F2P is not the Holy Grail.

Converting a subscription game to F2P only gives a game a temporary extension of life. In the case of Lotro, the F2P boost was quite significant, because it was the first AAA MMO to go F2P. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.

But nowadays, Lotro has to compete in an ocean of F2P AAA MMO's. Many of these F2P MMO's are new on the scene. Many AAA MMO's in production are launching as F2P or B2P with Cash Shop.

So Lotro's early advantage has been lost. The Cash Shop spend of players is being spread across more and more games, which means that each single game is earning less and less per player. And the players are demanding more and more free content !

Sooner or later gamers will wake up to the reality that quality MMO's cost a lot of money to make AND to play. You can only play for free if someone else is paying for your play time. That is the reality.

Originally posted by starwarsnut

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by FrodoFragins

Originally posted by JeroKane

So LOTRO going Freemium F2P wasn't because the game was doing bad. They just wanted to increase their revenue further after the initial success with DDO.

 

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Don't know which server you play on, but I play on 3 or 4 that are doing great, don't have time to check out the other servers.   For example the other night I had 3 pages of 75+ people in my kin leveling and we are not the biggest kin.   Oh and by the way the low level areas are not empty, their are lots of people trying the game out all the time.  So the only thing I can think of you must have chosen a bad server.

Unfortunate for those who've lost their jobs - and if "corporate culture" is playing out as usual, it's not the people who made the poor decisions who are being fired, but the ones whose job was to follow them, no matter what. Those most deserving of getting the axe rarely ever do, they always find a way to shift the blame to their "underlings". I've seen it, and even experienced it, several times in my life. I was fired on grounds of something I had nothing to do with. My boss's head was on the chopping block and he had to do what it took to "fix it". Not wanting to fess up and admit that he had screwed up, he found a way to BS his bosses by passing the blame on to others. Of course, firing people didn't fix anything because the people he fired weren't the problem. He was. So the problems persisted. It eventually caught up with him, in my case at least.

As for Turbine and the decline of LoTRO, doesn't surprise me. That game started losing its magic for me a long time ago, around the time of Moria. A move to F2P means a fundamental shift in how your MMO is designed. Instead of being designed to provide a lasting and engaging experience that players will happily pay $15 a month to immerse themselves in, it becomes about turning the game into a game of "how many ways can we compel people to spend more money?". LoTRO's freemium model was a nice idea in concept but it clearly wasn't panning out for them well enough and so they started making poor decisions centered around trying to get more money out of their players.

Though I don't know how many can identify what the problem is (I still see many people who vehemently defend F2P as "the future", even while they bash and complain about every F2P MMO they've tried, waiting for one to "get it right"), I think there's a more subtle "beneath the surface" recognition of what's happening. They haven't identified the cause yet, but they're clearly seeing the effect.

I'm not quite ready to say "I told you so", but there's a clear and steady shift happening in the MMO space right now, across the genre. People are starting to back off of their "F2P is the future!" positions, and beginning to see the huge cracks in it - both immediate and long term. If all plays out as I hope and anticipate it will, I'll never have to say "I told you so", because people will see it for themselves and we can get the hell rid of this abomination of a "revenue model".

Gaming should never be forced around having to choose how much real life money you're willing or capable to spend on individual in-game items to "improve your experience". The experience should be solid and fun and engaging enough to keep you wanting to play from the start. This is the philosophy all the best games out there - MMOs and otherwise - have followed. They didn't go with the "let's nickel and dime our players instead" approach.

Any revenue model that's built around getting as many people as possible, to spend as much money as possible as often as possible, by actually designing limitations, restrictions, speed-bumps, inconveniences and other negative experience factors into the game, while selling "solutions" to them in a cash shop should be, in my very strong opinion, shunned and refused.

What's kind of ironic is that the greed of these large companies is working against the F2P/Freemium model working for them. This is because, in my opinion, the people who call the shots only care about $$$. They know nothing, and care nothing, about providing an awesome MMO experience to the players. I doubt they even know what the hell that is. They only know about making more money.

So when they see a system that can - as has been proven and demonstrated - generate a technically unlimited amount of money for them, they get greedy and start pushing to get more and more. The result is the crap you see happening with games published or owned by these big companies. As the folks at CDProjekt put it, the customers are treated like milking cows, instead of as gamers.

Greed is coming back to bite them in the ass, and I couldn't be happier about it.

The sooner MMO developers can focus entirely on entertaining and engaging the player and earning their money for the experience and gets away from trying to milk the players for as much as they can with all these by-design restrictions and limitations they put on the experience, the better it'll be for everyone.

My opinion.

Originally posted by Gaborik
Again everything you have ever mentioned towards lotro was pre-moria. I fought Amathiel in Angmar big deal. I have never once said otro is the best mmo ever nor have I bashed another game. I enjoy lotro and I have a great kinship that enjoys it. When their are tro!!s crying and whining about stuff that supposedly happened 5yrs ago and then celebrate people getting fired I think that person should be called out. Turbine never ever hid their plan for pvp, it was never ever a major part to the game. I supplied you with a link to the changes to the moors you declined to read it. I just asked you two questioned and also made a comment how turbine never has released population numbers. Did you answer or respond? Nope you didnt. People can look back and read your tro!! Post like a few already have and commented on your nonsense. Enjoy gw2 i tried it and went back to lotro.

Read the post before you respond LOL. I said i played up to last week ror when i uninstalled. Its quite simple to see pop numbers go to fellowing tab this is what i mean you dont even know about that LOL. Thiers your answer the fact that i have to explain that to you is just lolz. They dont need to release numbers b/c bieng in the game and seeing fellow tab and bieng in the game also glff and other things can give you a general idea.

Turbine did say 2 times in a row thier was going to be a new pvp map seriously here you go http://www.lotro.com/news/pressreleases/910

Expanded Monster Play – LOTRO’s monster play system will get a major revamp including opening up the feature to all players, changes to monster player skills and advancement and a brand new region for players to battle for or against the forces of evil.

So there ya go dude i supose lotro itself is bieng silly and trolling eh?

Ive read and been in the ror moors i didnt need to read what i already knew lol. Which is sapience lying once again saying be amazed by the "new" moors when all they did was move 2 outposts and 2 rez spawns and added more buffs which are causing lag on top of the already bad lag there is lol. The moors is not or even revamped id say they just move some things around and said hey we have a new moors!! It may seem new to u but im not stupid thats not a new moors especially after lying about the pvp map

Originally posted by SpottyGekko

F2P is not the Holy Grail.

 

Converting a subscription game to F2P only gives a game a temporary extension of life. In the case of Lotro, the F2P boost was quite significant, because it was the first AAA MMO to go F2P. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.

 

But nowadays, Lotro has to compete in an ocean of F2P AAA MMO's. Many of these F2P MMO's are new on the scene. Many AAA MMO's in production are launching as F2P or B2P with Cash Shop.

 

So Lotro's early advantage has been lost. The Cash Shop spend of players is being spread across more and more games, which means that each single game is earning less and less per player. And the players are demanding more and more free content !

 

Sooner or later gamers will wake up to the reality that quality MMO's cost a lot of money to make AND to play. You can only play for free if someone else is paying for your play time. That is the reality.

Exactly.

I would also like to see Mr Richard "F2P is your future, stop denying it" Aihoshi's take in this mess when Funcom and Bioware/EA are next.

For some, laying off x percent of your staff stilll translates into "yes, going F2P was a huge success" in PR language.

Originally posted by starwarsnut

Originally posted by Gaborik
Again everything you have ever mentioned towards lotro was pre-moria. I fought Amathiel in Angmar big deal. I have never once said otro is the best mmo ever nor have I bashed another game. I enjoy lotro and I have a great kinship that enjoys it. When their are tro!!s crying and whining about stuff that supposedly happened 5yrs ago and then celebrate people getting fired I think that person should be called out. Turbine never ever hid their plan for pvp, it was never ever a major part to the game. I supplied you with a link to the changes to the moors you declined to read it. I just asked you two questioned and also made a comment how turbine never has released population numbers. Did you answer or respond? Nope you didnt. People can look back and read your tro!! Post like a few already have and commented on your nonsense. Enjoy gw2 i tried it and went back to lotro.

Read the post before you respond LOL. I said i played up to last week ror when i uninstalled. Its quite simple to see pop numbers go to fellowing tab this is what i mean you dont even know about that LOL. Thiers your answer the fact that i have to explain that to you is just lolz. They dont need to release numbers b/c bieng in the game and seeing fellow tab and bieng in the game also glff and other things can give you a general idea.

Turbine did say 2 times in a row thier was going to be a new pvp map seriously here you go http://www.lotro.com/news/pressreleases/910

Expanded Monster Play – LOTRO’s monster play system will get a major revamp including opening up the feature to all players, changes to monster player skills and advancement and a brand new region for players to battle for or against the forces of evil.

So there ya go dude i supose lotro itself is bieng silly and trolling eh?

Ive read and been in the ror moors i didnt need to read what i already knew lol. Which is sapience lying once again saying be amazed by the "new" moors when all they did was move 2 outposts and 2 rez spawns and added more buffs which are causing lag on top of the already bad lag there is lol. The moors is not or even revamped id say they just move some things around and said hey we have a new moors!! It may seem new to u but im not stupid thats not a new moors especially after lying about the pvp map

If you are going to post, at least post in English, trying to read that hurt my eyes.  The only thing I could discern was that you were tired of Lotro.  It happens to all of us, try something else, but despite your protestations, Lotro is doing just fine.  Now I can't say how DDO is doing, my guess is not well, it is a rather closed game compared to lotro.