VIP: Additional Benefits

[furtim]

I just wanted to pop in and say hi and let you know that we are definitely interested in hearing more ideas on these things. We're not promising anything but we are here to listen.

The only thing I want from my subscription is access to all the story content. No arbitrary "everything but expansions" nonsense. If I'm paying a sub, I deserve everything the game has to offer. LOTRO did this before Mines of Moria and between Helm's Deep and Mordor, and y'all can do it again any time you feel like it.

Hobbit Presents:
What are exciting items to get from Gold/Silver?
What are not so exciting items to get from Gold/Silver?

Hobbit Presents are a gambling scam, just like lootboxes, and LOTRO needs to get rid of them ASAP before they expose SSG to legal liabilities.

[Caanwick]

The current benefits for VIP are reasonable, but could do with improving by introducing a few additional benefits:

- Update Hobbit Presents Especially Gold Hobbit Present Offering
Mithril coins, tomes of attack / max morale / defence, run speed, rally horns, stat tomes, rep accelerators, star-liits etc. are useful so should stay as is
Increase gold offerings so they are more relevant to current game e.g. 1g becomes 100g, 2g becomes 200g etc. for Gold (Weekly VIP) Boxes*
Replace dale man crams with “Superior Dale Man Crams” with increased stats to better suit end game & 30 minute duration
Limit Mathom hunter armour to silver boxes only (hurts getting this in your weekly gold box)
Add nicer stuff to the weekly Gold hobbit presents, Regular Key, Black Steel Key, Steed Selection Box, New Cosmetics, Housing Items, increased chance at getting Mithril Coins etc.

- Mithril Coin Allowance: (20 Mithril coins per month)

- Monthly Gift: A new housing item, cosmetic or steed exclusive to VIPs and lotro store. Additionally could even have pre-order items from past expansions such as the song bird, pesky door mouse, steed of the Hammerhand etc. These could be announced in advance every month to generate some hype and encourage people to subscribe even if it’s only for 1 month to get that particular item.

* by limiting the increased amount of gold to weekly hobbit presents (Gold/VIP) we limit impact on economy, provide VIPS with a small benefit and prevent abuse by someone creating lots of f2p accounts

Agree pretty much across the board with this. Would maybe change one thing for VIP benefits.

For VIP's who have less than 5 years time as VIP: 500 LP and 15 Mithril Coins per month.

For VIP's who have 5 years or more time as VIP: 1000 LP and 30 Mithril Coins per month, and a special cosmetic given quarterly.

[Nymphonic]

?

VIP Monthly Gift
I like this idea. It seems like cosmetics are of interest. Anything else?

Anything to make the game more alt friendly. i want to take my alts through the storylines, not deeding thousands of mobs over and over again. Maybe 2 virtues per deed instead of one? Or keep the deeds exactly the same but be able to choose the virtue? Just anything that makes things more alt friendly would be good for Vips.

[Mar-Evayave]

The only thing I want from my subscription is access to all the story content. No arbitrary "everything but expansions" nonsense. If I'm paying a sub, I deserve everything the game has to offer. LOTRO did this before Mines of Moria and between Helm's Deep and Mordor, and y'all can do it again any time you feel like it.

Hobbit Presents are a gambling scam, just like lootboxes, and LOTRO needs to get rid of them ASAP before they expose SSG to legal liabilities.

I'm not sure if you are trying to give constructive criticism or not. You really think the WB lawyers didn't give that a solid look through before implementing them years ago?

As for the subscription, that's all your subscription covers is the non-expansion content. LOTRO has never done that at any point pre-f2p. Since the launch of f2p, the sub has only ever given you the non-expac content. So you get Eriador, Lorien, Great River, Enedwaith, Wildermore, the Gondor content and North Mirkwood. You have to pay for Moria, South Mirkwood, Isengard, East Rohan, West Rohan and Mordor. I really wish people would stop trying to fight this as though they had two twigs to prop together as a foundation for their argument.

And I have no problem with having to buy expansions. Even WoW, which is sub-only, charges subscribers for the new content (ie: Battle for Azeroth).

Agree pretty much across the board with this. Would maybe change one thing for VIP benefits.

For VIP's who have less than 5 years time as VIP: 500 LP and 15 Mithril Coins per month.

For VIP's who have 5 years or more time as VIP: 1000 LP and 30 Mithril Coins per month, and a special cosmetic given quarterly.

Do you mean VIP's whose account age is 5+ years? Or VIP's who have actually been subbed for 5 years in total? The latter might be hard to reach and track.

In my personal opinion, I am pretty strongly against giving different benefits to different VIPs. All should be treated equally, including the lifers. Whether your account and sub is a day old or 11 years old, the perks should be equal.

[Knight.]

Hi everyone!

RedPanda here. You may have seen me on the anniversary stream. I just wanted to pop in and say hi and let you know that we are definitely interested in hearing more ideas on these things. We're not promising anything but we are here to listen.

I do have some follow up questions:

Hobbit Presents:
What are exciting items to get from Gold/Silver?
What are not so exciting items to get from Gold/Silver?

VIP Monthly Gift
I like this idea. It seems like cosmetics are of interest. Anything else?

Thank You for getting involved in the discussion.

The monthly gift would definitely be a big win for us. I also like the idea of having a barterer (boar fountain in bree) where you can exchange your monthly gift for a SPECIAL VIP TOKEN and use them to trade for another gift or a selection of premium consumables which are only available in the LOTRO store (Black steel keys / Tome of Physical Mitigation / Tome of Tactical Mitigation / +5 Hope Token etc.). You could also have collect 12x Special VIP Tokens and redeem it for a unique code which grants you 1 months free VIP membership which can be used to extend your VIP or be given to a friend.


Items which are useful / exciting to get in hobbit presents

• Mithril Coins
• Tome of Defence
• Attack Tomes
• Max Morale Tomes (this item scales, but would be better as 5% morale increase as stats went up a lot recently)
• Run Speed Boosts
• Rejuvenation Potion (but make this x10 as 1 is disappointing)
• Reputation Acceleration Tome
• Scroll of Perfect Crafting Lore
• 100% Mark Acquisition (90 minutes)
• Marks (but need to be increased)
• Stat Tomes (make this a selection box & account bound)
• Relic Removal Scroll
• Enhanced XP Supply
• Tome of Extraordinary Experience
• Simple Rally Horn
• 20% mount speed
• Combat Run Speed Boosts
• Star-Lit Crystal (if LI system is due to change though, maybe skip this)
• Legacy Tier Upgrade (if LI system is due to change though, maybe skip this)
• Crystal of Remembrance (if LI system is due to change though, maybe skip this)

Items which are disappointing to get in hobbit presents

• Dale Man Crams
• Decorated Heritage Rune of Knowledge
• Fused Iron Relics / Fused Age Relics / Calenard Relics
• Random Relic Pack
• Landscape Soldier Token
• Scroll of Finesse (needs to be scaled or removed)
• Universal Morale Potion
• Universal Power Potion
• Skirmish Mark Boost
• Copper / Silver / Gold Coins (too low to be significant, but increasing may result in hobbit present farming)
• Universal Toolkit
• Mathom Hunter's Armour
• Fine Mathom Hunter's Armour
• Worn Symbol of the Elder King (change to Blemished Symbol of the Elder King, non bound)

In my personal opinion, I am pretty strongly against giving different benefits to different VIPs. All should be treated equally, including the lifers. Whether your account and sub is a day old or 11 years old, the perks should be equal.

Agreed. There should be no difference in VIP benefits whether you are 1 day old or 11 years.
Let's not forget those of us who had lifetime / founder accounts and then got screwed out of them by the codemaster / turbine transition via small print (still have the receipt and everything)
Furthermore the proposal is to reward all VIPs and incentivise others to subscribe, not create a divide.

[Rebs265]

All of it sounds fantastic, especially the posiblity of the pre order bonuses.

One thing I would like to suggest is maybe account wide mounts and or pets.

Find it extremely annoying that if I want a certain mount from the store I need to spend 2k LP for each of my characters. The same is for the 2016 yule mount that I got on my champion but can only have on him as I created characters after that event.

Same could be suggested for account wide frames, like the Yule frame.

[Arnenna]

Hi everyone!

RedPanda here. You may have seen me on the anniversary stream. I just wanted to pop in and say hi and let you know that we are definitely interested in hearing more ideas on these things. We're not promising anything but we are here to listen.

I do have some follow up questions:

Hobbit Presents:
What are exciting items to get from Gold/Silver?
What are not so exciting items to get from Gold/Silver?

VIP Monthly Gift
I like this idea. It seems like cosmetics are of interest. Anything else?

Thanks for dropping by. It's always great to see a SSG name reading our thoughts and suggestions. I'm late to the party, but you can see lots of great posts above mine here already.

Please drop things like Crams, universal potions, run buffs etc from Gold. Put them into silver if they really need to be in the game, but players craft this stuff for most part.

Cosmetics are always welcome in my gameplay, thought I have to agree with others that inventory space regarding cosmetics has become a real issue, especially since more and more items have become account bound over the last year. What would be really nice IMO as a VIP monthly gift is a chance at a consumable token, to boost RNG rate for let's say 24 hours.

[Skoch]

Hobbit Presents:
Exciting items to get from Gold/Silver are Mithril Coins, Crystals of Remembrance (if you don't have access to Court of Seregost instance), otherwise the Select-a-mount or +100% Boost scrolls for Marks, or Experience, etc.
Not so exciting items to get from Gold/Silver are Universal Toolkits (At a certain point your entire account has a horde of them), Mount Speed Boosters (on accounts that already have +78% Riding Pack, makes this useless), and Daleman's Crams.

VIP Monthly Gift
Tomes of Defence, Tomes of Attack, Fall-imunity scrolls, etc. ***Please, make these rewards also available for VIP Creep players to choose/benefit from.****

[furtim]

And I have no problem with having to buy expansions. Even WoW, which is sub-only, charges subscribers for the new content (ie: Battle for Azeroth).

Exactly, WoW is sub-only. If I want to play WoW, I have no idea but to pay whatever Blizzard wants me to pay. I have no choice in the matter.

With LOTRO, I have a choice between sub+expansion or F2P+expansion. So why should I pay $99/year for a subscription when I'll have to pay another $40-120 on top of that to get the expansion content when I could just sub for a month to get the one-time unlocks and then buy the Super-Special-Mega-Deluxe version of the next expansion pack?

Nothing SSG could put in the subscription other than the expansion content itself makes the subscription a better value proposition than making lump sum payments for the expansions as they come out. Especially with the way Mordor was handled, not being available for LOTRO Points until months later.

[Joetzim]

The purpose of Hobbit presents is to make people come back and log in on a daily basis. However, it's never done that, because there is nothing really desirable in them. You need an item that is attractive and super rare. You really just need 1 such item, but it has to be something that people can actively use while playing the game, not just something that you have, but you can't remember where you stashed it. It also has to be something to display.

So what could this be? It could be a cool merchant tent that you can set up in a city. It would come with a personal store NPC that sells your stuff much like the AH. Make this item pretty rare so that these tents are not all over the place.

Another possibilities might be a mini mûmak mount, cosmetic weapons that existed in the game at some point but are no longer available, permanent tracking tomes for specific creatures, hunting knife that let's you gather the corpses of beasts for extra hides, incoming healing buff food exclusive to Hobbit presents, etc.

[Rimenuir]

Items that are exciting to get from hobbit presents:
100% Boost (Craft XP, Mark Acquisition, XP)
Tomes of Defense
Reputation Acceleration
Mithril coins
Symbols of the Elder Kin
Scroll of Perfect Crafting Lore
Attack Damage
Stat Tome Selection Boxes
The occasional Rally Horn

Items that are not exciting:
Everything else honestly.



I especially dont like those pile of copper/silver scraps. They are nice for low level toons, but on my high level toons they are so insignificant and just take up an inventory slot.

[Phantion]

I'd say that the loot-pool for random Gold Hobbit Presents should be changed completely (since they are weekly for VIP players).

I think that it feels very underwhelming to consistently get "Silver Hobbit Present Rewards" for Gold after Gold after Gold, week after week after week. RNG can be -very- finicky sometimes.

I feel that Gold Hobbit Presents should have its own loot-pool that -guarantees- ---something--- -good- for each weekly Gold Present opening. That would add more incentive to be VIP and make it feel more exciting and worthwhile.

It should be -impossible,- for example, to get -1- morale / power regen potion from a Gold Hobbit Present, or 3 in-combat Run Boosts, or Dale Cram.

It really should be something ---good--- from a pool of equally good stuff- like the 200 MC's or as suggested by others, an imbued-legacy replacement scroll, or maybe something like the 50 Gold sell-item from that 1 Variag quest in North Ithilien, or 3,000 marks, or what have you. I also like the idea of having a super-rare reward from a Hobbit Present: but other good stuff should be made "less rare" if you open a Gold. A Gold should feel far more "Golden"- not a "Silver" in disguise.

It should feel more exciting and worthwhile to open a "Gold Hobbit Present" once per week as a VIP perk

As to the questions: I'd say that I agree with most of the list's of favorable versus not-so-favorable Hobbit Present rewards in this thread. I do like the Mount Speed boosters- they add on top of the 78% buff and its helpful to be able to ride a normal mount almost as fast as a warsteed sometimes (especially for navigating towns and cities without rubber-banding)- but they, to me, are good for Silver Presents.

If something like Joetzim's idea of the Merchant Tent can't work in a city, I'd say it would make a fantastic housing item, unique to VIP players that only VIP can get: to have a tent with a personal vault and AH would be so awesome for crafters (among many others!) at their houses.

I'd also would love new housing items, like a replica of Aragorn's Pavilion Tent, fully furnished, as an awesome enormous-slot reward. I'd also love rare chances at getting something like Felegoth's giant Elf Statue's, the bigger crystals, etc. etc. etc. There's lots of cool ideas out there for VIP players opening Hobbit Presents

[Mar-Evayave]

Exactly, WoW is sub-only. If I want to play WoW, I have no idea but to pay whatever Blizzard wants me to pay. I have no choice in the matter.

With LOTRO, I have a choice between sub+expansion or F2P+expansion. So why should I pay $99/year for a subscription when I'll have to pay another $40-120 on top of that to get the expansion content when I could just sub for a month to get the one-time unlocks and then buy the Super-Special-Mega-Deluxe version of the next expansion pack?

Nothing SSG could put in the subscription other than the expansion content itself makes the subscription a better value proposition than making lump sum payments for the expansions as they come out. Especially with the way Mordor was handled, not being available for LOTRO Points until months later.

I concur that any additional buffs should not be retained after the sub drops. Too much remains free as it is. But I still do not agree that the expansion should be free to vips.

[Nymphonic]

But I still do not agree that the expansion should be free to vips.

I'm in full agreement with this. Expansions are really big, almost game in themselves. Not only that, once you buy an expansion, the content stays in your account for the life of the game, and it counts toward all of your characters. and at the most, they are released once a year, if not two.

I see no problem with a ViP having to buy an expansion.

[kn1123]

Lots of good suggestions here! Here are some of mine, regardless of the chance they'll actually be implemented.

Wishlist:

- All pre-expansion content is permanently unlocked with first subscription. Now that all the pre-Moria stuff is around a decade old at this point, I think it could be used to incentivize purchases to get folks deeper into the game, rather than remain premium purchases themselves.

- All classic expansions unlocked for duration of VIP subscription. Mines of Moria, at the very least. Expansions are basically VIP deadzones as far as content, so why not add them so players don't have to alternate between VIP and expansion purchases, since there's a lot of "bridging" quest packs like the Great River.

- The ability to port directly to all five player neighborhoods for duration of VIP.

- The ability to port directly to all the main player hubs for the duration of VIP. To the Prancing Pony at the very least, since that area is where a lot of the seasonal festivals and player events take place.

- Bonus Reputation gained while questing.

[Filousia]

- Monthly Gift: A vip-only quest-thread with a monthly special reward. In a kind of Bingo Boffin, but not only with cosmetic rewards.

And please, since years the Quick Post service is waiting for a special uniform. It is no exaggeration, since years the full time employees must improvise in this important urgent case of matter.
Please hear our call!

[Boskone08]

Take for example the Universal Toolkit (UT). As a 10-year+ player with multiple accounts and multiple servers combined after the mergers, several of my servers have inventories of unused UTs. But a few of my 'minor accounts' (from the days of 8 characters to make a Kinship) have not had as much play time and lack those inventories. Consider removing the UT from the potential gift table for any Hobbit Gift recipient say Level 40 or above (perhaps even an Level 30 cutoff). Some of the other smaller gifts that simply don't impact the end-game user might be 'phased out' by levels the same way. Gifts of more coin, perhaps a new tier or two of Mithril Coins (add 100 and 300 coin gifts to some tiers to the 50 and 200 gifts current) and other more end-game friendly items could be put into the gift tables as the gift recipient reached a higher level range.

A monthly gift of greater value seems to be a good idea, but I wonder if it might be made an option? Say a player could accept a monthly gift (and this would be from a very benevolent set of gift tables) the first week of the new month, but that would 'consume' his weekly gifts for the full month (or perhaps at any time but 'consuming' the next 4 weekly gifts). That could allow the monthly gift tables to include some fairly high-value items without being quite so inflationary. TBH, some of the gifts discussed here seem excessive for a weekly award or at a very low percentage, but might make more sense on a less frequent basis. And on a monthly basis, the RNG percentages for these really good items could be higher than on a weekly award.

Bottom line is IMO the gift tables could use a review and an upgrade, especially at the higher levels. And adjusting the gift tables to remove the UT (and other gift items) above a certain level would still allow a player with a wide range of characters to seek one of those items as a gift, simply by selecting a lower-level character to receive their gift that day. An optional monthly gift would add a new player option to the game as well.

[Boskone08]

And please, since years the Quick Post service is waiting for a special uniform. It is no exaggeration, since years the full time employees must improvise in this important urgent case of matter.
Please hear our call!

Seconded!

[Slimneb]

First time poster here, but played on and off since Moria.
You want to know what will bring a HUGE number of people back and make the game seem less intimidating to new players? Take the model that most sub MMO's use and make all of the expansions free with the sub except the most recent one.
I know my opinion means little and i have nothing but anecdotal evidence, but i know so many people, both potential new players and potential returning players, who just cannot make the commitment to throw down the absurd price to cover all the expansions this game now has. There is just too many now. It currently sits at $150 to be up-to-date with this expacs of this game. Imagine if WOW did that?
Do what WOW (hiss) and other sub-based MMOs have done. Keep the f2p business model you currently have, but make it so the sub unlocks all of the expacs save for whatever the latest one is. It's a successful model. Heck, increase the sub by a dollar or two if you have to.
Something comparable would be the ESO business model and i think we can all agree they are doing well for themselves.
Time this with a big announcement with all the Gaming/MMO sites and i really think this will bring in a huge wave of new/returning players.
Honestly, the only other thing that would work to bring in a large number of people is a new game engine, and we all know that ain't happening!

[Mirillin]

- What are not so exciting items to get from Gold/Silver?
* regular mathom hunters armor
* Rejuvenation Potion
* Tome of Finesse
* 3 Universal Power Potions
* Universal Toolkit
* Tome of Extraordinary Experience
* 5 Dale Man's Cram
* 3 +10% Run Speed Boost (90 min)
* 3 20% Mount Speed (90 minutes)
* 3 Combat Run Speed Boosts
* Fused Copper Relics
* Simple Rally Horn

- What are exciting items to get from Gold/Silver?
* Relic Removal Scroll
* Reputation Acceleration Tome
* Crystal of Remembrance
* 200 Mithril Coins
* Star-lit Crystal
* 1280 Marks

- Missing items
* Essence reclamation scrolls
* black steel key
* imbued legacy replacement scroll

^ 100% agree with this (though I don't mind the run speed boosts).

IMO from the above quote the unexciting items (mathom hunters armour, potions, dale man's crams etc.) should only be silver gifts and not have a chance to drop for gold gifts at all, instead the gold gifts should be the "end-game" items listed above as the exciting and missing items (would add scrolls of empowerment as well) such as star-lits, relic removals, mithril coins, essence scrolls etc.

[fallohide]

I do have some follow up questions:

Hobbit Presents:
What are exciting items to get from Gold/Silver?
What are not so exciting items to get from Gold/Silver?

VIP Monthly Gift
I like this idea. It seems like cosmetics are of interest. Anything else?

It's really good to see some SSG response to this kind of thing. I play very rarely now, but little things like this really draw my interest (in playing more I mean).

For Hobbit Presents - the only two items that I've gotten (going off memory, not a chart of possibilities) that I find worthwhile are coins and mathom hunter armor. I think if I played more often, I'd be happier with speed boosts and food. I think cosmetics (including mounts, pets, clothes, housing decorations, maybe even rep cosmetics) would be really cool.

Also, any item that could help reputation would be really nice. A good bit (and I probably mean "the vast majority" here) of my frustration and not-playing comes from all the rep-gated content. As an example, I just finished getting kindred with the Grey Company this week - so I could finally buy a horse that I've had the rep-coins to purchase for years. Years... actual years. It just makes me not want to play. And there are probably 20+ factions where I'm in the same boat. I'd rather not play than have to grind rep.

[istvana]

As an altoholic I definitely agree that the game does require a lot more work to make new characters playable than many MMOs do.

While all of us can benefit from LOTRO points, their is *less* need for a subscriber (VIP) to grind them character after character after character so this is one area where it makes sense to differentiate between someone who pays for a subscription and someone who pays by microtransactions ....or not at all.

Most of what I can think of to make it easier for the second, or tenth, or 50th character is already sold in the store so they wouldn't be willing to give it for free, however. Virtues, trait points from class deeds, trait points from big battles, instant level 50 or 105 for example.

I would like a VIP discount on things like that, which both encourage subscriptions and encourage store purchases. But I don't have the data to know if that would help or hurt the game. If many of us buy these things already lowering the price would reduce revenue and *discourage* subscriptions because we would need fewer LOTRO points.

Fluff .....How about VIP only housing areas in areas that have been much requested but never given like Rohan or Lothlorien. They don't even need to be premium housing though that would be nice.

[Aleziana]

I believe that the best option would be benefits that are accesable during VIP period and after closing subscription the benefits would closed.It is not very fair to go VIP only once and get permant item forever in your account especialy for cosmetics like the Horse you gave some time ago and i know that this benefits more the premium players like me but that gave me the motivation to became VIP only for 1 month.Thats why the benefits are important to be exlusive to VIP players during VIP period and after that mast be closed.For example the protrait frame should be removed after closing sub. In conclusion, i understand that giving permant gifts to players after go sub even for 1 month can give you money fast but i believe that you can seperate the items and benefits from that and VIP players need to have motivate to keep their subscription for more than a motnh and they need to feel more special. After all they guarantee monthly income.

Also i have some thoughts aswell of benefits.

VIP Benefits:

1) If it is possible to make all pre order expantion Cosmetics,horses and Decoration items accesable to VIP during VIP period but after closing subscription those items would be removed from account (bound to character).
2) An amount of Mithril coins would be good idea i believe 10 per month is enough since they get 500LP every month.
3) Very extreme but i believe you can remove all the standar houses in Eriandor (hardly none actualy buy those) or keep very very few and instead create new houses bigger than deluxes and ofcourse smaller than Gondor's and make them available only during VIP period.
4) About Hobbit presents people already gave some good suggestions like reputation accelerators.
5) Make an event accesable only for VIPs like Bounters boundy event that VIPs can donate some tokens every week to something and the top donators can have their names on it for a week and ofcourse the vendors can have some exclusive items to buy like cosmetics stat tomes decorations and whatever.
6) You can give a 5-10% out of combat run speed buff during VIP period without using tomes.
7) Different cosmetics and emotes or horses accesable only to VIP period.
8) VIP players can have an option of showing their selfs in dots in the maps (with or without showing names).
9) Every VIP player during subscription transform all their horses into 68% not downscale from 78% if you have the buff ofcourse.
10) Give an item that can be found in vendors for each area in lotro that gives special informations about the area you are in like book with some art pages in and maybe some secrets and the special of these books would that the devs can change little informations whenever they can so the books can look like more alive and feel special(available ofcource only to VIP during subscription time).

In my personal experience ettenmoors in the best benefit for being VIP but subscription mast benefit every player and not only PVMP lovers

[Moondog548]

Great thread, great suggestions! Sorry not to be more specific but my desires have already been expressed by others.

[CmdrMagic]

I would keep Silver boxes as is. It is ok for some things to be more exciting than others.

I would revamp gold boxes. They should have their own unique loot table that should have much more valuable items. To balance this I would make it so you cannot purchase additional boxes. You are limited to 1 per week as the VIP perk.
Ideas:
Pick a mount box (this needs to be changed to BoA, not BtC like it currently is)
Pick a state tome box
End game legendary items starlit crystal, crystal of remembrance, pack of legacy up scrolls (needs to be more than 1...)
Mithril coins
Large amount of marks (5k+)
Pick a pet box
Pick a virtue +1 box
Unique cosmetics
Unique housing items

Obviously that loot table would need to be bigger to have enough items to keep people interested week after week, month after month, but those are some ideas.

For VIP perks, I would love a permanent rep boost. Since you increased the costs of Empowerment scrolls and rep accelerators it would be nice to not have to use marks I need to buy SoE's on rep accelerators.
I would also love ANY reduction to LI grind as a VIP perk (discount SoE for example). ANYTHING to reduce this stupid grind of getting a minimum of 400 SoE for EVERY ALT I want to play at end game...

Other possible VIP perks that are not HUGE, but nice benefits:
Permanent stackable +1 hope
Permanent stackable +5% run speed
Free or discounted repairs!
Discounted Mithril Coin travel costs in new areas where the cost is 5 MC