On a side note, lets say i was new to lotro, with no history to cause me to view the game in bitter unfulfilled colored glasses, the level cap on a f2p model would make me not play. basically, an extended trial with an itemshop ala dungeon and dragons, another game that fails due to retarded limitations on free accounts. free means free with item shop to pay the bills. free does not mean free until we want you to pay. z
The Level Cap is 50...And yep it's going to cost for MoM and SoM to get to 65, just like it cost all of us...Realistically your argument does not have teeth. Who in their right mind is going to grind to 50 and not be OK with having to shell out some points for the expansions to move towards Level Cap?... By that time I think you're staying...Besides, you're not going to get to 65 without the expansion content anyway...It's not a big deal...IMHO it's the last thing I would have a problem with in the F2P model...
I already voiced my opinions on the LotRO forums, but will repeat them here just because I am furious and need to vent to a community of people that might just understand...
In my humble, honest, and horrible irrelevant opinion...
For as many positives that LotRO conversion to F2P has, as far as I see it there are at least double the negatives. I no longer believe any MMO should be F2P and support the monthly subscriber system that I dealt with for a decade in many MMOs and I still believe it is the superior method of funding a MMO.
Each and every Player while ingame starts equal, with only a Player's abilities to set them apart from the rest. This to me is a key component of MMO gaming. With LotRO (and other MMOs) either starting or going F2P now there will be constant division umongst Players depending on real world circumstances. I believe one of the best features of a MMO is that when you log in it no longer matters who you are in real life... falure or success, rich or poor, healthy or sick, now when you are in the ingame world of a MMO you get a chance to start over... to do life again in a virtual sense. This part of MMO gaming I have always enjoyed even when my reputation as "Gardavil" followed me from MMO to MMO. I made my reputation myself and no one else can be blamed... not my parents, not my neighborhood, not my country... no one else is responsible but me.
Now with the F2P / Cash Shop / VIP hybrid system of LotRO, DDO, and other MMOs, who you are in real life does matter and can highly influence the entire MMO. I am not saying that that doesn't already happen in old fashioned monthly subscriber MMOs, but it happens much more and with the consent of the MMO Publishers now. To me this whole shift in game design (and to me it is game design since it affects the game so radically) damages what MMOs used to be about. I won't even call a MMO a MMO anymore that has gone to this new system because of the changes I see it causing to the particular game and the genre as a whole.
If it was just Free to Play in some areas, then subscribe for the "full" version I could live with that, but I would still be upset about it.
It is the Cash Shop thing that really makes me angry, as I consider all Cash Shops in all online games as a form of CHEATING. If I can't get something ingame from normal classic MMO gameplay, then I shouldn't have it. Same for all Players as far as I am concerned.
Note: I am a horrible MMO Gamer... I cannot compete with the reallly good Players that Raid and all that... yet I still believe the old way of MMO design is the superior design. I do not support Turbine in their recent decision. I am a Lifer there and will stay in LotRO, if for no other reason than to be a royal pain and point out(ever so often) why Turbine should go back to regular subscription based financing.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!" ............... "I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. " __Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__ ...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
I think the content updates are going to suck. I don't see them adding open world content ever again. Its just going to be "Oh, hey buy this new Rohan skirmish, but you know you can't actually ride around Rohan." Its going to be just releasing instances you can pay for. I mean they already gave up on making real content as it is. And a f2p model isn't conducive to adding accessible zones for others, but I hope they prove me wrong and use their f2p money to make a giant plains of rohan with 100s of quests.
"I will not play it nor any other MMO until they make it possible to obtain the best gear without forcing people to group up to do so." SwampRob
OzzallosRunes of Magic CorrespondentMemberUncommonPosts: 35
To clarify the mystery, this is why LotR went microtransactional--
Courtesy of MMOchart.com
Just so it's absolutely clear, I'm not making a judgement call on whether Rings is "good" or "bad", but I will note that it is tough to support an MMO whose peak was 200k after launch, and has been steadily declining since. You'll also note that DDO was suffering from the same condition prior to going trialware in 2009.
Here is where somebody notes the chart only goes to mid 2008. I know. The google key words are "mmo statistics chart". Do your own research and learn something.
Financially, it probably made sense to switch gears and operate under a microtransactional model where you could at least get more eyeballs on your game, even if your income tends to be less stable. "Something" is better than "Nothing" and nothing was exactly where both DDO and LotR were heading. I would have thrown both games under the microtransactional bus too with these numbers. Conversly, there's a reason why EVE Online hasn't gone trialware and the numbers bare that out.
You are right. Turbine are wrong. Turbines decision makers are idiots. They saw 500% and dollar signs flashed into their heads blinding them to reality. LOTRO will close in 6 months. The FTP Business model is one giant hoax.
I am sure Turbine is making the right choice financially. But as DDO has so far shown that choice generally includes changes that the older players may not endorse. In DDOs case this includes a dumbing down of what was once a thinking mans MMO. It is no longer the case really as each update drains a little more of the challenge and and increase in grind. Grind does not equal challenge, but Turbine is now making money off DDO and sees the same chance for increase of players in LOTRO. I have no doubt the population will increase, but if DDO is to be used by Turbine as a reason to try then the other side is I will use DDOs changes to show why it may be bad for long time players.
The skill level of the average player in DDO is down the tubes now. You have players who have TRed(true resurrection, DDO for level 20 character starting over at level 1) who do not understand the basics of the game because they piked their way to the top. THis number is increasing in DDO. The general chat is a cesspool, trying to give advice is nearly impossible at times with what has happened to the chats.
Increase profit? Yes. Make a better game then I played before? Not to me.
Lets look into a couple other things that get said but so far have no basis in reality:
More money means more resources. No it does not, more money means more money that is all it means. Turbine has showcased DDOs profit increases. But as a player of the game I have yet to see any new devs show up and introduce themselves or in any way see how more money means more resources for DDO. Some people seem to think that an increase in profit means the company will hire more people, WHY? Why would they spend that profit on more people? It makes no business sense at all unless those extra people will increase the profit by X as well. Assuming more money means more resources for the game is a hope that is not based in reality. Is the potential there? Yes. But that does not mean it will happen. If they can keep making money with the staff they have chances are no one gets hired.
More players and profit means faster content updates. Only if they hire more people. DDO after the switch to F2P had rapid content updates, that is already slowing as Update 5 will not be out until the end of this month at best. That will take DDO from 2 months between the last few to 3 months between U4 and U5. Now this is not a huge issue at all, but it illustrates the point that Turbine did not increase staff. For those unaware DDO went nearly a year between updates from late 2008 until the F2P went live, during this time DDO devs worked on the next few updates that were to be released after the F2p happened. So initially it looked like Turbine was hammering out updates when in reality they had most of the work done on them during the period we had nothing.
This was posted by Turbine before the last update explaining it was the first update since F2P that was entirely done after the changes. So what we see now is they are slowing down because the work load increased and it certainly seems like the staff has not. Longtime DDO players have seen this before by the way. DDO went from frequent smallish updates to supposedly larger less frequent ones. But the truth is as the time between was increased the quality and quantitity of the changes was not. By the time DDO made the decision to go F2P they were doing nearly nothing to the game. The F2P has made a huge difference in DDO, but to assume its all roses because Turbine makes more money now is false.
Ozzallous – on the basis of your subscription graph Lotro had ZERO subs by the first month of 2008. Sorry but we were playing then, I am on a overloaded sever now, the graph is pants.
LOTRO story is full of fantasy, which is based on P2P as Patience said, and with the fall of the traditions now will be F2P with a grain of green magic. Today LOTRO isnt only a tale of enthralling adventures and mythical beings, but it also touches upon some questions of philosophy and morality. Greed deeds against Heroic deeds, the separation of players for the sake of a money cause, true green love, the triumph of Evil over Good. LOTRO community which are the strongholds of Good, in contrast greedy Mordor, with their generals, is an abode of Evil. Hard life in LOTRO during this War of the F2P reflects hard life in reality. We has to believe that countless fair armies do not always decide the outcome of the battle, and that only one greedy can conquer alone if we let him. The struggle with different personifications of Evil is eternal. The War of the F2P is a small part of this struggle. But Evil has always been and will remain in LOTRO as well as in real life. LOTRO community teaches us to be humane, to follow the principles of valour and moral. It is both sympathy and humanity that prevent Frodo from killing Gollum, who played a crucial role in the destroying of the Ring, he never gave in to greed. The temptation was too great but even he knew that the Ring of shining gold was the personification of evil, the worst that humanity is capable of doing when blinded by evil. Good isnt greedy. It strives to get justice and will never shoot an arrow into the back of an ally. We cannot say that everything ends extremely well. F2P wounds wont leave us in peace like Frodo. In the past The Chain of Evil has split, however, there remains a possibility that a new Sauron will come, with the new Ring called F2P. For us who believe in our community and way of being in our world, LOTRO is unique to us, is not like another game, and several times has proved that. The righteous player who believe in our community and all the good it represents, will be in the front ranks to defend our way of life and not let the new Ring forged by Sauron makes us no longer believe in our fellowship and we all, who still believe, not vanish from the face of LOTRO midle-earth. May our ways be green and golden.
trust MMORPG.com to stick up for Turbine... how much have you guys been paid to spurt their propaganda about .
The root cause Here is Warner bro's they are only interested in screwing people over for their cash,
I knew as soon as they bought turbine this would turn out to be a huge mistake. I regret investing my time and money in this game. I don't see any benefit to me staying with the game recieving crap stories. about delayed updates and expansions.
codemasters europe are on the brink of collapse too.. the games doomed
theres gonna be another publisher announcement soon. you'll see
I don t know about another publisher. However I had to agree with your first statement, I guess somebody had to go to turbines denfence. Lotro was getting beet down in their forums. There has been tons of moderation over in lotro over this. I have to say this anoucment has the comunity even more polerized than radiance or LI's.
Everyone is lifetime? I think not. There will be a huge disparity between what actual lifetime members and subscribers have, and what "free" players have, like oh... access to huge chunks of the game and game mechancis.
Free expansions... for turbine points you can spend hours upon hours grinding the same old content for, or oh, you could just skip all of that and visit the turbine store.
Going "free" to play lures a lot of people sure, but the problem is that a lot of them are the dregs of MMO gaming. I'd rather have few people around, than a lot with jerks included. The main draw to LOTRO for me was the community, and this change effectively destroys that.
To clarify the mystery, this is why LotR went microtransactional--
Courtesy of MMOchart.com
Just so it's absolutely clear, I'm not making a judgement call on whether Rings is "good" or "bad", but I will note that it is tough to support an MMO whose peak was 200k after launch, and has been steadily declining since. You'll also note that DDO was suffering from the same condition prior to going trialware in 2009.
Here is where somebody notes the chart only goes to mid 2008. I know. The google key words are "mmo statistics chart". Do your own research and learn something.
Financially, it probably made sense to switch gears and operate under a microtransactional model where you could at least get more eyeballs on your game, even if your income tends to be less stable. "Something" is better than "Nothing" and nothing was exactly where both DDO and LotR were heading. I would have thrown both games under the microtransactional bus too with these numbers. Conversly, there's a reason why EVE Online hasn't gone trialware and the numbers bare that out.
Since Turbine nor Codemasters ever release sub numbers, I have to call BS on the chart, sorry. At best, this chart is a guesstimation. Which means....made-up of inaccurate info. It does have nice colors, though.
trust MMORPG.com to stick up for Turbine... how much have you guys been paid to spurt their propaganda about .
The root cause Here is Warner bro's they are only interested in screwing people over for their cash,
I knew as soon as they bought turbine this would turn out to be a huge mistake. I regret investing my time and money in this game. I don't see any benefit to me staying with the game recieving crap stories. about delayed updates and expansions.
codemasters europe are on the brink of collapse too.. the games doomed
theres gonna be another publisher announcement soon. you'll see
I don t know about another publisher. However I had to agree with your first statement, I guess somebody had to go to turbines denfence. Lotro was getting beet down in their forums. There has been tons of moderation over in lotro over this. I have to say this anoucment has the comunity even more polerized than radiance or LI's.
There is nothing worse than angry, vegetable throwing Hobbits. Especially when they are throwing beets, those things stain like crazy!
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Please don't pee on me and then try to sell me an umbrella because it's "raining".
all these people writing their 1000 word posts to make a point and then after 14 pages this guy jumps in and describes in one sentence perfectly what this is all about.
No...since there is alot of access/perks that isn't included for free. As it is, they seriously devalued the benefits of Lifetime membership. If they had included all the access/perks that go with it for free...it'd be even worse.
Let me put it this way...lets say last week you purchased a lifetime membership to a private golf course....no more range fee's, yay! This week the golf-course management declares the course is no longer private, it's public...no one is paying range fees. You just get to use the lockers for free..wheras non-members have to pay $2 when they do that.
How would you feel about the value of the purchase you just made?
Well...the plan they announced includes charging fee's (for non VIP's) for quests and access to existing areas. You seriously think they aren't going to find a way to make you pay...one way or another.... for access to the new areas they might add? Why would they purposefully abandon that revenue.
While we're on the subject of blind conjecture... they MIGHT invent ways force VIP's (current subscribers) to PAY (on top of thier subscriptions) for the new mini-content they add.... perhaps not directly...but there are lots of ways to push this sort of thing indirectly.
If you've been following LOTRO for awhile, you'll know that ALOT of the mini-content updates (The books and and many areas like Forochel) are stuff that was always included as part of the membership subscription.
Finding subtle ways to make players pay more for the same services they get now..... Naw, they'd never think of that, would they?
Possibly true....but what SORT of peoples will they be? More to the point, with allowing some sort of fee to "get in the door", whats to stop greifers, hackers, spammers and gold sellers from entering at will. At least with requiring a credit card or game card to start playing, there is some minor entry barrier/cost associated with behaving badly.
Not at all. IF (and this is a big "IF") Turbine has judged the potential market for LOTRO correctly it MIGHT mean more revenue for Turbine. If they've misjudged the market for it...then it'll mean less.... and just because something works well in one context (DDO) doesn't mean it'll work well in another. If that were true, ketchup would taste as good on ice cream as it does on fries. However, even IF Turbine has judged the market correctly, it doesn't translate to more content/services for the players. It just means more revenue for Turbine...what they choose to do with that revenue is entirely upto thier management.
Conversely we ALREADY know that implementing this system has COST us content (look at the rate/scale of updates in the past 6 months or so compared with a couple years ago) as resources have been devoted to creating the systems required to support F2P transition....resources that COULD have been used for other projects (like content and game-play enhancements). It will also cost a certain amount of resources ongoing to support F2P and the Cash Shop.... heck just increased bandwidth and disk storage from the increased user population (IF there is one) will end up costing some resources. What Turbine has done is gone from a model where you can predict thier costs and profits per user to one where they can't. Each user costs the service provider a certain amount of cash....hardware, bandwidth, technical support, engineering, etc....with a subscription based model, they know they can cover that cost and then some.... with a F2P model it's a big fat question mark.
They are GAMBLING on the F2P (or even the P2P) players spending enough in the cash shop to more then cover that cost....but whether that holds true or not is, at best, an educated guess. Each user that ends up paying less then the current sub-price ends up reducing thier margin....meaning less services per user. They are hoping to make up for this in VOLUME... and there are certain fixed cost savings in dealing in volume (writing a quest for 10 people costs the same as writing a quest for 1 million) with this sort of model...but that only goes so far. Trust me that designing a network archectecture (for example) to handle a million connections is ALOT more expensive then putting together one that handles a thousand. If Turbine cuts thier margins too thin (say by underestimating how many F2P people use the cash shop) it can drasticaly reduce the level of service thier current customers enjoy..... and can even drive the company out of business.
VOLUME of users can be quite BAD...if you can't convert a high enough percent of that volume to paying customers. Alot of MBA's today are blind to that basic fact....but anyone that's dealt with SPAM should be well aware of it.
Trust me...it's not "Free".... Turbine isn't a charity (especialy now that thier owned by WB) . They are in this to make money. They are going to try to find a way to make sure you spend cash on LOTRO. For those of us who WERE subscribers to LOTRO where the cash were paying to enjoy it at it's current level was quite predictable...as well as the level of service we were getting for that cash. Obviously, most of us regarded that as a fair deal..... else we wouldn't have subscribed. Turbine is changing that equation on us drasticaly....to what is note entirely clear at this point (possibly not even to Turbine). Whether it remains a fair deal is entirely impossible to predict at this point. However, Turbine hasn't exactly earned any points in the trust category with this move so far.
You can't expect those of us who were reasonably happy with the existing situation to be thrilled about being thrown this sort of change-up.
OzzallosRunes of Magic CorrespondentMemberUncommonPosts: 35
Originally posted by junzo316: Since Turbine nor Codemasters ever release sub numbers, I have to call BS on the chart, sorry. At best, this chart is a guesstimation. Which means....made-up of inaccurate info. It does have nice colors, though.
Actually, I cross referenced the data from a number of sources and decided the MMOchart.com was the easiest to post. I also mentioned google because i knew there would be somebody- more than likely several somebodies -who would get defensive with the suggestion that their favorite MMO wasn't doing as well as they thought it should.
MMOcharts itself is regarded as being reasonably accurate. In fact, visit their website and see how they collect the data. It's not hard to do. Even if you don't go there, at least do some minute amount of legwork and come back with your own substantiations before accusing one of baseless inaccuracies; especially when you haven't bothered to produce your own. The external source doesn't mean its bad data, and in the end, you get the same reply as Scot (below).
Originally posted by Scot
Ozzallous – on the basis of your subscription graph Lotro had ZERO subs by the first month of 2008. Sorry but we were playing then, I am on a overloaded sever now, the graph is pants.
Reading is hard, isn't it? To requote the second paragraph of the relevant post:
"Here is where somebody notes the chart only goes to mid 2008. I know. The google key words are "mmo statistics chart". Do your own research and learn something."
Im amazed that people still fall into the f2p scam!
f2p is just free to suck and free to log in ( tho usually log in with lowest priority like DDO ) Anyone that have a regular income is in danger or spending much more money on f2p games than the normal monthly subscription. As example DDO, sure you can play the low levels but at the time you hit lvl 10 you will soon want to buy more quests since youve run out of the free ones and your bored to death of running them over and over. On free account you only have 2 character slots and you will most likely need 3-6 characters ONLY for bag space of the gear you gather ( unless you vendor everything you get ). Now Turbine is planning to nerf 2 weapon fighting because the servers and clients become laggy of them proccing, NOT because of game balance issues. Also to consider is that some people have used years to tweak and gather gear for their 2 weapon characters.
Tho they have with DDO made lots of money and dont bother improving on the code or the hardware.
Also most of the f2p games use marketing tricks that are borderline scamming and for sure misleading of what the items do what you pay for. Turbine/DDO have a few items that are quite misleading and pretty much useless but still people buy them, Frogster and ROM pretty much scam people monthly with new schemes and with misleading adverticement. I really hope that soon European Consumer protection agencies takes Frogster Europe into the magnifying glass and start raising some charges on all the breaches they do in their marketing. EU marketing laws are much more stricter than anywhere else and well companies in the US or Asia can pretty much scam as much as they like
I played Lotro awhile ago and it was a fine game but as usual I get bored of any game after some time of playing and move to next one. When Lotro goes into f2p mode it will just become another turbine cash cow and will probably make lots of money for Turbine but it will loose its spirit.
I know many people with low or no income will like that games become f2p but they really all are just hooks to get you in the game and when you spents weeks playing it becomes much harder to resist to buy from the cash shops since all f2p games you will realize at some point
that your character Sucks! and you want to unsuck it!
How do you put a positive spin on something that has failed just because it goes f2p ? Remember, it is going f2p for a reason because only a small amount felt it was worthy of a subscription fee and the game is just average. I would still rather pay $15.00 a month for a quality mmo. Lotro is far from a quality mmo. If it was such a good mmo in the first place it wouldn't be going f2p after almost 3+ years after launch.
LOL, there isn't one MMO on the planet that doesn't have its share of haters. Lots of people think LOTRO is a quality MMO, just as there are many who don't care for it. Don't confuse your personal taste with an absolute. The reason LOTRO doesn't have more subs, IMO, is that it was released (and still is) unfinished as a Lord of the Rings MMO. No Rohan. No Gondor. No Mordor. How many casual fans of Tolkien, such as people who saw the movies but never read the books, ever even heard of Angmar? LOTRO won't have its full commercial potential until it has the iconic Tolkien elements in the game: Helm's Deep, the Ents, Minas Tirith, Isengard, etc. If the new payment model gets them more content, faster, then most of the players (myself included) will be happy. And if/when LOTRO gets Middle Earth fleshed out, it will get a *much bigger* player base.
Yeah DDO would like to explain how wrong you are on that. From Turbines point of view it was a stroke of genius. They took a money losing game and made it popular enough that its now a plus for them.
Yeah DDO would like to explain how wrong you are on that. From Turbines point of view it was a stroke of genius. They took a money losing game and made it popular enough that its now a plus for them.
Ok, how about "It's a bad sign when a AAA MMO that isn't on life support, goes free to play"?
Yeah DDO would like to explain how wrong you are on that. From Turbines point of view it was a stroke of genius. They took a money losing game and made it popular enough that its now a plus for them.
Ok, how about "It's a bad sign when a AAA MMO that isn't on life support, goes free to play"?
Nope have to disagree there too. If it is not on life support then Turbine must see this move as a possible huge upswing. If a game is healthy and makes this move why would that be a bad sign for the game? Now is it a bad sign for the current players? If it goes like DDO yes, but financially I would be willing to bet this ends up a winner for Turbine.
If it is not on life support why would Turbine make this move, and why do you think this is a bad sign? You said yourself it is a AAA MMO not on life support. Sounds to me like a game that its owner thinks can be even bigger with this move. I fail to see the bad signs, other then the community will be full of less desirable elements and the likely direction of content will be aimed at what the new players want or feel they need(see the changes and nerfs in DDO and the general making the game easier moves they keep pulling).
Actually, I cross referenced the data from a number of sources and decided the MMOchart.com was the easiest to post. I also mentioned google because i knew there would be somebody- more than likely several somebodies -who would get defensive with the suggestion that their favorite MMO wasn't doing as well as they thought it should.
MMOcharts itself is regarded as being reasonably accurate. In fact, visit their website and see how they collect the data. It's not hard to do. Even if you don't go there, at least do some minute amount of legwork and come back with your own substantiations before accusing one of baseless inaccuracies; especially when you haven't bothered to produce your own. The external source doesn't mean its bad data, and in the end, you get the same reply as Scot (below).
Unless a company actually releases it's sub numbers, there is no way of knowing what the actual numbers are. You can gather info from "sources" or whatever, but you still won't have the actual numbers. I stand by my original assertion that the graph is a guesstimation. It may be a fairly accurate guesstimation, but a guesstimation all the same.
Ozzallous – Reading is not hard, so please read. I never questioned the chart only goes to 2008, what I am pointing out is it shows ZERO subs at the start of 2008. That is just nonsense, yes I could check it out myself, but I am pointing out here that when you present evidence it is a good idea to look at it and see if it makes sense. Do you really think no one was playing the game in 2008?
Using ‘guestimation’ I can only tell you that on Laurelin we have had between 2000 and 5000 people since launch, that’s just one server and certainly not ZERO subs.
Comments
The Level Cap is 50...And yep it's going to cost for MoM and SoM to get to 65, just like it cost all of us...Realistically your argument does not have teeth. Who in their right mind is going to grind to 50 and not be OK with having to shell out some points for the expansions to move towards Level Cap?... By that time I think you're staying...Besides, you're not going to get to 65 without the expansion content anyway...It's not a big deal...IMHO it's the last thing I would have a problem with in the F2P model...
I already voiced my opinions on the LotRO forums, but will repeat them here just because I am furious and need to vent to a community of people that might just understand...
In my humble, honest, and horrible irrelevant opinion...
For as many positives that LotRO conversion to F2P has, as far as I see it there are at least double the negatives. I no longer believe any MMO should be F2P and support the monthly subscriber system that I dealt with for a decade in many MMOs and I still believe it is the superior method of funding a MMO.
Each and every Player while ingame starts equal, with only a Player's abilities to set them apart from the rest. This to me is a key component of MMO gaming. With LotRO (and other MMOs) either starting or going F2P now there will be constant division umongst Players depending on real world circumstances. I believe one of the best features of a MMO is that when you log in it no longer matters who you are in real life... falure or success, rich or poor, healthy or sick, now when you are in the ingame world of a MMO you get a chance to start over... to do life again in a virtual sense. This part of MMO gaming I have always enjoyed even when my reputation as "Gardavil" followed me from MMO to MMO. I made my reputation myself and no one else can be blamed... not my parents, not my neighborhood, not my country... no one else is responsible but me.
Now with the F2P / Cash Shop / VIP hybrid system of LotRO, DDO, and other MMOs, who you are in real life does matter and can highly influence the entire MMO. I am not saying that that doesn't already happen in old fashioned monthly subscriber MMOs, but it happens much more and with the consent of the MMO Publishers now. To me this whole shift in game design (and to me it is game design since it affects the game so radically) damages what MMOs used to be about. I won't even call a MMO a MMO anymore that has gone to this new system because of the changes I see it causing to the particular game and the genre as a whole.
If it was just Free to Play in some areas, then subscribe for the "full" version I could live with that, but I would still be upset about it.
It is the Cash Shop thing that really makes me angry, as I consider all Cash Shops in all online games as a form of CHEATING. If I can't get something ingame from normal classic MMO gameplay, then I shouldn't have it. Same for all Players as far as I am concerned.
Note: I am a horrible MMO Gamer... I cannot compete with the reallly good Players that Raid and all that... yet I still believe the old way of MMO design is the superior design. I do not support Turbine in their recent decision. I am a Lifer there and will stay in LotRO, if for no other reason than to be a royal pain and point out(ever so often) why Turbine should go back to regular subscription based financing.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!"
...............
"I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. "
__Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__
...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
I think the content updates are going to suck. I don't see them adding open world content ever again. Its just going to be "Oh, hey buy this new Rohan skirmish, but you know you can't actually ride around Rohan." Its going to be just releasing instances you can pay for. I mean they already gave up on making real content as it is. And a f2p model isn't conducive to adding accessible zones for others, but I hope they prove me wrong and use their f2p money to make a giant plains of rohan with 100s of quests.
"I will not play it nor any other MMO until they make it possible to obtain the best gear without forcing people to group up to do so." SwampRob
To clarify the mystery, this is why LotR went microtransactional--
Courtesy of MMOchart.com
Just so it's absolutely clear, I'm not making a judgement call on whether Rings is "good" or "bad", but I will note that it is tough to support an MMO whose peak was 200k after launch, and has been steadily declining since. You'll also note that DDO was suffering from the same condition prior to going trialware in 2009.
Here is where somebody notes the chart only goes to mid 2008. I know. The google key words are "mmo statistics chart". Do your own research and learn something.
Financially, it probably made sense to switch gears and operate under a microtransactional model where you could at least get more eyeballs on your game, even if your income tends to be less stable. "Something" is better than "Nothing" and nothing was exactly where both DDO and LotR were heading. I would have thrown both games under the microtransactional bus too with these numbers. Conversly, there's a reason why EVE Online hasn't gone trialware and the numbers bare that out.
I am sure Turbine is making the right choice financially. But as DDO has so far shown that choice generally includes changes that the older players may not endorse. In DDOs case this includes a dumbing down of what was once a thinking mans MMO. It is no longer the case really as each update drains a little more of the challenge and and increase in grind. Grind does not equal challenge, but Turbine is now making money off DDO and sees the same chance for increase of players in LOTRO. I have no doubt the population will increase, but if DDO is to be used by Turbine as a reason to try then the other side is I will use DDOs changes to show why it may be bad for long time players.
The skill level of the average player in DDO is down the tubes now. You have players who have TRed(true resurrection, DDO for level 20 character starting over at level 1) who do not understand the basics of the game because they piked their way to the top. THis number is increasing in DDO. The general chat is a cesspool, trying to give advice is nearly impossible at times with what has happened to the chats.
Increase profit? Yes. Make a better game then I played before? Not to me.
Lets look into a couple other things that get said but so far have no basis in reality:
More money means more resources. No it does not, more money means more money that is all it means. Turbine has showcased DDOs profit increases. But as a player of the game I have yet to see any new devs show up and introduce themselves or in any way see how more money means more resources for DDO. Some people seem to think that an increase in profit means the company will hire more people, WHY? Why would they spend that profit on more people? It makes no business sense at all unless those extra people will increase the profit by X as well. Assuming more money means more resources for the game is a hope that is not based in reality. Is the potential there? Yes. But that does not mean it will happen. If they can keep making money with the staff they have chances are no one gets hired.
More players and profit means faster content updates. Only if they hire more people. DDO after the switch to F2P had rapid content updates, that is already slowing as Update 5 will not be out until the end of this month at best. That will take DDO from 2 months between the last few to 3 months between U4 and U5. Now this is not a huge issue at all, but it illustrates the point that Turbine did not increase staff. For those unaware DDO went nearly a year between updates from late 2008 until the F2P went live, during this time DDO devs worked on the next few updates that were to be released after the F2p happened. So initially it looked like Turbine was hammering out updates when in reality they had most of the work done on them during the period we had nothing.
This was posted by Turbine before the last update explaining it was the first update since F2P that was entirely done after the changes. So what we see now is they are slowing down because the work load increased and it certainly seems like the staff has not. Longtime DDO players have seen this before by the way. DDO went from frequent smallish updates to supposedly larger less frequent ones. But the truth is as the time between was increased the quality and quantitity of the changes was not. By the time DDO made the decision to go F2P they were doing nearly nothing to the game. The F2P has made a huge difference in DDO, but to assume its all roses because Turbine makes more money now is false.
Ozzallous – on the basis of your subscription graph Lotro had ZERO subs by the first month of 2008. Sorry but we were playing then, I am on a overloaded sever now, the graph is pants.
My reasons for not be Excited About F2P LOTRO.
LOTRO story is full of fantasy, which is based on P2P as Patience said, and with the fall of the traditions now will be F2P with a grain of green magic.
Today LOTRO isnt only a tale of enthralling adventures and mythical beings, but it also touches upon some questions of philosophy and morality. Greed deeds against Heroic deeds, the separation of players for the sake of a money cause, true green love, the triumph of Evil over Good.
LOTRO community which are the strongholds of Good, in contrast greedy Mordor, with their generals, is an abode of Evil.
Hard life in LOTRO during this War of the F2P reflects hard life in reality. We has to believe that countless fair armies do not always decide the outcome of the battle, and that only one greedy can conquer alone if we let him.
The struggle with different personifications of Evil is eternal. The War of the F2P is a small part of this struggle.
But Evil has always been and will remain in LOTRO as well as in real life.
LOTRO community teaches us to be humane, to follow the principles of valour and moral.
It is both sympathy and humanity that prevent Frodo from killing Gollum, who played a crucial role in the destroying of the Ring, he never gave in to greed. The temptation was too great but even he knew that the Ring of shining gold was the personification of evil, the worst that humanity is capable of doing when blinded by evil.
Good isnt greedy. It strives to get justice and will never shoot an arrow into the back of an ally.
We cannot say that everything ends extremely well. F2P wounds wont leave us in peace like Frodo.
In the past The Chain of Evil has split, however, there remains a possibility that a new Sauron will come, with the new Ring called F2P. For us who believe in our community and way of being in our world, LOTRO is unique to us, is not like another game, and several times has proved that. The righteous player who believe in our community and all the good it represents, will be in the front ranks to defend our way of life and not let the new Ring forged by Sauron makes us no longer believe in our fellowship and we all, who still believe, not vanish from the face of LOTRO midle-earth. May our ways be green and golden.
I don t know about another publisher. However I had to agree with your first statement, I guess somebody had to go to turbines denfence. Lotro was getting beet down in their forums. There has been tons of moderation over in lotro over this. I have to say this anoucment has the comunity even more polerized than radiance or LI's.
Everyone is lifetime? I think not. There will be a huge disparity between what actual lifetime members and subscribers have, and what "free" players have, like oh... access to huge chunks of the game and game mechancis.
Free expansions... for turbine points you can spend hours upon hours grinding the same old content for, or oh, you could just skip all of that and visit the turbine store.
Going "free" to play lures a lot of people sure, but the problem is that a lot of them are the dregs of MMO gaming. I'd rather have few people around, than a lot with jerks included. The main draw to LOTRO for me was the community, and this change effectively destroys that.
And more content... added to the Turbine store.
Please don't pee on me and then try to sell me an umbrella because it's "raining".
Since Turbine nor Codemasters ever release sub numbers, I have to call BS on the chart, sorry. At best, this chart is a guesstimation. Which means....made-up of inaccurate info. It does have nice colors, though.
There is nothing worse than angry, vegetable throwing Hobbits. Especially when they are throwing beets, those things stain like crazy!
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Only $12.99 in the Turbine store!
all these people writing their 1000 word posts to make a point and then after 14 pages this guy jumps in and describes in one sentence perfectly what this is all about.
gratz man, that is /thread material.
Counter-Points
#5 Now Everyone is Lifetime
No...since there is alot of access/perks that isn't included for free. As it is, they seriously devalued the benefits of Lifetime membership. If they had included all the access/perks that go with it for free...it'd be even worse.
Let me put it this way...lets say last week you purchased a lifetime membership to a private golf course....no more range fee's, yay! This week the golf-course management declares the course is no longer private, it's public...no one is paying range fees. You just get to use the lockers for free..wheras non-members have to pay $2 when they do that.
How would you feel about the value of the purchase you just made?
#4 Free Might Mean Free Expansions Too
Well...the plan they announced includes charging fee's (for non VIP's) for quests and access to existing areas. You seriously think they aren't going to find a way to make you pay...one way or another.... for access to the new areas they might add? Why would they purposefully abandon that revenue.
While we're on the subject of blind conjecture... they MIGHT invent ways force VIP's (current subscribers) to PAY (on top of thier subscriptions) for the new mini-content they add.... perhaps not directly...but there are lots of ways to push this sort of thing indirectly.
If you've been following LOTRO for awhile, you'll know that ALOT of the mini-content updates (The books and and many areas like Forochel) are stuff that was always included as part of the membership subscription.
Finding subtle ways to make players pay more for the same services they get now..... Naw, they'd never think of that, would they?
#3 More Free Peoples
Possibly true....but what SORT of peoples will they be? More to the point, with allowing some sort of fee to "get in the door", whats to stop greifers, hackers, spammers and gold sellers from entering at will. At least with requiring a credit card or game card to start playing, there is some minor entry barrier/cost associated with behaving badly.
#2 More and More Content Updates
Not at all. IF (and this is a big "IF") Turbine has judged the potential market for LOTRO correctly it MIGHT mean more revenue for Turbine. If they've misjudged the market for it...then it'll mean less.... and just because something works well in one context (DDO) doesn't mean it'll work well in another. If that were true, ketchup would taste as good on ice cream as it does on fries. However, even IF Turbine has judged the market correctly, it doesn't translate to more content/services for the players. It just means more revenue for Turbine...what they choose to do with that revenue is entirely upto thier management.
Conversely we ALREADY know that implementing this system has COST us content (look at the rate/scale of updates in the past 6 months or so compared with a couple years ago) as resources have been devoted to creating the systems required to support F2P transition....resources that COULD have been used for other projects (like content and game-play enhancements). It will also cost a certain amount of resources ongoing to support F2P and the Cash Shop.... heck just increased bandwidth and disk storage from the increased user population (IF there is one) will end up costing some resources. What Turbine has done is gone from a model where you can predict thier costs and profits per user to one where they can't. Each user costs the service provider a certain amount of cash....hardware, bandwidth, technical support, engineering, etc....with a subscription based model, they know they can cover that cost and then some.... with a F2P model it's a big fat question mark.
They are GAMBLING on the F2P (or even the P2P) players spending enough in the cash shop to more then cover that cost....but whether that holds true or not is, at best, an educated guess. Each user that ends up paying less then the current sub-price ends up reducing thier margin....meaning less services per user. They are hoping to make up for this in VOLUME... and there are certain fixed cost savings in dealing in volume (writing a quest for 10 people costs the same as writing a quest for 1 million) with this sort of model...but that only goes so far. Trust me that designing a network archectecture (for example) to handle a million connections is ALOT more expensive then putting together one that handles a thousand. If Turbine cuts thier margins too thin (say by underestimating how many F2P people use the cash shop) it can drasticaly reduce the level of service thier current customers enjoy..... and can even drive the company out of business.
VOLUME of users can be quite BAD...if you can't convert a high enough percent of that volume to paying customers. Alot of MBA's today are blind to that basic fact....but anyone that's dealt with SPAM should be well aware of it.
#1 It’s LotRO and it’s Free
To which I counter....you get what you pay for.
Trust me...it's not "Free".... Turbine isn't a charity (especialy now that thier owned by WB) . They are in this to make money. They are going to try to find a way to make sure you spend cash on LOTRO. For those of us who WERE subscribers to LOTRO where the cash were paying to enjoy it at it's current level was quite predictable...as well as the level of service we were getting for that cash. Obviously, most of us regarded that as a fair deal..... else we wouldn't have subscribed. Turbine is changing that equation on us drasticaly....to what is note entirely clear at this point (possibly not even to Turbine). Whether it remains a fair deal is entirely impossible to predict at this point. However, Turbine hasn't exactly earned any points in the trust category with this move so far.
You can't expect those of us who were reasonably happy with the existing situation to be thrilled about being thrown this sort of change-up.
Actually, I cross referenced the data from a number of sources and decided the MMOchart.com was the easiest to post. I also mentioned google because i knew there would be somebody- more than likely several somebodies -who would get defensive with the suggestion that their favorite MMO wasn't doing as well as they thought it should.
MMOcharts itself is regarded as being reasonably accurate. In fact, visit their website and see how they collect the data. It's not hard to do. Even if you don't go there, at least do some minute amount of legwork and come back with your own substantiations before accusing one of baseless inaccuracies; especially when you haven't bothered to produce your own. The external source doesn't mean its bad data, and in the end, you get the same reply as Scot (below).
Reading is hard, isn't it? To requote the second paragraph of the relevant post:
"Here is where somebody notes the chart only goes to mid 2008. I know. The google key words are "mmo statistics chart". Do your own research and learn something."
Im amazed that people still fall into the f2p scam!
f2p is just free to suck and free to log in ( tho usually log in with lowest priority like DDO ) Anyone that have a regular income is in danger or spending much more money on f2p games than the normal monthly subscription. As example DDO, sure you can play the low levels but at the time you hit lvl 10 you will soon want to buy more quests since youve run out of the free ones and your bored to death of running them over and over. On free account you only have 2 character slots and you will most likely need 3-6 characters ONLY for bag space of the gear you gather ( unless you vendor everything you get ). Now Turbine is planning to nerf 2 weapon fighting because the servers and clients become laggy of them proccing, NOT because of game balance issues. Also to consider is that some people have used years to tweak and gather gear for their 2 weapon characters.
Tho they have with DDO made lots of money and dont bother improving on the code or the hardware.
Also most of the f2p games use marketing tricks that are borderline scamming and for sure misleading of what the items do what you pay for. Turbine/DDO have a few items that are quite misleading and pretty much useless but still people buy them, Frogster and ROM pretty much scam people monthly with new schemes and with misleading adverticement. I really hope that soon European Consumer protection agencies takes Frogster Europe into the magnifying glass and start raising some charges on all the breaches they do in their marketing. EU marketing laws are much more stricter than anywhere else and well companies in the US or Asia can pretty much scam as much as they like
I played Lotro awhile ago and it was a fine game but as usual I get bored of any game after some time of playing and move to next one. When Lotro goes into f2p mode it will just become another turbine cash cow and will probably make lots of money for Turbine but it will loose its spirit.
I know many people with low or no income will like that games become f2p but they really all are just hooks to get you in the game and when you spents weeks playing it becomes much harder to resist to buy from the cash shops since all f2p games you will realize at some point
that your character Sucks! and you want to unsuck it!
LOL, there isn't one MMO on the planet that doesn't have its share of haters. Lots of people think LOTRO is a quality MMO, just as there are many who don't care for it. Don't confuse your personal taste with an absolute. The reason LOTRO doesn't have more subs, IMO, is that it was released (and still is) unfinished as a Lord of the Rings MMO. No Rohan. No Gondor. No Mordor. How many casual fans of Tolkien, such as people who saw the movies but never read the books, ever even heard of Angmar? LOTRO won't have its full commercial potential until it has the iconic Tolkien elements in the game: Helm's Deep, the Ents, Minas Tirith, Isengard, etc. If the new payment model gets them more content, faster, then most of the players (myself included) will be happy. And if/when LOTRO gets Middle Earth fleshed out, it will get a *much bigger* player base.
Its a bad bad sign when an MMO goes FTP.
Yeah DDO would like to explain how wrong you are on that. From Turbines point of view it was a stroke of genius. They took a money losing game and made it popular enough that its now a plus for them.
Ok, how about "It's a bad sign when a AAA MMO that isn't on life support, goes free to play"?
Nope have to disagree there too. If it is not on life support then Turbine must see this move as a possible huge upswing. If a game is healthy and makes this move why would that be a bad sign for the game? Now is it a bad sign for the current players? If it goes like DDO yes, but financially I would be willing to bet this ends up a winner for Turbine.
If it is not on life support why would Turbine make this move, and why do you think this is a bad sign? You said yourself it is a AAA MMO not on life support. Sounds to me like a game that its owner thinks can be even bigger with this move. I fail to see the bad signs, other then the community will be full of less desirable elements and the likely direction of content will be aimed at what the new players want or feel they need(see the changes and nerfs in DDO and the general making the game easier moves they keep pulling).
Unless a company actually releases it's sub numbers, there is no way of knowing what the actual numbers are. You can gather info from "sources" or whatever, but you still won't have the actual numbers. I stand by my original assertion that the graph is a guesstimation. It may be a fairly accurate guesstimation, but a guesstimation all the same.
Ozzallous – Reading is not hard, so please read. I never questioned the chart only goes to 2008, what I am pointing out is it shows ZERO subs at the start of 2008. That is just nonsense, yes I could check it out myself, but I am pointing out here that when you present evidence it is a good idea to look at it and see if it makes sense. Do you really think no one was playing the game in 2008?
Using ‘guestimation’ I can only tell you that on Laurelin we have had between 2000 and 5000 people since launch, that’s just one server and certainly not ZERO subs.