Free-to-Play LOTRO Doubles Revenues

[HT_Black]

Somewhere, Gabe Newall just shed a single tear of joy for his prodigal son-that-he-had-nothing-to-do-with-the-creation-of.

 

[Necromancer1991]

...*looks around*...why doesn't WoW do this (Yes I'm bringing THAT up again). Well I've played LoTRO a bit already and I will say that I PREFER the F2P system (or the 1-time payment of Guild Wars) to the $20 a month model

 

[Nukeforyou]

Why didnt realtime worlds listen? well i suppose this was posted a little late.. but THEY should've known

 

[BENZOOKA]

That sounds great. I had no idea. Ridiculous monthly fees have kept me away from the world of MMORPGs, other than the odd couple months of WoW, six years back.

 

[Optimystic]

...*looks around*...why doesn't WoW do this (Yes I'm bringing THAT up again). Well I've played LoTRO a bit already and I will say that I PREFER the F2P system (or the 1-time payment of Guild Wars) to the $20 a month model

I would imagine because they got 12 million people [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/104134-World-of-Warcraft-Tops-12-Million-Subscribers] to subscribe.

If you have above a certain number of customers, becoming F2P won't appreciably increase that number.

 

[Karathos]

Great. Now F2P just needs to be released in Europe too... >_>

 

[Catalyst6]

It's interesting that the amount *doubled*, I didn't think that the increase would be that much...

I'm actually one of the saps that was drawn in by the promise of free gameplay, and I can see how the model would be effective. Hell, I almost bought some stuff myself, that is until I realized how gorram expensive it all is...

 

[Owlslayer]

Argh, Turbine, stop tempting me!
This is my final school year, i can't play a MMO right now!
God dammit, when DDO went F2P i was over it. Luckily i ended the addiction, though i still am not sure how i managed to do that. A MMORPG that's in the LoTR world is REALLY tempting, and that it's free, i really want to play it. But i must not...
Damn.

 

[Killerbunny001]

This is not main stream so stop making it sound like a big success.

Basically were talking about a but ugly game and a half completed one making "good". I don`t want to be playing this type of "good" I want to be playing exefuckinglent. And Free to play is quite at that level yet.

My two cents anyway...

 

[brunothepig]

This is such great news. First, it proves that MMO's can do just as well, or better, with a free to play subscription. Second, it reminded me that LOTRO is free now. Dammit, how did I forget that? I was gonna get it straight away, but I'd maxxed the bandwidth...
And you doomsayers, it's not so bad, I played DDO for a while, but I had to delete it when I wiped my HDD and haven't bothered reinstalling... Anyway, you can find the currency used in microtransactions (presumably this is the same thing, since they're both Turbine games) and the best stuff is always in game. But they gotta make money somehow, so if people want a boost, or some help finding the uber items, then they can go nuts as far as I'm concerned.

LOTRO is actually a lot less F2P friendly than DDO. You are pretty much left without quests past 20 lvl (i think vanilla cap was 50 or 60), you earn TurbinePoints much much slower while the prices are same if not higher than in DDO, and unless you really want to grind you butt off on Deeds you will want to at least buy Mines of Moria expansion on ebay or some retail shop that may still have it and use those 30 free VIP days to get past the grind stage.

Hmmmm... Disappointing. Still, I'll check out LOTRO. But if it's this bad I may be heading back to DDO soon.