Lifetime Account Members Thread

[halzar74]

But better than Guild Wars.

See, I can do it too!!!

Did you read the article? it's not based off any hard data it's a poll of 19,000 "random" people.

and to Gil I have to say I LOVE your patience quote in your Sig

"The LOTRO Store will offer convenience, not advantage." -patience

because convenience isn't an advantage ...

[Raath]

Did you read the article? it's not based off any hard data it's a poll of 19,000 "random" people.

When the NPD group said the LOTRO was the number 3 MMO in the US (2008), no one argued against it.

[willwheels]

To whoever is in charge over there, please go read about SWG and how they lost thier entire playerbase due to stupidity.

Right, because no game developer has ever heard of SWG or the NGE.

[Ehra]

because convenience isn't an advantage ...

It's obvious what the quote meant. However, even then I think I'd take issue with the quote. The store (or a subscription) will be required for new players to fully unlock all of their trait slots, and there's no way anyone will be able to convince me that traits are a mere "convenience" and not advantage.

[ararax2]

Major changes to combat and crafting. Addition of a new large system in Skirmishes.

Define major changes to crafting.

I agree Skirmishes were something, but they were the free part. The Eregion of Moria.

[gildhur]

It's obvious what the quote meant. However, even then I think I'd take issue with the quote. The store (or a subscription) will be required for new players to fully unlock all of their trait slots, and there's no way anyone will be able to convince me that traits are a mere "convenience" and not advantage.

They're certainly not an "advantage" over subscribing characters at the same level. It's only allowing F2P characters to approach the level of subscribing ones. Now if it crosses the line so that F2P characters can buy things (e.g. NEW trait slots) that a subscribing character wouldn't normally have, then we have a problem.

To me, the inherent modifier of "advantage" is "over a normally subscribing character".

[Dumnbunny]

To whoever is in charge over there, please go read about SWG and how they lost thier entire playerbase due to stupidity.

You should read about DDO and how they doubled their playerbase and increased revenues by 500% due to a switch to F2P.

What is this move to F2P more like: a complete overhaul of character, combat and other mechanics including the deletion of two classes, or DDO's move to F2P, a change in how the game is paid for?

Do you have specific concerns? The community reps and the other posters on this board can probably give you some answers. The Answers to Your Questions thread is also a valuable resource.

[khanute]

Right, because no game developer has ever heard of SWG or the NGE.

Well Since combat upgrade happened I have never bought another sony / lucas arts product . Now I will never buy another turbine/ wb product. It makes choosing an MMO alot easier for me now.

[Ascus]

They're certainly not an "advantage" over subscribing characters at the same level. It's only allowing F2P characters to approach the level of subscribing ones. Now if it crosses the line so that F2P characters can buy things (e.g. NEW trait slots) that a subscribing character wouldn't normally have, then we have a problem.

To me, the inherent modifier of "advantage" is "over a normally subscribing character".

I agree with you on the traits, I hope they give all trait slots to F2P, likely they will have to buy enough modules to maximise them though. I think the pay to raise cap for traits is a "pay to win" item.

[Raath]

Well, there is at least one valid fear; that the resources they get from the new MT system will go back into revamping low level content, or simply disappear into someone's pocket at WB.

MTs will be great for LOTRO, assuming they use those resources actually fix the problems with this game that have been piling on since the release of Moria.

If all the resources simply go into trying to attract more short term players, and wring 20 bucks out of them before they get bored and leave, this will not be a good thing for the existing players.

This is potentially good, but again it is up to Turbine to fulfill that potential. Frankly, with as bad as things have been since Moria came out for most of the long time players I am skeptical at best.

In case you haven't seen it, here's a graph from DDO showing where the money has gone:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...t=quests+graph

And here's a set of slides that DDO's EP Fernando Paiz used at the recent GDC conference:

http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/vaul...ation_SOGS.pdf

Lots of interesting stuff there, but slide #36 is really interesting:

"Thinking Before and After: New Content

Box & Subscription: “We have to build more content for elders to maintain subs.”

Free to Play + MTX: “We have to build more of what’s selling.”

[Krakenheim]

This is an interesting set of slides about the DDO experience with F2P that Turbine presented at the Game Developer's Conference this year - thanks to another poster here for that link. And while it doesn't point to the "end of end-game", it certainly does suggest an evolving set of priorities. For example, on one slide he mentions that the normal subscription-based game drives thinking like "We have to build more content for elders to maintain subs", while F2P model is more "We have to build more of what's selling". A hybrid model with both subscriptions and F2P would need some of both, so priorities are going to be split (unless what's selling also happens to be "elder content" - it wasn't).

Some interesting stats:

• 5X previous revenues.
• 2X previous subscriptions.
• 10X previous number of active players per month.
• 20% of F2P players spend money. With 1 million new players, that's 200K new spenders.
• They reacquired 20% of all previous players who had left the game.
• Most subscribers use the store, and 1 in 5 buys additional Turbine Points (beyond the 500 TP/mo that comes with the subscription).
• Average age of players did shift down, from 15% under 25 to 25% under 25.

Khafar

Its also obvious ,but not mentioned, that with that content in DDO also doubled or more in the same time....

lol

[Patrickwg]

DDO third-biggest MMO in the US

Ok if you read this it tells you it comes from a survey of 19,000 random people. Last time i checked only subscription numbers can tell you what game is more popular then the others. A survey is not going to be any where near close telling you what game has more players. Its like the forums here a large % do not post or view them at all. Same with a survey never know who is and not going to take one.

[khanute]

You should read about DDO and how they doubled their playerbase and increased revenues by 500% due to a switch to F2P.

What is this move to F2P more like: a complete overhaul of character, combat and other mechanics including the deletion of two classes, or DDO's move to F2P, a change in how the game is paid for?

Do you have specific concerns? The community reps and the other posters on this board can probably give you some answers. The Answers to Your Questions thread is also a valuable resource.

None of what is being said matters. I've seen the writing on the wall before, and it ends bads everytime.

I have 3 lifetime subs and Im leaving for good. Im not buying any of this BS. The game has offically died as far as I am concerned. WB and Turbine have lost a customer for life for any of thier product lines period.

Oh wait let me rephrase, If they want my buisness they can buy some khanute points from my a$$bank , here is a free pile of khanpoop for a teaser

[Ainaur]

Mirkwood counts as an expansion because they raised the level cap. It's a mini-expansion because it was 5 levels (with enough content to get through them, and precious little since).

[Khafar]

If all the resources simply go into trying to attract more short term players, and wring 20 bucks out of them before they get bored and leave, this will not be a good thing for the existing players.

True, but looking at DDO... I don't think that's likely. It's true that they've probably spent a lower percentage of their development effort on "elder game" stuff since moving to F2P. However, they've hardly abandoned it - the first adventure pack was levels 17-19, the second one was levels 18-20, and they added Epic level difficulty to some previous content to help make it relevant again (level 20 only). They're also adding flying ships as guild housing this month, a move which ought to be pleasing to many existing players.

In addition, even though the development efforts are now split between existing and new customers... they're spending more development $$. Six updates this year instead of the usual 2-3. I didn't play DDO before, so I don't know how this year compares with previous ones, but I've heard many long-term DDO players say it's "better" overall.

Most of the complaints revolve around a couple of things: some unpleasant, uninvested players flooding in (community degradation)... and less emphasis on grouping than before. The old-school players had to be big into grouping in order to enjoy the game, and that's changed. Not only did they introduce Solo difficulty on lots of content last year, but also "Casual" difficulty. These are of course very popular, particularly with new players. That means that when the vets try to PUG, they have to deal with lots of people who are inexperienced groupers. Of course... we have a lot of that here already simply because lots of people don't group much until they get to the endgame .

Khafar

[Ehra]

They're certainly not an "advantage" over subscribing characters at the same level. It's only allowing F2P characters to approach the level of subscribing ones. Now if it crosses the line so that F2P characters can buy things (e.g. NEW trait slots) that a subscribing character wouldn't normally have, then we have a problem.

To me, the inherent modifier of "advantage" is "over a normally subscribing character".

The thing is that it's an increase in character power that requires you to either never cancel your subscription or to unlock it from the store. If it were like many other things, where current customers get to keep it no matter if they stay VIP or go Premium, and new players had to unlock it then I may not have as much of an issue with it. But, from the way it's been described so far, if a VIP were to ever cancel their subscription then the next time they change their traits they'll lose their slots (unless they then decided to unlock them from the store, of course).

It'd be like if only VIPs were given the ability to wear two of each jewelry and everyone else had to buy the ability to wear more than one of each from the store (and the VIPs would lose the extra slots if they ever canceled their account and switched jewelry). Sure it's "only an advantage" in the sense that free players would have to pay to become equal in power to subscribers, but it's still a pretty large advantage over anyone who doesn't spend money.

This is one of the few things we've heard about that I'm not happy with.


edit: Changed the analogy a bit to hopefully be more applicable to this situation.

[Comstrike]

I am still digesting this info. But right off the bat it reminds me of SWG , Since thier mess up I have never purchased another Sony MMO or lucas arts product and never will.

I have been a fan of turbine since asherons call beta , but this is leaving a bad SWG taste in my mouth and even with 3 lifetime subs I think I will move on and never look back.

To whoever is in charge over there, please go read about SWG and how they lost thier entire playerbase due to stupidity.

The SWG CU and NGE was 5 years ago. It is the poster-child for how not to totally screw something up. Even typing NGE makes puppys suffer and babies cry. I hardly think they are unaware of it. Likewise, I see NO comparison at all. None.

CU screwed-up combat. NGE utterly changed the function of the game itself. And in the case of NGE, it was kept secret and then launched almost immediately after a major retail expansion.

People were furious over the CU messing things up, and how the entire game was wrecked by the NGE. Making it worse, was the very real fact that they had all this coming, and choose to sell a big retail expansion right before it.

Turbine is announcing this months ahead of time. It does not fundamentally change how you play the game.

[Krakenheim]

In case you haven't seen it, here's a graph from DDO showing where the money has gone:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...t=quests+graph

And here's a set of slides that DDO's EP Fernando Paiz used at the recent GDC conference:

http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/vaul...ation_SOGS.pdf

Lots of interesting stuff there, but slide #36 is really interesting:

"Thinking Before and After: New Content

Box & Subscription: “We have to build more content for elders to maintain subs.”

Free to Play + MTX: “We have to build more of what’s selling.”

And for me the future of LOTRO is right here for all to see.

Nuff said

[Patrickwg]

In case you haven't seen it, here's a graph from DDO showing where the money has gone:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...t=quests+graph

And here's a set of slides that DDO's EP Fernando Paiz used at the recent GDC conference:

http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/vaul...ation_SOGS.pdf

Lots of interesting stuff there, but slide #36 is really interesting:

"Thinking Before and After: New Content

Box & Subscription: “We have to build more content for elders to maintain subs.”

Free to Play + MTX: “We have to build more of what’s selling.”

looked at that first link and it goes along with what they say over there gona be lots of low level stuff coming

[phaelan2]

None of what is being said matters. I've seen the writing on the wall before, and it ends bads everytime.

I have 3 lifetime subs and Im leaving for good. Im not buying any of this BS. The game has offically died as far as I am concerned. WB and Turbine have lost a customer for life for any of thier product lines period.

Oh wait let me rephrase, If they want my buisness they can buy some khanute points from my a$$bank , here is a free pile of khanpoop for a teaser

But they're not changing the game, they're adding a new way to join. We subscribers are not losing anything. SWG made major changes to actual gameplay; the comparison is not relevant.

If you want to waste your subs, that's you're choice. But I'd advise doing it based on knowledge, not FUD, if you still enjoy the game at this point.

[khanute]

The SWG CU and NGE was 5 years ago. It is the poster-child for how not to totally screw something up. Even typing NGE makes puppys suffer and babies cry. I hardly think they are unaware of it. Likewise, I see NO comparison at all. None.

CU screwed-up combat. NGE utterly changed the function of the game itself. And in the case of NGE, it was kept secret and then launched almost immediately after a major retail expansion.

People were furious over the CU messing things up, and how the entire game was wrecked by the NGE. Making it worse, was the very real fact that they had all this coming, and choose to sell a big retail expansion right before it.

Turbine is announcing this months ahead of time. It does not fundamentally change how you play the game.

Cool I have 3 life time subs , I'll come back and look you up in a year and ask you how it went. For me it's over. turbine and Wb should ask SWG to buy in on this and we'd have a triple crown of crapola mmo's

[Comstrike]

Cool I have 3 life time subs , I'll come back and look you up in a year and ask you how it went. For me it's over. turbine and Wb should ask SWG to buy in on this and we'd have a triple crown of crapola mmo's

If your attitude is any measure of what we might lose, the game is better already.

If you spent that much money up-front, worry this much about things, MMOs might not be a wise investment for you.

[khanute]

But they're not changing the game, they're adding a new way to join. We subscribers are not losing anything. SWG made major changes to actual gameplay; the comparison is not relevant.

If you want to waste your subs, that's you're choice. But I'd advise doing it based on knowledge, not FUD, if you still enjoy the game at this point.

Yeah keep telling yourself that LOL . I'll check back in a year and see if you feel the same way. AS it is all of my real life freinds quit last year. The 300 person guild has 2 loggin a week if that. I took a year off and have finsihsed SOM in 2 weeks. YAY for content...

[Duryn]

Well, I am a Founder and have been with the game since Closed Beta One. I can't say that I was pleased with the announcement of LOTRO going free-to-play; however, I stated months ago that Turbine is or would eventually look at this buisiness model and that they would implement it if they thought it would be beneficial and would 'protect' their bottom-line.

So, here we all are.

I am an older player, like some of you here, and I don't adapt to changes as well as I used to--I am an 'old school' MMORPG'er (I was there when EverQuest I went live). I do not look upon these micro-transaction buisiness models too keenly, but for now they seem to be 'all the rage', and there is not much we can do about it if we want to keep playing our on-line game(s), so we must adapt some. You have to admit, us 'Lifetimers' are getting a really good deal out of all of this. Turbine certainly did not have to go the lengths it has to accomodate us 'Lifers'.

I've taken the time to read all the FAQ's, and the pretty charts, etc; but with a grain of salt with regards to LOTRO. I have experimented with the free-to-play version of DDO, and I was tempted by that game; however, soon after I started playing they introduced the 'Infamous Wall' of 'third party' services. My Email now gets new forms of spam, to this day, from that fiasco. As a result, DDO no longer populates my hard-drive. This is something I, and many other players (I would hope), have no tolerance for. Many of you here, and in other threads, have done comparisons of DDO's current model to the new FTP LOTRO model--keep 'The Wall' in mind. (Yes, I know it's gone, but the temptation remains for something similar).

As with many things, only time will tell if the FTP 'model' will really work for LOTRO. I for one will stick around long enough to see how it goes. It could mean good things for LOTRO and I really hope it succeeds so we can continue the journey to the Black Gates--I just hope we don't find the road guarded by a 'third party wall of shame'.

Good hunting all.

[ararax2]

Mirkwood counts as an expansion because they raised the level cap. It's a mini-expansion because it was 5 levels (with enough content to get through them, and precious little since).

Technically with out rest xp and doing repeatable or instances there is not enough content to hit 65 from lv 60. I also remind you that there was only 1 skill per class in Mirkwood, and lv 65 gear is statistically inferior to lv 60.