LotRO F2P? Really? (7 posts)

  • Profile picture of Fletch Fletch said 1 year, 8 months ago:

    Lord of the Rings is going free-to-play? Is that right?

    Did they consult with all the lifetime subscription holders to make sure it was okay?

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  • Profile picture of Kisheek Kisheek said 1 year, 8 months ago:

    I don’t know if they consulted, but the F2P part is VERY vanilla. You have to buy expansions and a lot of other stuff.
    Source:

    http://www.lotro.com/news/pressreleases/782-the-lord-of-the-rings-online-will-be-free-to-play-starting-september-10-2010

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  • Profile picture of Vinny Vinny said 1 year, 8 months ago:

    Lifers are taken care of fairly well. I’m not one of them but it looks to cover a lot. I really like their implementation and I’m looking forward to playing it again when it launches. Would be nice if a few people come back or a few new people join. The content free accounts have access to is still significant. Though the restrictions may feel a bit to tight, but they are a business, if everything everyone wanted was free they wouldn’t make any money. But getting a few one time payment upgrades is fairly cheap.

    If you want to see how not to do a switch to F2P look at EQ2.

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  • Profile picture of Moatengator Moatengator said 1 year, 8 months ago:

    Yeah good point Vinny. I am a Lifer x2 on LoTRO, and while I don’t play that often anymore, not due to the game per se, I have more than gotten my money out of it. I am looking forward to whole F2P. One issue is that our biggest concentration of characters as a group, is on Elendilmir, which I think with Brandywine and one other aren’t open to the F2P all the other mature servers are, including Landro, I believe. I haven’t really looked at the particulars since BETA early on. They really have cracked the code on the transition. Them Turbine guys are very deliberate and with them running three games they have the ability to try things out and tweak.

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  • Profile picture of Ring Ring said 1 year, 8 months ago:

    Was the EQ2 F2P switch notorious or something? I keep hearing references to it, but without much in the way of elaboration.

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  • Profile picture of Kisheek Kisheek said 1 year, 8 months ago:

    I hadn’t even heard EQ2 went F2P, but after a little research, I see that one can get up to level 80 and play everything that a paying player can except the newest expansion. There are other drawbacks if you don’t want to pay anything, but overall manageable.
    Source:

    http://everquest2.com/free_to_play/game_overview

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  • Profile picture of Vinny Vinny said 1 year, 8 months ago:

    With EQ2 my main problem is that they left all the regular subscription servers running as normal, they are completely separate from F2P. Right now F2P is just one new server. F2P replaced the trial as well, all new players will go there, no reason not to really. So the standard servers will stop getting new players.

    Bronze and Silver are the only non-recurring membership types. Gold is $15 a month and Plat $200, so the same price or more than just playing on the regular subscriptions servers, which are still running. The subs are also separate, paying for one does not give you access or benefits in the the other. If you buy the latest expansion in live you do not have access to that expansion in F2P, you need to buy it twice to play it on both, even though it’s the same account.

    At launch of F2P only 6 of the 24 classes where available for Bronze/Silver accounts. To play the others you had to pay the same $15 a month as live servers. As soon as you stopped paying that and went back to Bronze/Silver you lost access to those characters.Thankfully they fixed this by allowing you to pay a one time fee to unlock a specific class. This was a deal-breaker for many, and rightfully so, it did not make sense.

    The problems extended much, much further as well. I could go on and on about how many things just do not make sense with their implementation.

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