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Lord of the Rings Online: New F2P Screens
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Turbine has sent out several new screens from the upcoming free to play version of Lord of the Rings Online. The first group give players a look at the new 'locked quest' icon that will indicate a 'pay to play' quest line within the game.
We also have several screens showing off character generation.
Comments
aha! what comes next? locked textures? locked dual wield? locked character heads?
This is just a technical quibble with MMORPG.com, but is there specific reason that they cannot call a press release a press release? This isn't an interview by any stretch...so perhaps call it a Screen Shot Release...at best?
This is just showing up in the news section for me. Is it labeled an interview somewhere or are you referring to something off-topic?
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
Interviews By Guest Writer on July 15, 2010
Would be what ericbelser is referring to, would be my guess...
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
Lord of the Rings Online - Interviews
That would be the heading it was under for me...it's not a big deal but you would think that since basically every company does periodic SS releases it might have its' own category or heading...rather than being lumped under "interviews"?
Get ready to open your wallet. From the +50 Stat tomes, Reputation Mounts, Class Skills, Virtues, Legendary Item XP and more are available in the store.
Everyone will have to shell out the $$ to keep playing - don't let the "VIP Rewards" dazzle you, that 500 points will get you very little (as intended).
The store just oozes with "Give us your mony my PRECOIUSSESS!".
The "The store is for Convienience" PR Bullsh!t is completely sickening.
Avoid like the plague.
No, what comes next is the whiners cry a river which opens up a new unlockable rowboat line of Quests... ; )
Relax...
I really don't get what there is NOT to like about the move to F2P (okay, I have one exception, which I'll mention shortly). As far as I can see, there are two options and neither of them has any negative aspects to it.
You are currently a paying subscriber to LotRO. If you continue to pay come F2P, you will not lose anything. In fact, if you continue to pay, you will be a VIP player and receive a monthly allowance of LotRO points to spend on things like more bank slots, more wardrobe slots, more shared storage slots, more character slots, special crafting recipes, boosts to XP gain and similar boosts akin to those you buy with Destiny Points, and ultimately probably even entire expansions (the latter judging from the fact that MoM and SoM are currently available in the item shop). If you stop paying to play come F2P, you will revert to a Premium member (since you have bought the game). Granted, you will not have access to everything the game has to offer, but if you compared this to what you would have gotten had you stopped paying a P2P game (i.e. nothing), you still get more out of the game due to the move to F2P.
You are currently not a paying subscriber to LotRO. You do not pay, you currently have no option of playing LotRO, and the move to F2P only means more LotRO for you.
The only thing one could remotely call negative about the F2P move is that there is a considerable gap between live updates. There are three justifications for this problem.
Judging from the information available, Vol III Book 2 is gonna be a HUGE update. Off the top of my head, we will get (i) scalable old-skool instances, (ii) a new area to play around in, (iii) a new epic quest line, (iv) considerable updates to the character creation screen, (v) wardrobes, and that is not mentioning (vi), a lot of fancy updates among the items you can buy from the store, such as increased shared storage and extra character slots.
While the move to F2P will mean there is this initial lack of live updates over the months to come, Turbine has confirmed their plans to release updates more frequently in the future than they have over the past few years (even though the game usually receives quite frequent and more substantial free updates than most MMORPGs I have played). This means that we will get more bang for our buck in that sense due to a higher income on Turbine's part following the F2P system.
There a summer holiday in between. As we all know, business life grinds to all but a halt in this time of year.
I'm personally VERY excited by LotRO going F2P and these screens only give me more reason for that. Has anybody spotted the improvements made to the character selection screen? A few I noticed straight away are:
You can now randomise your new character's name. This was not possible in LotRO before. While it's no big deal to me, my girlfriend can never think of names and always asks me to help her out. I'm sure she's not the only one.
Instead of the rather awkward scroll bar to view all your characters, they are now neatly organised in a page system.
Selecting your character's heritage is now as simple as pressing a button, rather than selecting from a drop-down menu, giving you a better overview of the possibilities. Moreover, it is now also more obvious that your heritage determines your character's available appearance options.
Speaking of appearance options, those are now labeled with digits (i.e. "Option 5"), so that it is easier to see how many options there really are for your character's mouth. I have personally always wondered how many times I had subconciously cycled through the options for mouths and faces, as there are some very similar options there and I am having a hard time determining whether the one I am currently looking at is the same as five options back or not.
It's smooth. The previous character creation and selection screens looked like they were from a 1990s game.
Yes, I like lists.
Everyone will have to shell out $$$ to keep playing? Really? So someone who starts out playing for free, then upgrades to $10 per Month, then spends a couple more bucks a Month to get a few cool things they want is being ripped off? Right...There is absolutely nothing, notta, zero in that Shop that is going to keep anyone from playing the freaking Game if they can't afford it but want to keep playing...The statement is ridiculous...It assumes that Folks can't be happy with what they already get for free or for $10 a Month...How do you know? It's just a bad assumption period...Hardcore Players who want all that stuff are probably 1-2% of LOTRO's total population if that...
We'll miss you...
Or maybe not...
Um. Guys, if you read the LOTRO forums, basically the store *is* for convenience. If you buy a faction mount, you don't have to grind faction for it. Get it?
If you pay to unlock content, you're probably going to end up paying what you used to pay for a boxed expansion (or micropayments for various areas that add up to something like it). Get it?
There's also a subscription (VIP access) model that's pretty much like what they have now, except they give you a few hundreds of Turbine Points to spend as you like each month.
If you don't like the F2P model, you can nearly ignore it by paying a monthly fee. Depending on your preferences and playstyle, one or the other may work out better for you.
Geez, you guys are a bunch of negative gits. DDO's done *fine* with F2P. Really well, actually.
The only thing I'm particularly worried about in LOTRO is goldfarmer control when an account can be created like <*snap*> that. And since F2P toons are limited as to how much gold they can carry (and how far their voices carry at low levels), the goldfarmers are going to have to do a few gyrations, so maybe it won't be too bad.
Moreover, free players can only send a single tell every five seconds. It will be impossible for them to spam individual players with tells. The same goes for the mailing system.
The "real" issue has nothing to do with the F2P move; it has to do with them deliberately misleading their current players and delivering nothing but "token" content for close to 2yrs while they implement the new system.
If they had kept up with the promised level of content updates and generally delivered better content *as well* as going F2P virtually no one (aside from the hysterics) would complain. That is not what they did however, thus the outrage amongst current players. We already got kept in the dark and shat on so they could do the F2P move....which strongly implies that the "new" model and customers will take precident over old ones as the game goes forward and that should terrify all current players.
Been playing LOTRO for over a year now. This bit of news didn't come as a surprise due to the success of DDO's FTP move. I am not terribly fond of FTP games due to the balance and entitlement issues that come with it. That being said, it is my hope that this will in fact bring more players into the somewhat empty servers and funnel enough funds into the game so they can march the storyline into the gates of Mordor. Without something different being done, the game would have hobbled along and not seen any more decent development.
It's marching forward. The best we players can do is keep our eyes peeled and fight for balance. When things get out of hand, then if fighting doesn't help - we let them know by leaving. That being said, I think they will approach this move tactically and not go overboard. They are not trying to pay off debt like STO is and its desperate cash shop issues. Eyes are peeled though and I am hoping for the best.
As for the paid storyline quests - as a subscriber - if I get enough monthly tokens to play them and not be behind the 8ball of a nonsubscriber, I will give it a go. If I don't - well, then there might be an issue. Paying attention, Turbine?
Just wait unti this goes live and a lot of folks who dont have vip status find out they got to unlock quests they done before.
Hopefully one will be able to turn off those little locks in the UI prefs.I'm a lifer there and I don't mind this conversion so long as I can ignore it completly.
I really don't understand why people get upset to have to pay to "unlock"/access additional features content. First off, this game, when originally released, like most major mmorpg games (WoW, City of Heroes, Everquest, Planetside, etc) are subscription based. In other words, unless you are playing with a subscribed/trial account, you are not playing at all. I don't see people whining saying "That game is BS, I have to pay to play that game?". Take a look at the statistics and see how many people shell out money to play these games on a monthly basis. The fact that you can play some of the game without time restrictions should be a bonus for you. If it weren't for F2P, you wouldn't even be playing the game period. And if you like it, then pay for it. That's what all of us who've been playing the game and paying the monthly subscription have been doing. You don't hear any complaints because the game is totally worth it. If it's not, then end your subscription and be on your merry way. Those that like it stay. Think about how those of us feel about when it was decided that they were going to "give away" access to the game for free? Why should "you" be allowed to play when you haven't forked out a dime and I've been paying to play all this time. If you have a problem with subscription based games, then this game is not for you. I wouldn't even play the F2P. Go look for a different type of game elsewhere because all your going to do is end up frustrated in then end that you can't access the cool stuff because you are too tight on your wallet to shell out for the game. I'm fine with it because of how Turbine is structuring it for "paid" players. Long story short, if you like the game enough to want to see the rest of the content, subscribe. I've been doing it for about 2 years now and will continue to do it because this game rocks. Nuff Said.
If you're a lifer (VIP) you probably wont see them, however get used to seeing the LOTRO Store icon...everywhere.
Not to mention the lifers when they find out that the "free" tokens they think they can use for future expansions arent even enough to pay for the patched in content they used to get free.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
Haha! Love this post.
Total MMOs played: 274|Enjoyed: 9. >:|
I really don't get what there is NOT to like about the move to F2P (okay, I have one exception, which I'll mention shortly). As far as I can see, there are two options and neither of them has any negative aspects to it.
First off, as soon as LOTRO goes F2p, the subsriber or VIP price will jump back up to $14.99 a month like it did for DDO. There won't be any 3, 6 or 12 month specials and there won't be anymore lifetime subscriptions available (the latter has already been stated by a Turbine employee).
The pittance of allowance they're currently giving you wont buy you much in the store, and - technically - you are currently PAYING for that allowance, they're just storing it for you until F2P goes live. You will still have to purchase more bank slots beyond the ones you have now with either in-game gold or TP's, they won't automaically give them to you. Same goes for shared storage.
The Wardrobe storage will only store COSMETIC items, so if you use gear as your wardrobe, you WILL NOT be able to store these items in there. Additionally, it only stores a COPY of said cosmetic item, thus you are still stuck with the actual cosmetic item in your inventory or vault.
More characters slots will be available, but from what I have been told they WILL have to be purchased by everyone (slots 10 and 11 will have to be purchased via the store by VIP's. From what I understand, they will not get them automatically.)
F2P players will have to do a LOT, and I mean A LOT of grinding to get anywhere in the game.
1. Judging from the information available, Vol III Book 2 is gonna be a HUGE update.
Hardly. A zone that's about the size of the Trollshaws, if not smaller.
(i) scalable old-skool instances
Scalable in level only, not size.
(ii) a new area to play around in
Small area.
(iii) a new epic quest line
That requires you to do 3.1.1 before you can start it.
(iv) considerable updates to the character creation screen
They just moved everything to one screen and slapped a big LOTRO STORE button on it and a monstorous ENTER THE GAME button on it and called it a day.
(v) wardrobes, and that is not mentioning
See my previous response to this one.
(vi), a lot of fancy updates among the items you can buy from the store, such as increased shared storage and extra character slots.
And Rep horses and craftable items and permanent stat tomes and Virtues and...I could go on.
I wouldn't be surprised.
Conjecture .Wheres your facts ? I guess you must have some inside information non of us are privey too or could it be you just made it up off the top of your head .
It will all come clear when you see how many Turbine tokens can be purchased for $15. But never let the reality of F2P get in the way of your hopes and dreams or Turbines BS.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
Actually Turbine has already stated that the regular updates (which will hopefully now become a little more regular) will be free to VIP's just as they have always been for subscribers. On the other hand, the Rohan expansion will be a paid expansion -- again, just like was the case for subscribers with MoM and SoM. The difference is that now it will probably be possible to purchase that expansion with accumulated Turbine points if you hoard them. This is conjecture on my part but is backed up by the fact that MoM and SoM will be available for purchase with Turbine points if you haven't bought them already.
Incidentally, there is a big advantage to the store that I am surprised I haven't seen anyone else pick up on. We know that it will be possible to purchase Virtue point boosts through the store as an alternative to having to grind out some of the more annoying deeds to get those points. (Although you can still skip the store if you want and grind the deed, getting some Turbine points in the process.) Basically this means there is an alternate way to level up your Virtues. However, this ability to buy Virtue points will not amount to an I-Win button because you will not be able to use the store to exceed the point cap. Compassion, for example, will still be capped at 10 points. The only difference is that you'll now have an alternate way to get some of those points. Since raiders pretty much require you to have maxed virtues before they'll take you seriously, this means that the new system will result in a larger pool of raid-ready players. That's a good thing for the end game as a whole!
You call Moria "token content?" Geez, you are hard to please...