
“Hi folks,
Following our announcement on Wednesday regarding the delay of Free-to-Play in Europe, we can now provide you with a further update as to its status. It’s not good news I’m afraid. We are currently anticipating a delay of more than a week, potentially launching around the end of the month, and are still not in a position where we are able to confirm an exact date.
As you know, we were tracking a launch date of 10th September and up until recently thought this was still achievable; however, due to some major obstacles this date is simply not possible. Many of you have asked for a detailed explanation as to why this has come to be and why there wasn’t very much notice of the delay. Regarding the implementation challenges we talked about, the good news is that our Store and new servers are just about ready to roll, barring some final, live stress testing that needs to be performed.
We understand this is disappointing for you, more so because of our lack of communication in the earlier part of the week coupled with the last minute bad news. As the situation was changing literally from hour to hour, we weren’t in a position to tell you anything with any stability to it.
As we work to bring Free-to-Play to launch here, all eligible players will still continue to accrue loyalty rewards as per the rewards table on the website. We’re also laying on a bunch of your favourite live events on all servers starting next week and we’re introducing a community competition to allow you to take out your frustration on us and win some great prizes in doing so. We know this won’t substitute for the new Store and Enedwaith, but maybe it will make things a little more fun for you as you wait. Look out for announcements on all of these things within the next few days.
As always, thanks for your support and patience and a particular thank you to all of you who took the time to send us personal messages, those were awesome and really appreciated!”
So no free Lord of the Rings until possibly later this month. Isn’t it about time Turbine took Lord of the Rings back under their watch?