I’m sure that the Turbine announcement of LOTRO’s impending Free to Play mode will generate a fair dose of trolling out there over the weekend (“oh, noez, the game is dying!” or “yayz, the game is dying!” or “we’re going to be overrun by MMO tourist trolls!”), but I’m going to echo Ravious on this one and be optimistic overall. I think it’s probably a wise move for the longevity of the game in a shifting market. That said, I’m still not sure when or even if I’ll be revisiting the game.
I don’t quite have the humorously adversarial relationship with the game that Shamus does, but LOTRO and I, well, we have history. Y’see, it’s the only video game that has the distinction of traumatizing my daughter. The cave troll that busts out of the wall in the Dwarf starting story had her convinced that a monster would break through her bedroom wall. Dumb daddy (me) lets her sit on my lap sometimes as I play games, but that wasn’t the… wisest time to let her in on the LoTR IP. She and I slept on the couches in the front room for three weeks until I convinced her that the Dwarves had moved into our neighboring mountains and had made the trolls go away.
I love kid logic.
Anyway, LOTRO isn’t a bad game, but neither is it really the MMO that I’m looking for, or the LoTR game that I’d most like to spend time with. (That honor goes to this title that I’ve had on my shelf for years… yeah, high priority.) Sure, I’d like to spend some quality gaming time in Middle Earth, it’s just that I can’t do that in DIKUMMO games since I have to spend too much time grinding before I can just look around without fear of being torn asunder by grumpy trolls, dire pigs, giant spiders… or whatever.
Still, it’s more tempting now than before, and they have a better chance of earning money from me like DDO did. I’ll chalk that up as a win for the LOTRO guys, and I wish them well.
…
Anyone calling the date for when WoW finally does the same thing? All I see in my crystal ball is Bobby Kotick, and I’ve seen my share of trolls for the day.
I think Blizzard might consider going F2Play with WoW only when their next MMO comes out, and then only once it’s up & running with a gazillion subscribers.
And then…it will only be F2Play if you have a $15/month Battle.net subscription which, well goodness me! It comes with a “free” vanilla WoW sub!
Ah, so *that’s* why Kotick is smiling maliciously. 😉
[…] Tish Tosh Tesh: “Still, it’s more tempting now than before, and they have a better chance of earning money from me like DDO did.” […]
I don’t think WoW is will ever go F2P. I think they’re happy with their subscriptions + extra purchasable content. They’ve got the best of both worlds really.
Eh. I’m more in agreement with Keen on this. I don’t think it will help because LOTRO was doing fine and was stable. DDO only did it because it was dying.
I wonder about future releases though. No way I’m going to buy a sub game from turbine if they are willing to cash shop it later on.
I already commented the very same thing on many blogs, the most complete edition is on Dusty Monk’s blog ( http://ofcourseillplayit.com/?p=431 ).
In short, I wonder if LOTRO will be as successful as DDO and if it will really do the game good. And Lifetimers did not really win with this offer. I think especially EU gamers who took the latest offer got scammed. I also wonder what they will sell in LOTRO? DDO’s instanced structure really cried for F2P, but LOTRO’s huge, connected world?
It is a great opportunity to show how F2P can be done right, on the other hand.
I can’t help but think that GW2 in the wings is also putting a bit of pressure on the industry. If LOTRO were selling their lifetime sub at $200 and GW2 comes out and undercuts that with their own “lifetime sub”, even at $60 or $70, who do you think would sell more?
Turbine is paying attention to the market, and I think it behooves them to do so. Better to try to stay ahead than get left behind by a changing market.
This is true for SWTOR, too, and one reason why I recommended ages ago that they shouldn’t try to run with a sub-only monetization plan. The DDO/LOTRO hybrid is closer to the future of the market than the WoW model… and it’s possible that even Blizzard knows it, despite needing to at least give a pretense of loyalty to the sub model. Why else experiment with the sparkle pony and minipets?
I don’t know. To use a tongue-in-cheek example, it would be like selling your own game piecemeal in the hopes that more people would play KoK if they could buy only the first five levels for 99 cents and maybe buy the fuller game as they need it. I think you’d find that very few people ever get past that, and what they are doing is just bargain hunting fragments of games to game on the cheap.
I don’t see this model working. I see it generating inflated number counts of “subscribers” but not communities.
I kind of think the product ‘wow’ is the market pressure making others go to free to play.
Whether they gang up and form enough market pressure back to make it go free to play – well, wow’s gone from subscription to subscription + micro transactions (sparkle ponies, server transfers, race changes, other things that cost them zero and make millions).
So there needs to be alot more pressure before that changes…
I’m quite pleased about this and I hope it catches on.
I’m rather swayed by Turbine’s argument that sub-based games only rent you the game where other models let you buy it. 5 years of WoW and all I have to show for it is an Armoury link that doesn’t work. Cost about $1000 counting box, expansions and subs.
9 months in DDO and I have most of the content unlocked, 800 points in the bank and can play any of my characters whenever I want. Cost $50.
Seems a better way to pay for online gaming.
I think your renting in either instance, as turbine can retract it’s service at any time (indeed, this is even MORE renting than, say, if you rented a car, as the car rental place cannot instant retract your ability to use a car, while a mmorpg can with the press of a button)
It could be thought of as infinite renting though, as you pay once for the item then rent it eternally (as long as the company still provides the service).
It’s important not to read more into a deal than your actually getting.
Battle For Middle Earth is fun. Though.. it still has EA written all over the bugs and overpowered cavalry 😉
Dblade brings up a good point though about buying future games form Turbine. I’m no sucker. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
Yes, changing business plans midstream can be problematic. That’s perhaps the most turbulent part of this situation, not so much the actual original sub plan or hybrid plan itself. I’m firmly with Stabs on this, but I do see problems when expectations change.
I’ve had Battle for Middle Earth since I worked for EA (I picked it up on sale from their internal store)… having worked in the industry, and for EA specifically, I expect it to be a bit buggy, but I’m hoping for some fun anyway. 😉