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LOTRO Pre-Order....LOL Laughable
tomfred81
Member Posts: 31
Turbine and Midway Unveil
Revolutionary Pre-Order Founder’s Program
for The Lord of the Rings Online™
to Launch on April 24, 2007
WESTWOOD, Mass. & CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Turbine, Inc. and Midway Games Inc. (NYSE:MWY) today announced the details of the revolutionary pre-order Founder’s Program for The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™. The highly anticipated massively multiplayer online game, The Lord of the Rings Online,lets players experience the greatest epic fantasy adventure of all time and join with millions of fans from around the globe in the vast world of Middle-earth.
This exciting Founder’s Program rewards all players who pre-order The Lord of the Rings Online with special $9.99 monthly subscription pricing, early access to the game (beta version), character roll-over and unique in-game bonus items. Players can become a Founder by pre-ordering the title at www.lotro.com/preorder or at retail stores nationwide beginning February 1, 2007. This limited-time offer is exclusively available to pre-order customers.
“The Lord of the Rings Online immerses you in one of the greatest literary works of all time,” said Jeffrey Anderson, president and CEO of Turbine. “The Founder’s Program pricing plan rewards fans for their loyalty with a special opportunity to join Middle-earth from the beginning.”
The Lord of the Rings Online Founder’s Program(a) offers players two different membership options:
- Only $9.99 per month subscription price!
- Just $199 for a Lifetime Membership!
- Open Beta: Guaranteed access provides Founders the first opportunity to create a character and enter Middle-earth currently planned for March 30, 2007
- Character Roll-Over: Moves the character that you created during the Open Beta into the live service —along with the stats, levels, items, and experience that character earned prior to launch!
- Bonus Items: Two special in-game items that are only available to those who pre-order:
| -- Enchanted Cloak of Regeneration | ||||||||||
| -- Ring of Agility | ||||||||||
This exciting Founder’s Program is available for a limited time until the commercial launch of The Lord of the Rings Online (currently scheduled for April 24, 2007). At launch, millions of fans will be able to explore the untold stories of Middle-earth, interact with legendary heroes like Gandalf, and play a vital role in the War of the Ring. The Lord of the Rings Online is the first and only massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the Books of J.R.R. Tolkien. The game recreates the vast world of Middle-earth with incredible dedication to the Tolkien lore with an unprecedented level of detail. The game delivers an experience that takes players beyond the books to where they can create their own story within the most famous fantasy world of all time. For more information, visit www.lotro.com.
Ok, seriously
1) Allowing for someone to pay $199 up front to cover their monthly subscription fee forever (if they dont cancel) ensures that Turbine's number of subscribers will never drop below that certain number of those that dish out the $199. This will allow Turbine to inflate their reported numbers on current game subscriptions even if people aren't really playing the game, but rather keeping their account open.
2) $199 is like paying for 20 months of the monthly $9.99 price if you preorder. Upfront this would appear to be a great deal, however, there is not 20 months of content in this game, not even 6 months really. The $199 is ensuring your money in Turbine's pocket now, rather than take the chance that you will not renew your monthly subscription after 3-6 months of playing this game once you become bored with it or realize what you actually bought. For the majority, you will basically be flushing $100-$150 down the crapper. Turbine is competing against various other MMORPGs due to launch this year which are a heck of a lot better than LOTRO, and they know they can't compete against them.
3) If the game is going to be a fantastic hit like some people keep insisting, Turbine would not need to have a special discount price to preorder, nor would they allow for a generic pay one time only $199 fee. If they really believed this game was going to succeed and make money and keep subscribers then they would be confident that fans would continue to pay a $15 fee every month, and that would be across the board. I think Turbine's marketing department has taken a look around and seen what else is out there and know that they are in trouble.
4) This one is awful...Seriously, roll over characters from open beta servers into the actual game? Thats the worst thing I've ever heard of...Letting some people start with mounds of money and some fantastic armor while noobies have nothing? What the crap is up with that reasoning? My only thought is that Turbine thinks if they allow people to keep their already invested in characters, people will continue to play with their pre-made beta characters and won't leave LOTRO so fast. Don't even get me started on the economic problems-imagine joining a game at launch where prices are already fixed by those who are 25 levels above you....So dumb
In my view, this communicates a lack of confidence to sell a high volume of Turbine's own product and also a lack of confidence to retain gamers for LOTRO. It seems more like an act of Turbine desperation to me. Turbine FTW once again.
Comments
I read this and my first thoughts are they need more development funds for release and/or follow on patches or expansions.
Wow! They must be really desperate trying to save yet another big failure. They shall go down in MMORPG history as the company that took 2 of the biggest licenses and utterly failed at both. DDO is a complete nightmare and LOTR will follow it.
One Month Beta characters that most likely found a few exploits and grinded before balancing, taken over into final? Even if it gives them more pre-orders, people that start at release (if they do, which i doubt) will be so pissed off by this that they leave faster than in DDO.
I just hope this is the last time we see Turbine take a license with huge potential and screw up royally. It's enough already Turbine, we know you are useless.
Read the fine print on the main site. It says at the bottom that there will be level restrictions in the open beta. So the idea is that you get to create a toon with the name you want, and level him to probably like 10 or 15 (not a huge leap ahead of people) and then get to keep them in retail. Sounds actually pretty cool to me, but what the hell do I know?
Though this does seem like a ploy to pull people into the game, which makes it seem like they are afraid they wont make any money. I still think its a decent idea.
Lets face it .......
If you were gonna try out the game anyways (which is the ONLY way to really know whether its any good) Then paying 10 bucks a month for it if you end up liking it and getting the in game items and early start etc.. are a good deal. I was gonna give this game a shot anyway so this makes it worthwhile to preorder in my opinion anyway.
Critical thinking is a desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture.
About the $199 life-time subscription, this is a great idea. To claim already this game doesn't have 6 months worth of content is premature and false. How could you possibly know? However, I actually don't think there will be 6 months of content either... it all depends on the end-game and monster play features. However, what MMO does have 6 months of pure content? Did WoW? No. Yet people are playing 2+ years and still happy about it. Whats to say you can't do the same in LotRO?
Also, they never said when you have to decide when to pay the life-time subscription fee. I would assume you get to choose when they start charging to play, AKA The end of the Beta which you get to participate in. After you play the game and see the beta THEN you get to decide what payment plan to choose. (That is speculation and I haven't seen anything to suggest otherwise)
The amount of active subscriptions will be skewed a bit with the lifetime acounts, but what game doesn't skew their numbers? Recently WoW just skewed their numbers with the number of TBC sold... Sure, they sold 2.4 million in one day, but that was counting all the pre-ordered copies... So really, people bought this game MONTHS ahead of time, but really bought it on that particular day... So really, who cares?
How can you honestly say that Turbine thinks they are in trouble? Sure, this is a marketting hype and it's working. Recently, the hype of LotRO has grown quite abit. Not just on this site but even my casual gamer friends. Everywhere I go it seems that LotRO is being looked on more favorably and Turbine is riding this and making it even better.
Honestly, is it so hard to think that if an MMO tries something diffrent then they are obviously in trouble? Oh no! They are diffrent from WoW, they must be sinking already...
As for keeping your Beta Charecters, I really like this. It is more of a reward for helping them finish their game. And, honestly, how will this break a game. This is mostly a PvE game and non of us know enough about Monster play to claim that this will unbalance it. I'm not sure how this would unbalance it anyways... If you start a new charecter in an MMO and other people already have charecters that are made and leveled, does that unbalance the game? No... it's pretty standard. So, just think of the beta as the launch of the servers...
Its not the first time a beta roll over has happened. It just means they are sure of where they are at this point. They feel the balance is what they want, and the major bugs have been fixed.
As for the $200 deal, it also worries me a bit. It does not seem like a offer from someone who feels they have a game that is going to have a long, stable life. But then again, I might not be treating them fairly. I have looked as this game as a let down since they changed it from MEO, to LOTRO.
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If you don't want to even try it then don't. Go back to Vanguard and leave us alone.
There is a lot of competition out there. All they have to do is get people to try the game, that's what this promotion is about. If they like it they'll stay.
Complain all you want about this whole pre-order plan, but keep this in mind: It is the result of direct feedback from beta testers. Turbine didn't just pull this out of thin air, they asked people what they wanted and this is what they were told. If you personally don't agree, that's fine of course. However, people are always complaining that companies don't listen to their fanbase. Well, Turbine did. So is it a damned if you do damned if you don't kind of thing when it comes to listening to the customers?
#2) Besides the last couple days, I havent posted on this site in like a month...funny how my posts make you so mad. It seriously makes me laugh out loud to know that I piss you off so much just by typing a simple opinion from my keyboard in the comfort of my own home.
#3) I'm trying to save people $200 so they can spend it on quality products. I don't like to see people waste their money, and I don't like to reward a company for mediocre products. Maybe I just have higher standards than you. But hey, if you love to play crap, don't let me stop you. I know Turbine loves pulling in you suckers.
P.S. Vanguard early release starts tomorrow
Sadly, tomfred is probably correct. This game caters to a rp fanatic and or someone who is DEEPLY into the lore of LOTRO. Those of you looking for something different and or exciting will not find it here. That being said, this promotion is a great idea. And I also believe while the game is not for me as I wish it had been, Turbine will sell enough copies to make it very succesfull. They can get 500k subscribers alone just on the name. With this promotion, anyone wanting to try it , really has nothing to lose.
LotRO is a quality product in a competitive market. Marketing such as this makes sense and a lot of people will welcome it
My only worry is Turbines past behaviour with their AC2 expansion shortly before it closed. This is a company that has shown it is capable of taking cash and running.
MMORPG
2. A troll is a troll
3. Thanks, but some people would rather from opinions based on relevant information and their own experience. You've bashed this game a number of times but have given no details. NDA aside, I'm certainly not going to take your word for it. Just because you may not like the style of the game doesn't mean others won't as well.
I've heard plenty of people complaining pretty hard about Vangaurd. I guess I shouldn't bother trying that one either.
2. A troll is a troll
3. Thanks, but some people would rather from opinions based on relevant information and their own experience. You've bashed this game a number of times but have given no details. NDA aside, I'm certainly not going to take your word for it. Just because you may not like the style of the game doesn't mean others won't as well.
I've heard plenty of people complaining pretty hard about Vangaurd. I guess I shouldn't bother trying that one either.
You are right to try LOTRO if you don't believe me-go ahead. Just remember what I said when you are crying about your wasted money.
As for Vanguard, it's had more tweaks and patches in the last 3 weeks of open beta than all the 9 months of closed beta before it combined. You see, with the biggest world of any video game ever and a game of 20 gigs, the devs were worrying about the major issues and waited until the last month to fix the cosmetics of the game. Visit the Vanguard forums and you will see everyone is ecstatic with the final product that has been recently immensly polished. Sorry, don't let me get off track-LOTRO sux big time and no I'm not going to go into all these NDA breaking details at this time.
OK, first time posting but yea had to.
To the guy trolling about LotRO the very fact you said you have played or are a beta tester is a breach of the NRA or some ever it is called. The second thing is that you say that vanguard is going to be way better when it isn't in open beta yet and like you said about vanguard it got more patches in the last 3 weeks then 9 months of closed beta. How do you know that LotRO won't do the same? Assuming means nothing and i doubt you creditbilty on the whole "i beta tested it already and know it sucks." I like hard proof so i am going to pre-order a whole $5 and if what you say is true .. well it is but i won't say good or bad about the game until i have tried it. Also vanguard brings nothing new to the table of mmos either like LotRO.
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
Wow, I won't even attempt to respond to that ignorant comment. You obviously don't have a clue....do a little research before you post please. I'm not even gonna waste the time explaining everything to you....the information is out there if you feel like being informed.
Also, patches will not help LOTRO...the graphics and quests are mainly polished-its the gameplay as a whole that needs fixing, not minor bugs or animations or quest lines like Vanguard.
Stop making this into a LOTRO vs Vanguard debate.
People need to really calm down on this site. The sky is not falling and the world is not at an end.
Perhaps if people would not put so much stock in every mmo being the end all be all they would have more realistic expectations and not blow a gasket every time they are disappointed.
Of course it's a way to up box sales. But as far as I'm concerned, the people who were interested in trying the game were going to buy it anyway, regardless of what others say . Now they can play it and pay less per month.
Not sure about the lifetime membership. I do know many people who stick with games for several years (myself included) so this might make sense for them.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
We will formulate our own opinion of this game when we get a chance to Beta it.... Until then, anything you say should be taken with a grain of salt. Seems you just want people to play vanguard... Which I must say had a terrible open Beta until the very end... So honestly, if you actually are or were apart of LotRO closed Beta, you should know how much a game can change in a Beta.
And honestly, I think Turbine has been doing a great job listening to their fan base and I think this game will have a much bigger reach then you claim.