FREE TO PLAY! (was game=268)Follow

Out of curiosity, I haven't kept up with LoTRO so forgive my ignorance but is there a catch to it becoming free to play? i.e., are they gonna use something like a real money trading store and make you pay for armor and stuff like that or is it the complete game?

gotta pay for questpacks 2 expansions gold cap lvl cap if you upgrade for more char slots pvp so many tells ect.items vary from fraction mounts cosmetics to items that enhance stats

meh I would rather just pay for the game. This kind of thing is lame if you ask me.

Because obviously that game did so well !

It is totally free to play. That being said, you can level till around 25. At this point you either need to grind to earn points ingame to buy additional content or buy those points with real money. They figured out that around $50 you have all the content (except expansion) and then it is totally free to play till level 50.

Of course there are some restrictions, like chat, AH, bag space and a few others.

It is a good concept and if you never played LoTRO, you should try it at least :)

As former subscriber I am not very happy though. It seems Turbine decided that we, who bought the initial game need to pay for that content again :s

Besides LoTRO, also Everquest 2 is F2P. Same concept, but with different limitations.



In fact LoTRO did very well. It had a large subscriber base and was steadily growing, much better then FFXI, AoC and WAR together :P Why they changed their marketing strategy is beyond me.



Edited, Sep 10th 2010 6:59pm by Shoomy

I will be playing FFXIV for a very long time, but I have great memories of LOTRO.

It is a solid game and a fantastic story. LOTRO is a gem of an MMO missed by many gamers. If you have room for another MMO, I do suggest this game. The community is still very strong and the game is healthy.

The goal is not to get people to pay more money than they would from their sub, it's to attract a lot more people to pay a bit for extras. You can keep your sub if you were already playing and keep the benefits and not pay more.

The genius part about LOTRO and Turbines system is you CAN just pay a monthly fee. Free to Play is only optional. I subscribe to LOTRO even (well i did before FFXIV fried my PC -.-) when it's "free to play" simply because you are a VIP and get everything the F2P players get and more, just for the same old monthly fee.

I can see most mmo companies doing this in the future. It's pure genius simply because they make money from dedicated subscribers, plus they rake in money from people that wouldnt be playing if it wasnt "free to play". It's a win win for everyone really. It's no wonder Turbine is getting awards for their buisness model on both LOTRO and DDO.

Edited, Sep 10th 2010 7:37pm by Soezu

Wow the EQ2 limitations are stupid. LOTRO's seem reasonable though.

There's a reason it's "free to play". You cant expect to get everything on a F2P game where 3/4 of the players are still paying a monthly fee. They dont make it free to play to be nice, they make it F2P with a cash shop because it nets them more money, while at the same time earning the same subscription fees from dedicated fans.

LoTRO was not failing on the contrary, LoTRO is always the second best MMORPG after WoW (Not counting older games like EQ, UO and DaOC).

On the contrary, these are examples of games that are adapting to the market and offering players a myriad of game play options.

If you were around at the launch of EQ2 you would know that other than the starting areas and locations, it's an entirely different game now (100x more solo friendly than before, with a well-balanced and challenging EM/HM instance & raiding features). The reason why EQ2 had such a fail launch was they rushed it out, had archaic/unfriendly game mechanics, and very unbalanced/buggy encounters. EQ2 subs are actually on the upswing now because of all the changes they've made in the past 2 years.

Edited, Sep 10th 2010 11:13pm by measureups