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Lord of the Rings Online: Big Numbers Since Conversion
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
At this week's GDC Online, Turbine's Kate Paiz revealed some impressive numbers for Lord of the Rings Online since its conversion to free-to-play in September. The game has scored over a million new accounts and doubled its monthly revenue. Additionally, peak concurrent player numbers have risen exponentially along with the return of a large number of former subscribers.
Paiz also shared that 20% of LotRO's former players have returned to the game since the switchover, and that the game has seen a 300% increase in peak concurrency, with three times the number of players online simultaneously, and a 400% increase in active players total. 53% of players have used the in-game microtransaction store (which sells everything from mounts and outfits to XP boosts and character slots), and as you can see above, extra storage slots are extremely popular in the store. And even paid subscriptions have increased. Turbine's lesson seems to be that, as Paiz said during the panel, "when you tell people you no longer have to pay for it, they come in droves."
Source: Kotaku.
Comments
Good for them!
I've already sunk some cash into the xpac, some quest hubs and skirmishes.
Even got my Wife and my Brother to play since they both quit WoW a few months ago.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Indeed, good for them!
Going Free-To-Play with DDO was a bold maneuver. They sunk a lot of time and money into converting it when they could have just hauled stakes and let it die. Now they've done the same with LOTRO and it's paying dividends again.
It's nice to see something other than the typical business model do well. Nice to see the underdog score a touchdown.
Take note other developers. Especially you SOE, seems Turbine is doing something right.
Just to bad that Codemaster sucks and still havnt implemented it on the EU servers =/
There goes the neighbourhood.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Don't think CM will change to F2P any day soon :'(
Good news!
I only hope bad apples won't be too vocal and stay long in this game, in 2.5 years I only saw 2 gold spammers and very rare bickering, and I ignored only four players which must be a record for my mmorpgs.
LOTRO is already a great game and with more resources it could near perfection and be unique, as long as they don't push it too far with the store (buying reputation items and pots is already a bad idea) and don't change the good things (has Warner Bros a say in the development now?).
I'm playing in Europe and not so anxious for the new version (levelling up my spider) but as for Codemasters my wild guess is Turbine may have done things wrongly or didn't mind attracting international players before Codemasters launched the new version. We are left with speculations really as to whom is to blame.
But with the US site and forums and extra-game applications so much better, European players have the right to complain and feel neglected
It's blood boiling, that's what it is.
I reactivated my account just so that I can make a new toon to play with all the F2P players, so I can play all the low level group content I missed initially... and now this. Still no F2P.
I do have a 6 month sub (well, 5 left now), but this is just not good. Wonder if we'll ever know the real reasons behind this mess.
DB
Denial makes one look a lot dumber than he/she actually is.
Very interesting news. It looks like the gamble is paying off again, at least for now.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
"when you tell people you no longer have to pay for it, they come in droves."
If that quote holds any truth when it comes to a p2p-to-f2p conversion, then that may very well be a new trend to watch out for in the future.
I hope not too many companies begin to see things that way, and just start purposely developing f2p games, hype them up, sell it as p2p, then after the boxes have sold/subscription numbers drop, they make it f2p as was planned right from day 1. Then once that happens everyone else will feel like it's a prevelege to be playing a p2p game for free, and behind all of that hussle-n-bussle they potentially double the starting earnings of their f2p game before it even really started.
Not implying that's what lotr is doing or has done, actually has nothing to do with that game.
It's just a theory of something we might start to see, since i'm sure there are a lot of other developers taking notice to turbines success as of late, and in all honesty if you think about it a sort of "f2p-sold as p2p-then made f2p" scheme could work quite well if some quick starting out $$ is all a company with no integerty is after.
I'm glad it seems to be working out for them. LOTRO is a great game and it was a shame to see the number of players as low as it was. It's nice that, when I log in now, there's people around.
Yes it is an absolutely fantastic game and I am glad it is doing well.
Yes, this is great news. Now if they will re-invest the money and make the game great. This game has been in stagnation since MOM (Mines of Moria) rolled out. We watched them go from several updates a year to just 1 this prior year.
Making cahs is one thing, putting cash back into your company and delivering more and better content is where this needs to go. Content as in playable content not more items to buy in the store.
I dont think the f2ps will stay for the long haul, but I think this game has taken the right path with f2p. It started as a AAA MMO, then went f2p, so the game is pretty good. It knows what it is (pve, lore) and sticks to it. And it give you just enough free content to encourage you to pony up. Hopefully by subscribing as turbine points are a ripoff compared to a VIP acct.
I wouldn't celebrate just yet. What has it been, a whole month? Everything listed could have been easily predicted. New players bored with other MMOs were bound to descend like locusts once the game went "FREE". Old players were bound to come back and see the changes, why not? And of the 53% who used the store, how many were old players with credit already in their accounts? I logged in and did little more than use my balance to buy horses for four of my characters and since I have a Lifetime, I didn't spend a nickel.
There are still the issues of the "layering" technology and the trivialization of the IP. Let's see how things are going after six months of this drek, shall we?
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
That's exactly what I was thinking about the "53% used the store" comment. Subscribers and LT accounts get free points, and are very likely included in that number... which means that the whole bragging over those "sales" is meaningless.
I'm not touching the game with a 10 foot pole though. The fact that they added RMT turned me away completely, when I was otherwise planning on starting to play again.
Oh well, there choice. We'll see how long this "success" lasts though...
Having played lotro since its release i have to say its great news.but time will tell.the game deserves a big community , i just hope with the influx of people we don't end up with some of the crettins that made me move from wow.but i suppose thats why we have ignore.btw c'mon codemasters get a move on we europeans want the damn update.
I haven't noticed, you are pretty much alone outside the Bree zones. Maybe it's because I'm on the new server, albeit the most populous of the new servers.
I saw my first LOTRO multi-boxer yesterday....
Unlike SOE, Turbine used the right f2p design to enhance their game. About all you can do is laugh at SOE's version of f2p, it has Smedley's hand all over it with a big "fail" stamp on it.
Of course Turbine saw how successful this model made DDO and it was an easy decision to convert Lotro. My hat is off to Turbine.
LOL where have you been, we had multi boxers all the time on brandinwe you have 3 very well known multi boxers one of them stays in the moors and has 6 computers. can any one say the bomb squad seroiusly that the name bomb.
It not the first time its happened and it will not be the last, in fact its really piced up now that its when free to play, lots of folks rolling new toons farming tp and deleteing them.
Rofl, enhance the game???
What have the enhanced so far other than adding the store in. They just went free to play, were still waiting on the enhancements that are yet to come. I am still waiting to see new content thats worth anything.
It is easy to think that way until you look at DDO. They did the same conversion that they did to DDO and DDO has just gotten bigger and bigger in the year that it has been f2p. LotRO is following the pattern and is a bigger IP so there is no reason to think it won't follow the same course that DDO did over the course of the next year.
I personally think it is a wave. MMO's started out as pay per time played and then went to a subscription model. The economy went bad and all of a sudden people thought $15 a month was huge (even though people have pointed out time and time again how tiny that amount is for a month's worth of entertainment). So people started looking to F2P to get them by. This made DDO switch to f2p and it worked out well so now LotRO and EQ2 have switched. The wave will crest when there are several major western F2P games out there and then it will go in the other direction again. People will once again not want to have to pay for each little item they want and more games will come out that are subscription or buy to play. Overall neither model will vanish anytime soon but the popularity will swap back and forth.
I still find it funny in a time when all other services have been swapping to a subscription model, MMOs are going the other way. Phones used to be pay by minute (and then pay by text) and now most cell phones are buy a plan and have unlimited texting and tons of minutes you can use for calling without being charged extra. Cable/Satellite TV, you buy a plan for it and pay monthly. Internet switched from pay per minute to pay for a subscription.
I think DDO and LotRO will do well. However I think once there are 5-6 big players from different companies with similar models that none of them will do all that well. It will be harder then subscription only MMOs to keep dominance because a person knows they can just stop buying things/paying for VIP and they can still connect with the friends they made and characters they've built while they go pay for the other game they're interested in now.
This won't slow down to a halt - it relies on the sale of virtual goods. When did you see the illegal RMT market for any game die as time goes on because of lack of interest?
They can drain way more than $15 a month from the willing customers, they can get less than that for the ones that won't pay for a subscription but will not grind until their heart stops beating so they never have to pay, and everyone is happy with that. It's a miracle.
Not that I am interested by the way, the above i's just an objective analysis, I uninstalled as soon as I saw the only viable option was to keep paying a subscription, while still needing to pay for expansions AND getting a fully functional item shop shoved down your throat. This was my opinion.