The LotRO Store & Turbine Points

Palantir

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Question: What does Christopher Columbus have to do with LotR? :hmmm:

Answer: Not a dang thing. :censored:


So why would Turbine/LotRO be celebrating Columbus Day?
:pIMP:

View attachment 31295

Why would they be offering such a "great" deal so suddenly after the Store opened? :paperbag:
Wouldn't this double point give away just cut into their nickel & dime profits over the long haul? Maybe the players are not using the store as much as they hoped. Any opinions?


Also, this "Bundle" costs $50, more than the cost to get the game initially or any expansions.
If players who couldn't afford to pay the monthly subscription before are now willing to fork over that kind of money (often) for just "stuff" you'd think there would have been no reason to go F2P because those players could have afforded to play the game already.
 

Michael Dorosh

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Enjoy LOTRo while it lasts; I doubt it will last another two years.
 

Palantir

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What are you thinking?

1. Is that because we'll take a sudden bee-line to Mordor in two years: say they take some short-cuts, straight to Rohan (no Fangorn Forest), Gondor (limited areas around MT), North Ithilien, then straight to Mordor (limited north area). I don't see that happening though.

2. Will the F2P players slowly disappear over that time?
3. Or will the core players slowly disappear over time?

Assuming the newest players disappear: wouldn't the game still continue forward like before F2P with the "original" players and still have 1 major expansion a year. We'd still get ALL the areas just not as fast and eventually make it to Mordor with the same high quality of work we have now.

The better chance of a collapse to me is if the majority of core players disappear who (used to) have more of a connection with the game, and the F2P'ers will not buy as much stuff as originally thought.
If numbers go down wouldn't the game just downsize to fewer servers and continue albeit at a slower pace for expansions?

I'm betting the game continues stronger than before IF The Hobbit Movie gets going. The excitement around it should give the game a big boost for several years.

Btw- what does happen to MMO's that lose player populations? Do they just shut down “like that,” or continue with fewer servers? And, have any other F2P's shut down?
 
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Scott Tortorice

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Btw- what does happen to MMO's that lose player populations? Do they just shut down “like that,” or continue with fewer servers? And, have any other F2P's shut down?
I've seen MMOs do both. Warhammer, for example, began shutting down servers a few months back as the game's initial popularity has dropped off precipitously. It's still running, however, as a P2P. APB, on the other hand, was such a fiasco that it completely shut down in a matter of weeks. Tabular Rasa had the best of both worlds: it started out as a pay service, lost members, shut down servers, went to F2P and then closed shop.

Anything is possible.

I guess it will ultimately be determined by the community. As long as the game makes enough money to keep the servers running and to pay for the cost of expansions, a dev really doesn't care if their game is comprised of lifetime subscribers or people who just jump in and out as the mood strikes them. With LotRO, I gather the biggest problem is with the friction that is occurring between the original P2P members and the new F2P community. Going from one to the other was going to cause trouble no matter what.

BTW: Why did LotRO go F2P? I don't think I ever heard a real explanation. Was membership falling off? If it was, I suppose better F2P than DOA. If, on the other hand, it was just out of a desire to maximize profits, well, as long as it works, that's not bad either. While F2P might have its annoyances, if the game is making even more money, that means the devs can invest a lot more in improving the game. I guess that is why I am not freaked out - IN PRINCIPLE - over micro-transactions / online stores.
 

Palantir

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Why did LotRO go F2P?
More Money
Scott Tortorice said:
Was membership falling off?
No but it wasn't growing much as of lately. The number of servers had never been increased until F2P arrived.
Scott Tortorice said:
if the game is making even more money, that means the devs can invest a lot more in improving the game.
That’s the hope for LotRO now since that is what happened with DDO & their store- more expansions are coming quicker than before F2P was introduced.

If The Hobbit Movie gets going that’s sure to bring more players to the game & more money, extending the life of the game.

As mentioned elsewhere it's not THE store that’s the problem it's what they are selling in it. Better items to improve in-game combat than you can find or reasonably get in-game and items that can only be obtained from the store. Plus a lot of the class only skills are now being sold as items in the store which sort of short changes the usefulness of those classes.
 

Michael Dorosh

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Why did LotRO go F2P?
Desperation is the only word I can think of.

I just got another email. They are selling Spring Festival Mounts, 20% off. You used to have to go through a rigmarole at the summer festival to get them, once a year, and jump through hoops - literally - to get 'em, plus pay a ton of gold after.

It's bloody autumn. It's like a clearance sale for heaven's sake.
 

Palantir

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We need Redwolf who has the fortitude to go where no player who really likes the game should go into the Offical Forums and cruise around and see whats up. Maybe someone has some info on why all the store sales are suddenly happening.
I only look at selected forums there but won't last long poking around for news.
 

Redwolf

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They had a "point sale", I think with the same numbers involved, right when they launched the shop.

I don't think it has anything to do with desperation. What they do is have one of these sales just rarely enough that enough people discoverer a need for points in between, regret not having bought the on-sale package and pounce next time.

It's the same for all the "shared storage" or whatever sale. There are a lot of people who say they won't spend any money, or people who say no money other than subscription. You dangle the cheaper storage in front of them for a couple day, then you torture them for a month with insane floods of garbage items that all somehow need storage, then a good number of them will get the storage on the next sale, breaking their previous determination.
 

Redwolf

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BTW: Why did LotRO go F2P? I don't think I ever heard a real explanation. Was membership falling off? If it was, I suppose better F2P than DOA. If, on the other hand, it was just out of a desire to maximize profits, well, as long as it works, that's not bad either. While F2P might have its annoyances, if the game is making even more money, that means the devs can invest a lot more in improving the game. I guess that is why I am not freaked out - IN PRINCIPLE - over micro-transactions / online stores.
The lack of real expansions (pretty much none after Moria) made it diminish.

The problem that I and others have with the recent move is that at the same time as f2p a number of code changes have been rolled out that have nothing to do with f2p and are not at all to the advantage of the player in general, and other changes not to the advantage of the thinking player, or a player looking for a challenge every now and then. Turbine has also turned to directly deceive their customers on a constant basis.

It should also be pointed out that the lack of new content was probably the biggest problem in the old game and now they spent about one year almost exclusively working on f2p. I haven't seen the new region but it's no new Moria, that's for sure.
 

Palantir

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It should also be pointed out that the lack of new content was probably the biggest problem in the old game and now they spent about one year almost exclusively working on f2p. I haven't seen the new region but it's no new Moria, that's for sure.
That probably explains why the in-game Enedwaith region is only @ 1/3 the size of what Tolkien shows on his maps. Considering they went over the top in creating the expanses of Moria. It’s like a stop gap expansion to keep the players from revolting over no expansion at all.
However, I actually like the story line they do have for Enedwaith, who would have thought that the "Grey Company" of Dunedain Rangers, all of them being elite warriors, would need help just riding to Rohan? While the area isn't extensive it should be enough for the casual players to explore while waiting for the Rohan Expansion to come out. I still haven’t seen all of Mirkwood yet.

I'm guessing that the delay in The Hobbit Movie is sort of good news for Turbine (and the players). It gives them more time to develop the areas of the Northern Misty Mts, N. Mirkwood & the Lonely Mt regions. If the F2P system works they should have a large war chest to throw quality resources into it as the movies get released.
 

Dr Zaius

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The problem that I and others have with the recent move is that at the same time as f2p a number of code changes have been rolled out that have nothing to do with f2p and are not at all to the advantage of the player in general, and other changes not to the advantage of the thinking player, or a player looking for a challenge every now and then. Turbine has also turned to directly deceive their customers on a constant basis.
People can say the two are completely unrelated, but publisher deception and the microtransaction model seem to go hand in hand in the MMO genre. In theory they may not be releated, however, there is a definite pattern when you look at MMOs that have transitioned from P2P to F2P. They start telling lies once they get a taste of those microtransaction dollars.

Microtransactions ruin MMOs, IMHO. Players simply buy success instead of actually playing the damn game.
 
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It's a tad ironic that Turbine has taken part of a page from the gold farmers' business model.

The ban on farming seems to be about protecting a monopoly.

If someone in Turbine's finance department decided that revenue from paying players was pretty much maxed out (whether or not that source of revenue had started to decline in size), it would make sense to consider going to a F2P model to capture incremental revenue, even if that revenue was significantly less on a per-player basis. Then the calculation would simply come down to whether or not the incremental revenue generated by increased F2P volume would be enough to cover the cost of additional resources, revenue lost from disgruntled defections, and a profit equivalent to whatever ROI hurdle rate they're using.

You can't ignore economics when you're setting up something like this, but I get the feeling that game development is being driven by the need to maximize returns rather than by the developers' rendering of Tolkien's world. That's the kind of thinking that goes on at Eisener's Evil Empire all the time, and gives me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
 
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Dr Zaius

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You can't ignore economics when you're setting up something like this, but I get the feeling that game development is being driven by the need to maximize returns rather than by the developers' rendering of Tolkien's world.
No, you can't ignore it. It costs money to make and maintain MMOs, game websites, and other services for gamers. But it's a bad sign when players are spending more time talking about how the game is funded than the gameplay.
 

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You can't ignore economics when you're setting up something like this, but I get the feeling that game development is being driven by the need to maximize returns rather than by the developers' rendering of Tolkien's world. That's the kind of thinking that goes on at Eisener's Evil Empire all the time, and gives me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
It doesn't matter that the old model made money (assuming it did).

It is the same as with TV shows (series). Plenty shows that are making money get canceled. Why? Because they take up "slots" of some kind that could be filled with a product that in the imagination of the decision-makers makes more money. It could be the place in the evening schedule, or some members of the team, or a specific genre that the station doesn't want two series of. So the old series gets the axe not because it wasn't profitable, it gets the axe to free up that slot for the new toy.

LOTRO sits on the Tolkien license slot. There can only be one MMORPG sitting there. So whoever sits there gets killed regardless of whether it makes money or not if some new thing is assumed to make more money.

Now add "not invented here" syndrome and general preference to place products that this particular decision-maker has spoken for in the past and you don't even have to think about money anymore.
 

Scott Tortorice

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What more needs to be said?

Free-To-Play Shift Doubles Lord Of The Rings Online Revenue

Turbine debuted LOTRO’s free-to-play option in the US last month, and has since seen the return of 20 per cent of the title’s inactive players, along with the creation of 1 million new accounts and double the amount of monthly revenue.

Paiz, who had a similar success story with Turbine and Dungeons And Dragons Online in 2009, said "when you tell people you no longer have to pay for it, they come in droves."

...

Speaking to us recently, David Solari, vice president of LOTRO’s European publisher, Codemasters, said: “There’s good theory behind why item sales can return more than subscriptions. Item sales lets players pay as much as they want to pay. You get maybe five, ten per cent of people who’ll pay something, but then there’s one per cent who are so into it they’ll spend a significant amount. Generally speaking the overall return – because of the broader customer base – is higher.”
 

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Well, first of all they have been lying to the press before but let's take it at face value.

The question is how many of those people who payed money this month did one-time payments and will never pay again. A so-called Premium player pays no monthly subscription, but he can buy storage, quest packs, horses etc. Buy once and then use it in gameplay forever without forking out another cent.

As a matter of fact the majority of items in the store are pay once, use forever. How many people will pop potions that cost real-world money in every fight? Ah that's right. You just make the fight hard enough so that the weaker in-game potions don't cut it...
 
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Palantir

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What more needs to be said?
"free-to-play-shift-doubles-lord-of-the-rings-online-revenue
Thats good news but only if it means they'll be putting that money back into the game. If "Item sales" are required to get us into Mordor in style it's better than watching the Ring get lost forever as we cross over the Anduin River or get some second rate expansions.
 

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Question: What does Christopher Columbus have to do with LotR?

Answer: Not a dang thing. :censored:

So why would Turbine/LotRO be celebrating Columbus Day?

View attachment 31295

Why would they be offering such a "great" deal so suddenly after the Store opened?
It's exactly the same deal they're offering for Dungeons & Dragons Online (hereafter DDO) for Columbus Day. So, no great mystery; they've simply set up a model where they offer sales either "in honor of" holidays (like real-world stores) or at a time when they figure customers will have time off and be apt to play the game (like real-world stores and shopping...).

I've never played LOTRO but it's quite obvious from reading the comments here that they're adopting as exactly the same business model for the two as they can, so I'll comment freely from my (similar) DDO experience.

Also, this "Bundle" costs $50, more than the cost to get the game initially or any expansions.
If players who couldn't afford to pay the monthly subscription before are now willing to fork over that kind of money (often) for just "stuff" you'd think there would have been no reason to go F2P because those players could have afforded to play the game already.
At this point I'm heavily invested (timewise) in DDO, but I've been doing it F2P so far; since there is no initial cost for the game for F2Pers, that means I've gotten many hours of play without spending a dime. However, I will be buying DDO's equivalent point bundle this week while it's "on sale". My intention is to go back to never spending a dime on the game after that, though we'll see how well it works out in the end.

From my perspective the $50 is no more than I've paid for any number of non-MMO games that I got an equal amount of enjoyment from. In fact, I realized tonight that I paid $10 more for Starcraft II... and, except for the single-player campaign, have been enjoying it far less than DDO. So I figure I sort of owe Turbine some money for the enjoyment they've provided me -- given that if everyone was F2P they'd go broke in a heartbeat. I would not be nearly so sanguine about finding myself shelling out another $50 in a few months... but it will ultimately be my decision whether to do so or not.

None of this means that I'm wild about Turbine's business model (and I'm even less wild about having it applied to LOTR!). There is no question it is manipulative. At best they will always be holding something back, something which hypothetically should be part of the core game, to get people to shell out some money. In DDO it is the Monk class and the Warforged race. Both of these have a sufficiently high "cool" factor to have played a part in my decision to spend money on the game, so yeah, I've been sucked in by their methods.

However, much of the $50 will go to buying expansion packs that are not part of the F2P experience. I'll wait till the packs are on sale. I'll focus on the ones that get good reviews. It won't be all that different from buying, say, Company of Heroes: Opposing Forces after effectively having gotten the base Company of Heroes game for free.

I personally am not likely to shell out real money for "just stuff". One of my friends did, in essence, when he used some of the points he'd purchased to get himself a +3 suit of plate armor and a +3 shield. But then, he could have afforded the monthly subscription... if he had bothered paying attention to the game before it became F2P.


John
 

jwb3

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They had a "point sale", I think with the same numbers involved, right when they launched the shop.

I don't think it has anything to do with desperation. What they do is have one of these sales just rarely enough that enough people discoverer a need for points in between, regret not having bought the on-sale package and pounce next time.
Yup... and it worked on me. $50 for 6900 DDO store points seemed like a waste of money when they advertised it a few weeks ago just as I was getting started with the game... and then as I earned my first "in-game-earned" store points and realized I could, and had to, use them to buy expansion packs, suddenly it seemed like a great deal after all. I'm pouncing.

Meanwhile, the friend I mentioned in my previous post is mildly annoyed because he just went ahead a few days ago and spent some money on buying points at the non-sale price. Just like when you buy a new product to try it at the grocery store, and then the next week it's on sale...

It's the same for all the "shared storage" or whatever sale. There are a lot of people who say they won't spend any money, or people who say no money other than subscription. You dangle the cheaper storage in front of them for a couple day, then you torture them for a month with insane floods of garbage items that all somehow need storage, then a good number of them will get the storage on the next sale, breaking their previous determination.
And I may be one of them... because the DDO store is also selling storage right now, at the "incredible bargain price" (my words, not theirs) of 50% off. Of course, that's 50% off a ridiculously high price to begin with. I think the sale price on the largest (and therefore best bang-for-the-buck) storage container of a certain type works out to something like $1.96 of real money... per character!

And yet I'm considering paying it... because when it comes down to it, it's just part of that first $50 -- which as I explained in the previous post is not an unreasonable amount to pay Turbine for having provided me with the gaming experience I've been having.


John
 

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People can say the two are completely unrelated, but publisher deception and the microtransaction model seem to go hand in hand in the MMO genre. In theory they may not be releated, however, there is a definite pattern when you look at MMOs that have transitioned from P2P to F2P. They start telling lies once they get a taste of those microtransaction dollars.
Even if they don't start doing so outright, it appears that Turbine, for one, is making use of every slick marketing tactic in the book. Whether these gimmicks technically qualify as lies is certainly debatable. Either way, I'd say they feel just as slimy. :devious:

Players simply buy success instead of actually playing the damn game.
Certainly my friend who bought the +3 items did so. Me, I'm playing the game. Question is, how many of each type there are.


John
 
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