sadly, I feel this blame lies squarely on the shoulders of the players. Prime example, Blizzards latest mount that they sold for I think $25.00 a pop. People lined up to buy it. What did you as players teach Blizzard? You taught them to not waste time and resources developing content to sell as an ex-pack when you can make almost as much money by having an intern reskin an existing piece of art in a few hours. And you can sure bet that the next one, and believe me there will be many more to come after that cash cow, will be more expensive than the last one, because stupid players will pay more money… again. Game companys will not stop doing this until you stop paying them.

Call me what you want, but I dont want the Farmville/”I play an mmo for 1 hour a week” crowd in the games I play. To be blunt, I hate what you instant gratification ADD players have turned the mmo genre into.

@Sentry: “The second aspect that f2p brings is lack of development” In a lot of cases, yes, but I’m banking on Turbine’s development history with DDO. It’s gotten lots of new content, since the changeover.

@Keen “Saying “I pay $10 a month right now, how will that be any different?” forget that in order to create a game that functions on micro transactions, the game’s design and future development must be bent to meet that. ”

Just like it happened with DDO, Subscribers have not experienced any changes to their gameplay experience, other than a noticeable increase in players. Turbine made sure not to alienate their playerbase as much as possible when they added the F2P alternative. Hell, the amount of expansions have greatly increased.

It also worked with Wizard101. (Though I believe Wizard101 wasn’t a P2P to begin with). The Cash Shop offers Zones, etc for a small price OR players can pay a Sub and have access to 100% of the game.

The thing is, rather than alienating their current playerbase by making changes to the core gameplay, Turbine wants to bring an alternative without taking anything away from the subscribers. That’s how the Cash Shop works.

This type of Cash Shop is geared toward the Casual crowd, who, instead of paying a monthly sub to play only a very small part of the world, they can simply buy a Zone/Area and play for as long as they want. Since Casuals are unable to play for longer period of time, meaning that the amount of content they see in a month is considerably less, this basically gives them an excellent alternative. This doesn’t take away from the game at all.

The Free To Play Area will also allows many more players to join. Thus populating the lower levels areas, which are pretty empty at times. It will also bring many more customers who are likely to subscribed too.

I’d like you to re-read one of your blog post : https://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=3724
The Micro-Transaction (or Cash Shop) sort of work the same way. They don’t take away from the current players. Except that in the case of LotrO, they added an Alternative to the way you can pay instead of selling Fluff.

@Howdy Doody

It absolutley does take away from the game, specificly the community. WoW has become more of a online lobby than a rich full world to explore. Most people just hang out in Dalaran waiting for their dungeon to pop. They run their dungeon and then poof, back to Dalaran. Or worse, they log in get their frosts then log right back out. I could go on, but thats one example.

I like your posts, but this just has overreaction all over it. Sure DDO was not doing well to begin with, but now it is doing awesome, better than LotRO in fact. Turbine sees that these changes have improved the game for most players and the company. I dont blame them for trying out the model on LotRO. Heck I may even start playing it again.

The fact of the matter is you are making assumptions based off your experience within F2P mmos that you dont like. The game play will not be much different, just the payment model. Its more flexible and gives players more freedom to pay for what they use.

Turbine made the game that you praise as one of your favorite MMOs. That isnt changing. Its not like they are turning into some half ass cash shop toting bundle of nasty pixels. You wont wake up tomorrow and find your hobbit weilding 8-bit graphics. Its LotRO with more flexibility. Dont buy it? Look at the factual changes that Turbine made to DDO. As someone who played before the changes and after, the game play is the same, except now I get to pay for the features I want when I want instead of being stuck in the rut of a subscription, paying for content that will take me months to see.

You cant just call a game bad because it now has F2P in its description. That is just ignorant.

@Tesh

I cant believe someone correctly used Gestalt on a gaming blog. Maybe there is hope for humanity.

cool, so i can actually play this game now and feel good about it.

Could someone correct me here but is LotRO not a P2P/F2P hybrid model whereas 90% of the “bad games” are just F2P? Seeing as how DDO functions under the former model, that provides incentive to the developers to create content in order to have that guaranteed income. Allods was 100% F2P. The amount of people (Keen included) that would have shelled 15$ a month to get around the cash stop hurdles would have made the game quite a success. Pure F2P models are designed around the idea of forcing people to buy tiny increments and not about package deals and is all about consuming, not playing. Having a monthly model allows both to co-exist.

As for community…people are actively comparing F2P with P2P saying the former is worse? Has anyone set foot into WoW lately? Sure the existing community in LotRO is on average more mature and knowledgeable of the content and the average will drop. People who play for a month at a time won’t reach Mirkwood, let alone Moria so does it really matter in the long run for existing players? The ones who have always wanted to play but couldn’t fit it into the time/cost budget will now have a chance (I am in that boat).

I understand your fear on this especially after the allods failure we all went through, but your basing your judgement off the allods model of free to play and fortunately for turbine they are a lot smarter about the free to play model.

First and foremost the game will still have a monthly sub option that gives access to everything the same as it currently is and therefore the lifetime subbers aren’t losing anything (infact they will be gaining turbine point rewards and increased community activity). The rest of the store stuff is mostly there for the free to play crowd who will be limited on some content but have access to the game, and will have to buy turbine points to spend to permanently unlock other things they may be interested in if they don’t want to pay a subscription fee. Obviously there will be some items (mostly fluff and buff kinda stuff) in the store to give incentive for people to spend pooled turbine points on. Subscribing will always be an option if a person chooses to not want to play for free or buy turbine points to unlock things.

This system is an awesome..i repeat AWESOME free to play system that should be followed on more games, giving people the ability to play and experiment in a game as well as stay in contact with friends without the pressure of having to constantly maintain a subscription just to pop in once in awhile to say hi or check out recent changes. It offers a lot and takes away almost nothing.

I’m sad to see you bash it without having experienced turbines previous amazing f2p conversion in DDO.

I have been a subscriber to LoTRO for years. At first I was like most and thought what the heck was going on, but now that I read what is actually in store I think this is a great idea for LoTRO.

As one that is playing the end game this change will not affect me one iota and if anything now will enhance my playing with the monthly stipend of TPs to buy fluff stuff!

There is not one thing you can mention that would affect my playing in a negative way. (and please don’t say the community will go to shit as anyone running around in moria and beyond will be a paying customer like today and those buffoons that migrate to beginning areas will be non existent)

And like DDO with more incoming revenue more content, and how is that bad?

I had it down to 2 MMO’s to go to, LOTRO which has great PVE, and Warhammer Online which has great PvP and has gotten considerably better than last I played it….Warhammer it is

@Pai and Sentry,

I see yalls point of view on the Dungeon finder. But I also think it’s impact is huge. Before the finder you would have a ton of time traveling (and if pug’n) it often went bad. With the finder I have gotten to go into every single dungeon that before I couldn’t. It just wasn’t feasable. (not enough people, no lock, 90% of time waiting for someone, etc) Not to mention tensions were always high and folks raged much harder.

Things were much better in a guild and I agree more epic. And some of the best momories are of 40 man raids.

I guess I’m somewhat in the middle. I personally love the Dungeon finder, but I honestly do wish there were more to do to let the server factions battle it out and explore their massive world. Examples: add random spawning treasure chest, random spawning Huge boss mobs, Hell anything with the goal to get folks out across the world, team up, achieve goals, and kick the other factions ass.

Another example where i’m in the middle is the Flight paths. When I first started I always beotched about how long it took to fly anywhere and that it should be instant. Then I played WAR and found out how small the world felt when traveling. Instantly spawning from castle to castle was lame. Came back to WoW and love every flight I have to take now.

Hell this discussion has me more consfused about what I like/dislike…. I don’t even know anymore! ahhahaha.

@Howdy Doody

Basicaly I feel like there are two types of mmo players in this post WoW era, and they can not coexist peacefully. Unfortunatly I am on the losing side, and we are losing bad, like really really bad. Filch had the best analogy Ive ever seen to describe it.

If it were just up to the players I would say to the other side “Fine you dont like my game the way it is, I get it, but why do you expect my game which I love to change to suit your wants? Go play a differant game thats already like that and leave mine alone.”

But its not up to the players,its the gaming companys, and they see me and my group, and then they see you and your group, which is ten times mine, and they say “yeah, screw you guys Sentry, we can make a lot more money by pleasing Howdys group.”

The most pure examlpe of this is probably SWG. Lucas arts saw the sub numbers WoW was putting up(which launched after SWG did), and they got their pantys in a bunch because they precious IP was getting trounced. So they gutted one of the best, most innovative sandbox mmos to make it a WoW clone, willingly sacrificing their current player base in the hopes attracting the WoW crowd.

@Parenon

But it is…f2p is the evolution of the increasingly casual,accessible,easymode trend that every mmo game company is following. Its where the cash is.

@sentry

“But it is…f2p is the evolution of the increasingly casual,accessible,easymode trend that every mmo game company is following. Its where the cash is.”

I agree with every part of that except f2p. f2p has nothing to do with the trend of pushing towards casual. That is all p2p. That is all Blizzard.

Even as a consumer who “just wants a game to play”, I still passionately dislike F2P item shop and RMT models. In my opinion, they just do not make for fun games to play.

The main problem I see is that they encourage developers to push item shop purchases; and many do so by fist filling their games with deliberately annoying elements and then selling their players a way to bypass them for cash. You have to have a lot of faith in your favorite game developer to believe that they are going to act purely in the best interest of their players under these circumstances.

Even sub + item shop model is not completely immune. Look at Blizzard. It’s clear that vanity-only just isn’t cutting it anymore. Cute pet #25 isn’t as special as cute pet #1. So they quickly went from purely cosmetic pets to sparkly ponies to selling premium Auction House access; and now their CMs are busy re-defining what constitutes an “in-game advantage” on the official forums. It’s a real pity too. I like playing well-developed, relatively bug-free games that do not reach for my wallet the second I log in. It looks like soon I won’t have that option.

Agreed there, Keen.

@msp, any developer that expects to survive as a developer is not going to act in the best interests of their players (else there wouldn’t be cash in sports games every single year, some sell purely because of their sport and do just fine), for better or worse, they act in the best interests of their paychecks. And the best way to for players’ best interest and developer’s best interest to be united is in the model that DDO has successfully used. DDO is NOT the cash shop of your average cash in F2P game. DDO’s team actively develops new things for the game in order to earn the money of the player. Turbine employees have called this the “Democratization” of an MMO, I think that fits and offers bodes better for MMO’s than most other directions the genre seems to be going in. Allods took the typical route and the primary money maker was what allowed people to quickly remove their death penalty, other “F2P” games make grinding so horrible that if you want to get far you practically HAVE to get their XP boost potion buffs or what have you.. Honestly, I think Allods Would’ve been better as a subscription based game, even if a WoW clone, because what they were doing for their cash was heavy handed blocking of game content and demanding an outrageous fee that punishes the more hard core players for wanting to play their game. DDO offers a system where neither the “casual” nor the “hard Core” will be punished, as while the hard core may pay more they will also largely be getting more in terms of places to explore and and classes to play at a much less heinous price than Allods where they get nothing new.

DDO does not and has not done that, Turbine has proven capable of handling F2P in such a way as not to turn the product into an Allods incident which attempts outright thievery from its customers. The Argument that “LotRO is a different game” is rubbish because the way in which Turbine is approaching F2P is the same and it prevents the game from falling into the traps of games like Allods, assuming of course that warner brothers doesn’t force turbine to do something stupid.

Blizzard is cashing in on micro-transactions in a more crude way than turbine is. Pay 25$ for a sparkly pony and then keep paying 15$ a month for subscriptions or you can’t use it. If you bought a sparkly pony in DDO, you could keep using it without the 15# a month fee.

Imagine two supermarkets. In one, you roam around at your leisure, browsing through the store. The store is full of people like you, all wandering around doing their own thing. Nobody bothers you, you get what you want, you leave.

The other store is full of kids, you cannot hear yourself think. Store assistants continually wander up to you to try and sell you things. You were thinking of buying those things anyway but to have them shoved in your face is frankly, quite irritating. Every time you try and talk to somebody, 10 random nearby people shout at you about “Buying cash from their website!”.

The old world will become a cesspit of arrogant kiddies and F2P hippies proclaiming their love for the F2P movement as they drift aimlessly from game to game, not actually playing any for long enough to care about them. Add in the inevitable goldspammers, who no longer need to buy accounts via fake credit cards and you have a ruined old world. Groups will be easier to find though…..yay?

Sadly though, F2P probably is the future. Companies go where the money is and theres money to be had in exploiting the addictive nature of people. The addicted minority paying for the freeloading majority isnt a payment model that appeals to me *shrug*

Meh, single player games are the future for me most likely. I hate the F2P model and I cant stomach any more warcraft quest hub clones.

2 weeks ago my freinds and i were discussing if we wanted to try out lotro man im glad we didnt buy it.

f2p just takes away so much from a game but maybe it was the only way to generate an income on lotro.

@Parenon – Sure, any developer wants to take care of their paychecks first and foremost. I’m not accusing them of running a “for players, by players” charity :). I simply feel that in P2P situation their interests better align with mine. To keep subscriptions going, P2P developers need to make their games engaging and fun to play. I like that. They also have vested interest in shipping high-quality products and maintaining them. F2P games often launch buggy, full of deliberately annoying mechanics and with a shop full of overpowered items in case players need an extra-large carrot to go with the stick. End result: even if you do pony up for a demigod status monthly, you’re still playing a semi-broken game.

That said, I’m glad to hear that Turbine is doing a better take on F2P. Perhaps I’ll try LotRO when the changes go live. I’ve been meaning to for a while now. Oh, and don’t get me started on Blizzard’s cash shop. It won’t be pretty.

that sounds like the worst implementation of microtransactions ive ever heard of.. well its just more proof of how much turbine sux.

League of legends is the only game i know of where the micro transactiosn is done well.

Personally I hate microtransactions, but trying to be objective here. LOTRO will in all likelihood remain a good game after this change, a good game that I will not play because of the character models and animations. It might be developed a little differently from now on. Not necessarily bad if at least a portion of its new found revenue is used towards development.

In all honestly there is no f2p vs. p2p fight anymore. Making games is a business and business always gravitates towards the highest profit, there is no fighting against that. So in that sense maybe this is a good thing, maybe Turbine can create a standard here that other MMO’s will adopt. Certainly an improvement compared to most of the f2p models out there.

Personally, I’m not your intended audience, since I’m not a current LOTRO subscription player. I can’t financially afford any subscription games, which is why DDO is the only MMO I’m playing right now. LOTRO is the MMO I’ve *wanted* to play ever since it was announced, so this is a great thing for me.

I will say, regarding weapons and gear, in DDO they don’t sell high level weapons and gear or the parts to make them. What they do sell in the shop is basic weapons from +1 to +3. At exorbitant prices. Which means you can buy a small hit/damage advantage for about your first 5 levels or so. Very few players seem to bother buying them, since they’re rather expensive considering it’s not that hard to get better weapons in-game.

The top sellers in the store seem to always be adventure packs, healing potions, and experience boost items.

I actually expect LOTRO to be a little more limited in the shop, simply because you’ve got a more narrow theme base to work off of with Tolkein. D&D is filled with massive quantities of overpowered things to play with, and DDO seems to have shown a fair amount of restraint in what they put in the store.

I will say that I can see one area of concern in this, which I wonder if it isn’t closer to the exactness of the community argument.

Community is entirely what you make of it. If you and 5 or 20 or 30 of your friends stick together and keep playing routinely, you can mostly ignore the other people. It will only break up the community if the people who are your community start leaving, to that extent.

However, I think there is an underlying concern there that the flavor of the game will change if casual players who aren’t Tolkeinites come in and begin behaving in ways that aren’t in keeping with Tolkein theme. A potential disruption of your immersion into the Tolkein world, if you will. You have a potential point in that. But hopefully that will be ameliorated by the comments that the casual players will never invest enough to get into the zones mostly occupied by the longterm hardcore players.

My real background, before MMOs even existed, was MU*, mostly MUSHes. Even before that, I was on IRC-based RP games. Personally I think text-based games will always be better RPGs than graphical games. 😉 But that’s because text-based games aren’t limited by the scope of interactions that developers have coded. They’re really interactive novels. And there are still thriving Tolkein MUSHes out there for just that reason. Most of them are totally F2P, no subscriptions involved at all. Players come and go, but it only matters if those key to your character leave. But they are another different genre, really, which is why the graphical MMOs have attracted a lot of MU* players but not killed off the MU*s.

One last comment, which is that there is an art to learning to ignore idiots. The only times I’ve really had trouble with idiots in DDO was when I ended up in a party with one and their antics got us killed. But that’s going to be a case with any game, anywhere. Learning how to laugh at the absurdity till you can leave the party, instead of getting mad, is a vital skill for any game player.

Remember even Allods was a fun game to play; it was poor implementation of the F2P model that killed it, a marketing problem, as opposed to an intrinsic flaw in the model. The F2P mechanic is in a state of evolution, so don’t be surprised that a few games will fail until it adopts a form suitable for a western market. A virus that quickly kills its host is not as successful as one that adapts to coexist; the F2P model is in that state of transition, with surviving developers borrowing from the lessons of the dead, learning how to best extract money long-term from their hosts.

Subscriptions for MMOs have been $15 for as long as I can remember. Is this shift in the pricing model a way to get more money out of people without raising the monthly sub? WoWs sub is still $15 but they are charging $25 for a sparkly pony. LOTRO sub has not changed but now new players can play for free but also have options to buy stuff which a lot will do. DDO players play for free but have options to buy stuff. Is this a way to get more money without raising sub prices which would likely cause an uproar? Imagine EQ2 saying our monthly subscription was now $20 a month rather that $15. Tons of people will be ticked off. But keep the sub the same, allow players to play for free but have to buy premium items and there is still complaints but from the hardcore gamer minority.

Spidubic – Lotro has actually had a 10$ per month subscription cost for a few years now. Pretty much since the first Christmas, it’s been pretty easy to get it at 10$ forever.

The F2P move doesn’t worry me. This means we’ll get more content faster. They significantly increased the development rate for DDO, and the same should happen with Lotro.

Since the biggest sales will be coming from quest packs and expansion unlocks, I can see where the incentive to churn out the rest of the content to Moria will be very high. There’ll also be incentive to add the areas of Middle Earth that are more off the beaten path of the primary story.

Also, getting more folks playing the game will be a good thing. Nobody reads general chat in Lotro anyhow. It’s all kin chat or the private chats like glff channel or such. Seeing Bree populated again the way that 21st Hall and Emyn Lum is now can only be a good thing for the game.

I (like Keen) am more of an old-school virtual world MMO player and do not like what is happening to LOTRO. My biggest concerns are:

1) The community will suffer- LOTRO has a great general community with lots of mature players, lore fans, and a decent amount of RP. This is very hard to find in the MMO world these days. And every F2P game I’ve tried had an atrocious, shallow community.

2) The lore-heavy aspect of LOTRO will not blend well with the inevitable constant cash shop marketing. “Gandalf says, there’s nothing like a Hope Potion to fight Nazgul! On sale right now in Rivendell!”

I think that the players who approach MMOs as virtual worlds and meaningful communities have a very different outlook than players who want to dabble in games ‘for free’ in a serial fashion. You can see that in the comments on this thread.

I’d be glad to be wrong about this, by the way. We will see, but I’m not hopeful.

Irenor, I tried DDO, and I was bombarded with cash shop offers. A lot. And I’d be pleasantly surprised to find that LOTRO’s community will stay the same under the F2P model- I’d be amazed, frankly.

I agree that DDO’s cash shop model is not as bad as other F2P games. I’m mainly thinking about the community and the lore focus of LOTRO, which I fear for.

I’m a lifetime LOTRO subscriber by the way.

I have to agree that it’s quite possible that the community change. But it’s not F2P exclusive, WoW’s community isn’t the best community ever (to stay polite) yet it’s a P2P. But still, I agree with you.

I only had to clear up the “Too much advertising to buy Cash Shop because it’s F2P” aspect of your post.

Irenor, you are correct that subscription models don’t automatically make a good community, and WoW is as you describe. That’s why I think LOTRO’s (IMHO) fairly solid general community, something that I haven’t quite seen in other games for years now, is at risk from this move.

The drama runs deep in this post. 🙂
I just want to add the following thought to the conversation:

Why the hell does the free to play model has to follow the idiotic cash shop model?
Why aren’t there more MMOs following the Guild Wars model where you buy the box but play for free?

There could be an evolution for that model: sell new content online every two/three months instead of releasing boxed expansions. And there you have a decent model.

I think this is a smart move on Turbines behalf. The MMO market is changing and there is increasing competition not just from other MMO’s but from all other pc and console games.

Ive noticed that myself and all the guys i used to play GW and WoW with arent interested in forking out the cash anymore on a monthly basis because we cant play a wide range of games and get the full value from the subscription model at the same time.

Sorry but IMO that’s pure contradiction and the fact that the sparkle horse sold so well just directed MMO’s even more torward a macro-transaction model.

And for me it is much more obscene to have a game offering micro/macro transactions when it’s already charging their players a subscription, even if the item is just cosmetic.
And judging by your reaction to the Cryptic store: https://www.keenandgraev.com/?p=3470 I would guess you defended the same. Except you have a double standard because it is Blizzard.

And in case you haven’t noticed the Turbine cash shop model is actually a lot different from the Allods cash shop model. By selling content and not required items in the cash shop they actually have to focus on putting out content.

Don’t want to be bothered to play it free? Just subscribe and you have access to everything with your VIP status plus you can buy stuff with your 500 TP per month.

Any links for critical information on the current state of Allods? I am not interested in getting back into it, but I do have a morbid curiosity…

@Carson: If you have followed Guild Wars as closely as I have, you’d know that Guild Wars’s business model is not good if you expect a game with constant content additions. They failed to create an expansion in the six-month time they intended to do. Support for the game is pretty much non-existent because the game has no monthly-fee (this is the reason given by ArenaNET themselves). The game lacks so many features most other MMO (or non-MMO) games have, f2p or otherwise, to the point that the company decided to move on and create Guild Wars 2 which will be pretty much a clone of other fantasy MMOs, but with the same business model.

We’ll probably have to wait and see how that goes. I suspect that it may come with a cash shop similar to what we see in other games; after all, if the business model is exactly the same as GW1, there’s no reason to create GW2 whatsoever.

I’m sorry, Keen, but I also agree with many of the rest that you’re way off base on this. I’ve been a long time reader of your blog but it’s pretty obvious that you’re making a snap judgement here without giving it much thought. I’m assuming that you’re basing your “F2P” disdain on your misadventures in Allods Online, but if you spent a little time getting re-aquainted with LOTRO, you’d realize that this is a good change and will bring some fresh blood to the game without “ruining” it.

It’s no different than WAR’s “unlimited trial” in that it incentivized F2P folks to switch to subs to experience the full game, without detracting from subscrivers’ experience. A little research would have quickly shown that if you’re already a subscriber, not much will change for you other than a few extra perks and some cosmetic stuff, not far off from WOW’s sparkly pony shop – which I don’t see you complaining about here.

These knee-jerk “sky is falling” tirades you’ve been posting lately are getting pretty old. It’d be nice to see an unbiased discussion on here for once instead of these polarized, uninformed rants. I miss the old Keen. :/

I’m not really sure it’s correct to classify this as LOTRO becoming a F2P game, even if that’s what Turbine themselves are claiming.

I’d actually liken this to Wizard101 and say it’s really a non-expiring Free Trial with additional content available to paying customers.

@Keen

Or maybe the old executive producer as moved to produce a Harry Potter MMO? He wasn’t fired nor did he resigned. He was reassigned!

And you really need to learn some differences between the freemium and free-to-play/cash shop model. While the first one usually sells content in the cash shop besides some minor cosmetiv items the second one usually sells items that are necessary for the gameplay. In the first type you have games like Wizard 101, DDO and a couple of others, in the second one you have Allods, RoM and a shitload of Korean grinders.

IMO, the first model is more adapted to the Western market and the success of Wizard 101 and DDO proves this.
Before you flame this change try to understand the differences in the free to play revenue models.

@ Carson

If you read my post you could see that i suggested improvements. I am almost sure that Guild Wars 2 will follow a revenue model very similar to DDO and LoTRO. It’s a logical evolution of their model. They usually sold boxed expansions every now and then. I can see them selling the content in a in-game cash shop alongside a load of cosmetic options.

To follow suit, “aaa, i’m not in the mood for this” isn’t a particularly articulate way to start a comment either; it makes it seem like you are apologizing in advance for not being invested enough in the comment to follow. I wouldn’t normally make such a point, but hypocrisy is a pet peeve of mine…

Peace in the galaxy!

Monsieur I really think you need to check out DDO (the other Turbine game with this model) before making the claim that you can buy your way to the top.

In DDO, you can buy convenience items, loot bonuses, xp bonuses and access to classes, races etc that you would normally have to grind for.

You can’t buy anything even resembling decent gear. There is no way to buy your way to the top. You can buy your way to the end game slightly faster (25% faster), but that is about it.

Before F2P came to DDO there was one thing in common with the communities on both DDO and LOTRO – both complained about a lack of content and a lack of players.

DDO is now getting a steady stream of new updates based on the success of F2P.

LOTRO has servers that are ghost-towns except a few endgame areas and the PVP area. Either you need more players or all of the content would have to become soloable (which I don’t want at all!) so IMHO LOTRO needs F2P now to save it. Look at the LOTRO forums pre the F2P announcement and you will see the complaints of repeated delays to updates and the widespread disappointment at the quantity and quality of content post SoA (the original game).

LOTRO may have started out well but it’s lost it’s way and needs a serious injection of players and money to get back on track. I’m playing now as a relatively new subscriber but before the announcement I was worried about the future of the game, now I’m not.

The verdict, and this comes from the majority of past games that have financial backing, is that LOTRO will follow the path of DDO just like everyone thinks, right down to the last punctuation mark. By this, I mean, is that the content released will be short, shabby, and contain enough game play to help you finish off a quick boring weekend.

I would like ANYONE here to truly go log into DDO right now and try to download a couple pieces of content and stay with it for more than a day or two. Just try.

PS: You cannot, because it is just one ill-made dungeon.

Dietx, I play DDO with my friends every Tuesday night and occasionally some other times during the week. You know what? It is fantastic. We don’t have to grind, grind, grind away to achieve anything and we can do a couple of adventures in the 2 hours we play.

We’ve bought a couple of the adventure packs and I think they have been quite good. There are some decent stories, some puzzles, some good fun.

I am not really sure what your argument is. When it comes down to it, most of the MMOs we all play are all about whacking loot bags with different types of sticks. LotRO was not any different when I played it. I am not sure what the move to free to play will change about it except bringing in more players.

F2p players are worse than the crap under my boot.Kids with no need for credit cards and no bed times = hill billy community.

Sorry but I agree, don’t ruin this great game with f2p riff raff.

DDO turned for the better in F2P. I dont see why Lotro would be different. Maybe I’ll play again now.

Keen you have to accept the fact that you are a dying breed my man. The heavily invested experienced MMO player, the guy that shreds a game to the bone and lives by it.

In the current market, with so much MMO competition, hardcore MMO players are not where the money is to be made. Nope, casual gameplay is the next big thing. And casual gamers are the moneycow.

I love how someone in an above comment brought up the latest Blizzard mount example. He’s so dead on.

CASUAL + EASY ACCESS = BLING BLING

I like to think of LOTRO in SWG terms. It has (had) a tight playerbase. A very dedicated audience, hardcore kinda people, that live and die by their game. But those people (numbers) are not enough. Not if you want to survive in the current market.
You claim they were doing all right? How can you know? How can you tell? That’s what people said about SWG as well. “But they were doing all right man, why the changes??”. Well ,they weren’t. Bleeding slowely is death by ignorance.

LOTRO is not, and this may sound weird, a niche game. It has elves, orcs and the like. It’s not that different than what’s out there atm. LOTRO had little future left in my opinion. Could they grow any further? Nope.
And again, in this period/market, stagnation means decline. The only ones that keep beating the odds are EVE Online, because they are a niche game that cater to a very specific crowd.

Don’t get me wrong, I hear what you say, and I understand completely. But the days of hardcore MMO players, the days that MMO games were difficult to understand and get into, the days mmo’s in general were a niche, those are over.

You’re 100% correct in some of your opinions, but in the changing MMO world today, you sound like that 60 year old dude sitting in his wheelchair in the corner of the room, yelling stuff like “In the old days we had to walk to the other side of the map by ourselves. We didn’t have insta-travel and shiittt.”
And then your grandkids look at you from the other side of the room and say “We know granddad, we know. Now be quiet we’re trying to play a game here. Sheez.”

Great discussion here though. But the rabbithole goes deeper than people think.

I agree with you on most things, Keen, but on this, I think you’re wrong. For me, this is an opportunity to try a MMO that I would probably not play otherwise — I think it’s definitely a good thing. Also, Turbine’s F2P model is perhaps the best out there right now; DDO proves that it works rather well. If you’re thinking LOTRO will somehow become like Allods Online… well, that’s like comparing a ripe, juicy apple to a raisin.

I left Lotro as soon as I heard the announcement about free to play, and as did a lot of my Kin, and also players I know outside of my Kin. I started playing in June 2007, and I really loved the game from then until late 2009. Mirkwood was a terrible “expansion”, but we now know why that it was bad, and why we’ve recieved so little content from summer 2009 up until now, the reason being Turbine have been working on free to play.

I will miss what this game was, and also what it could have been, but most of all I will miss the community. Of all the MMO’s out there, Lotro has by far the best community, but this will no doubt change come 10th September. Thankyou all for a great 3 years in a once great game.

Cheers.