Irregardless of all the whine threads I see here and the very real and obvious tech issues coming from overloaded network hardware I think the F2P has been a great success for Turbine.  Was just loooking at the XFire numbers and Friday 63 september the hours were 5,495, last Friday they were at 9,163, and this last night they were up to 14,153.  And yes while I don't know any one who uses XFire myself, obviously a lot more people I don't know that do use XFire are playing the game now than 2 weeks ago.

Changing the subject a bit , but seeing tons of new people in and around the Shire and loving the new wardrobe system for the cosmetic outfits. It kind of neat sitting near the vault in Michael Delving and seeing all the toons and all dressed so differently. It is odd though seeing a level 8 riding a horse LOL.

I think once the final wrinkles with the hardware are ironed out and the store system is fine tuned Turbine and LoTRO will be making a lot of gamers real happy with the new system. It wasn't perfect at launch, but it seems to gbe improving daily.

Yeah I have read more than a few threads on the LOTRO site of people who came for F2P and have gone VIP within a few days.  These are people that had not tried the game before.

It will die down again at some point. . but it is certainly a nice second wind for the game without mergers etc.  The servers have great population all the time and I can tell by looking around that people are spending money on cosmetic items and mounts etc.  I am enjoying the game a lot myself after having only tried it for a month or two at launch.

Also. . the community so far is great and I am playing on Riddermark a "new" server.

I think it's abit early to call it a sucess but so far so good. While waiting for the EU release I have been playing on the US servers for free and having a good time. The community have overall been very nice on Riddermark and Crickhollow. Only 1 person have been put on /ignore so far :)

They also permenently lowered the prices for alot of consumebles already.

It will be interesting to see the Xfire numbers after the EU release aswell to see how many were waiting for that!

I have made a few gold cleaning out my vaults. Putting the cosmetic outfits that I have recieved through the various festval boxes over the years  on the AH. Anyone with a tailor might think about making a bunch of cheap cosmetic items. They seem to be selling well on Silverlode at least. Got a feeling dyes will sell well also, but have not tried one that yet..

Originally posted by Papadam

I think it's abit early to call it a sucess but so far so good.

I would not lable it a WoW killer but the population has certainly improved over this time last month.

Been doing a lot of cooking up in the MD cooking area and I am pleasantly surprised with the general chat and how well behaved the low levels are. One guy asked me politely if I had a few coppers worth of ingredient I could spare so I gave him 100 silver and told him to buy  what he needed and I thought he would fall over thanking me.

Not sure how successful financially it is, only Turbine can answer that, but the servers ARE very busy and there is alot of questions in the /advice channels as well as /OOC.

As much as I personally can't stand the layering tech they have in place,  it looks like a win to me.

Originally posted by Rifle123

As much as I personally can't stand the layering tech they have in place,

I agree the layering some work. It would not be so bad if you could just click on the icon and choose your layer like AoC does their layering tech. I am not  a big fan of layering period,  but if that is what it takes to prevent lag, at least make it more user friendly.

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by Rifle123

As much as I personally can't stand the layering tech they have in place,

I agree the layering some work. It would not be so bad if you could just click on the icon and choose your layer like AoC does their layering tech. I am not  a big fan of layering period,  but if that is what it takes to prevent lag, at least make it more user friendly.

The layering is my biggest personal issue right now.

OP: Read this http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=irregardless

On-Topic: I havent tried LORTO since it turned F2P, but I've only heard good things about it.. I'll try it again, once I get better DL speed.

Originally posted by Claes

OP: Read this http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=irregardless

 

LOL what can I say I went to public school in W. Va. :)

I heard a teacher say it yesterday so . . . 

Originally posted by Aethaeryn

I heard a teacher say it yesterday so . . . 

 Several family members of mine are public school teachers. I love them dearly.

While they are able to do a job I couldn't do myelf, they are not exactly the most learned and well-educated. Even the one's with post-graduate degrees.  Their collegiate level education consists of learning how to finger paint properly, how to teach people things, and a large part of their education is useless PC garbage like how to teach social justice, diversity and all sorts of other garbage. In a nutshell, getting a degree in teaching actually teaches you very little that is applicable outside a classroom.

Learn tihs lesson now and remember it for all time: teachers are usually not the best sources of information.

And I have no idea what the OP said, because when you open up with a made up word like that, I have a mini stroke.

Originally posted by PhelimReagh

And I have no idea what the OP said, because when you open up with a made up word like that, I have a mini stroke.

Actually thats how new words get created, by enough people starting to use made up words. Its strange how we actually do not have real rules for language, its actually quite the living thing.

I remember that i wrote something "wrong" once and got reprimanded by the teacher, by a total fluke though i wrote it the same way Goethe did(it was in german and i was reading Goethe for another class). So i asked my teacher wether he thinks he is a bigger authority on German than one of the greatest German writers in history, and who he bases his "right" writing on. Suffice to say my teacher was dumbstruck. Yeah well, more because of me actually having read something of Goethe than by my stellar reasoning but still.

He decided that was the best excuse he had ever heard and rated my work up.

So bottomline you can't do right or wrong based on logic with languages imho, the whole purpose of language is as a transport for thoughts and meanings, if you managed to do that you did it right. So yeah, irregardless is a double negation, but everyone is aware its actually means the same as regardless, so its already a functional part of the english language.

Oh and with the Xfire ratings i would wait until next weekend to take them at facevalue. Those numbers and graphs are averages, you can't for example see the serverdowntimes in them because you only see the daily average. The true value without downtimes or techtrouble would probably have been alot higher for the launch weekend. For example if its 9k hours logged for last friday of which 10 hours have been downtime, thats actually 9k over 14 hours, while this friday is 14k over 24 hours. Not accurate numbers but you get my drift. We can only compare days with equal service availability, and that includes account creation etc(which was a bit of a problem until recently).

Originally posted by Jackdog

I have made a few gold cleaning out my vaults. Putting the cosmetic outfits that I have recieved through the various festval boxes over the years  on the AH. Anyone with a tailor might think about making a bunch of cheap cosmetic items. They seem to be selling well on Silverlode at least. Got a feeling dyes will sell well also, but have not tried one that yet..

Dye is selling well.  I list mine at reasonable prices and ever single one I've listed has sold, sometimes in less than 5 minutes.

I'll have to watch cosmetic outfits now too, and maybe put some up on the AH.

Originally posted by PhelimReagh

And I have no idea what the OP said, because when you open up with a made up word like that, I have a mini stroke.

not really made up, at least the OED lists it as

irregardless (ir|re¦gard|less)

Entry from World dictionary

adjective & adverb

informal regardless:the photographer always says, irregardless of how his subjects are feeling, ‘Smile!’

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/irregardless?view=uk

anyway I am a techie ( now that is a made up word) in school so I tutored the English majors in math and science and they typrd up my papers for me. Thirty years later I still write the same way I talk, like a hillbilly :)

But back to the subject, I was just commenting on the population boost since the game went F2P

I was worried about the F2P, so far the community is still good , i'm not happy with the store, but it does not change anything for me,i dont even open it. But the layers, hell ! i hate it every day, i can't stand that icon, when i go into bree and i see that f...ing icon, i get angry. I dont know what i'm missing, if there is a band playing , if there are people rping as always.
 Turbine must change it for good.... i dont know if i'll stop playing because of it, but i won't love the game as i used to, it makes me regret my lifetime sub.

It is still hard to say. Will the F2P players stay or just play for a week and then quit? Will they actually buy stuff or will Turbine lose money on this?

We will know in a few months.

 thats ez Turbine set up the free to play for players to play a week or two  buy subs or mass TP  or quit.   Turbine game the F2P players lepersy . or the MMORPG equ. of  ,

 Not only can a F2P player not use AH to sell wears, they also can  not  personal trade there wears for  money , nore  can they personal trade other players for mats they need useing money. no one can expect  players to stay any amount of time in a game that is 100% blocking them off  from ecconomic gain.

 The first  things any player looks at  when starting a F2P game  .

1 amount of spam/gold sellers/ bots / ingame support   . spams  mid to high /gold sellers nill/ bots  low / ingame support none

2 players look at grind time per lvl .  past 25 "lvl 25 is a 2 day job for the noobiest of noob" very high and  the back and forth to find the handfull of quest open to free to play unbearable

3 how hard is it to make ingame money . with lotro its not just hard its not happening .

this friends is what players look at befor they invest in a  F2P game.  ive said it befor and ill say it again   .  " No One Wants To Be Poor , In Real Life Or In A Game . In Real Life Its Harder To Over Come Poor , In A Game  Its As EZ As The Uninstall Button.

Originally posted by farfanugon

 thats ez Turbine set up the free to play for players to play a week or two  buy subs or mass TP  or quit.   Turbine game the F2P players lepersy . or the MMORPG equ. of  ,

 Not only can a F2P player not use AH to sell wears, they also can  not  personal trade there wears for  money , nore  can they personal trade other players for mats they need useing money. no one can expect  players to stay any amount of time in a game that is 100% blocking them off  from ecconomic gain.

 The first  things any player looks at  when starting a F2P game  .

1 amount of spam/gold sellers/ bots / ingame support   . spams  mid to high /gold sellers nill/ bots  low / ingame support none

2 players look at grind time per lvl .  past 25 "lvl 25 is a 2 day job for the noobiest of noob" very high and  the back and forth to find the handfull of quest open to free to play unbearable

3 how hard is it to make ingame money . with lotro its not just hard its not happening .

this friends is what players look at befor they invest in a  F2P game.  ive said it befor and ill say it again   .  " No One Wants To Be Poor , In Real Life Or In A Game . In Real Life Its Harder To Over Come Poor , In A Game  Its As EZ As The Uninstall Button.

Honestly the LoTRO strategy is the exact equivelent of DDO minus the swift travel, and DDO has been a great success in business terms and for the player. I love the way LoTRO is at the moment, minus some details that will eventually get tweaked. I am a casual player when it comes to this game, so I stopped subbing. But the Premium membership is allowing me to play the game at a casual pace and save money. True it's not completely "F2P" but nor is any "F2P" game in existance past a certain point. You can literally just spend $15 to get to end game if your smart and have time available, wait till you get to 20+ then sub for a month. Get as far as you can(you can get to 50 if your already 20 in a month if your really wanted to), and then go back to premium. This unlocks most of the restrictions in the game including the AH/chat/extra character slot/gold/etc. $15 is much cheaper than most MMO's or even F2P MMO's on the market at the moment.

Plus if you buy any points in the store(cheapest or most expensive package) you get 30 days of customer support. If you are a VIP you get the entire time you are VIP with CS. This only makes since, considering anything else in life(Like buying a car, you get support/warranty so many miles after purchase then that support is gone).

Even if you decided to just be premium as I will, you can still buy all content in the game for less than $60(if you had the MoM expac or SoM). This is cheap considering it will be available until the game goes under(most likely years from now). Even if you are a new F2P person you can get all the content for less than $200, which is much cheaper than the Lifetimers paid back in the day(or subbing for the last 3 years).