Quote Originally Posted by MAWorking View Post
So Ill ask again....

Curious, would you be against or for only making loot boxes openable by VIPs with no key (or a token universal key that you get when you are a subscriber)?
Free players would have to buy a key or earn them via ingame actions.
This sounds close to how SWTOR handles this; subscribers there get an additional XP bar at endgame after hitting the level cap which awards a Command Crate (their version of a lootbox) when it fills up. Except there you can't buy these crates to open them at an accelerated pace like you can buy keys in LOTRO. If lootboxes were somehow limited in possible opening frequency in LOTRO there wouldn't really be an issue unless each box dropped a guaranteed 2,000 Ash or something crazy like that. The issue is buying keys and opening boxes gets you BiS gear quicker than running the content does, even though that BiS itself doesn't directly drop from the lootbox.

Quick note: SWTOR is published by EA, and even they have a less shady monetization plan going on than LOTRO does. That should be a wake up call...