This is the extended trailer for Lord of the Rings Online, which will be airing exclusively on G4TV for the next few weeks. No doubt the product of Warner Bros being the new frontman, television ads are extremely expensive.
Tag: Free to Play
Lord of the Rings Online Free! [Not For Europe]
Just a friendly reminder to those of you who haven’t been enjoying the head start: Lord of the Rings Online goes free to play today! Well, freemium is a more accurate description. Either way, if you haven’t already been downloading the client, you may want to start it this morning, as the seven gigabyte (ten gigs for the full high-definition client) download is going to take a while, and Turbine’s download servers will no doubt be hit by the sudden rush of players.
Turbine is fixing a bug where players are being shown too many/few Turbine points compared to what they should have. The points may take a couple days to register, for those who obtained them either through Turbine’s subscription promotion, subscription “allowances,” and lifetime subscription allowances.
Reminder: Loyalty rewards may take 7-10 days to appear in your account after the launch of Volume III, Book 2. VIP Points should appear within 2-3 days after your billing date.(Click Here) for more information on account status, points, or other Free to Play related questions.
Still no word on Lord of the Rings Europe. To those player in the US, expect major queue lines (unless you’re a VIP) for the next few weeks.
Lord of the Rings Online: Europe F2P Delay
Even solely a subscription game, Lord of the Rings Online ranks in the higher tier of games that are not World of Warcraft, in terms of population. Turbine has been setting up for the past few months in preparation for the transition to partially free to play, doing everything from beefing up existing servers to adding in new servers. With today’s launch of the head start, Codemasters is having stage fright.
Unlike the United States servers, where the transition went live today, the European servers have been delayed for a yet to be announced time.
“Given the complexities and challenges faced in the preparation and implementation of the new store to work within our infrastructure, we feel more time is needed to deliver the high level of service our players have quite rightly come to expect. As a result, we have decided to delay launch to ensure that we can support the massive increase in players that we are anticipating and deliver them a Free to Play experience like none other.”
I feel bad for the European Turbine fans. I mean, sure the delay may only be the rest of tonight, or it may be next week, but it seems like the European players always get the short end of the stick. Look at how long it took Dungeons and Dragons Online Europe to transition to the free to play model after its much more Yankee counterpart.
I, on the other hand, will be downloading the client off of Turbine’s website, as my special edition (seen below) is so out of date that the client it installs won’t even update.
Turbine Trucking In 8 New Servers: LOTRO
Are you an ex-Lord of the Rings Online player who enjoyed the game but couldn’t pay for the subscription for one reason or another? If so, you are very likely aware of Turbine’s highly popularized moved to free to play (with cash shop) that is coming soon, so soon in fact that many of us former players are waking up with the taste of ale and hobbit foot shampoo on our teeth. Current and former subscribers will have access to the head start on September 8th, with everyone else allowed in on the 10th.
I knew Turbine was adding new servers in preparation for the flood of new players, and eight new servers sounds much more logical when broken down across regions.
US:
- Riddermark
- Crickhollow
- Dwarrowdelf
- Imladris
EU:
- Anduin [DE]
- Gwaihir [DE]
- Withywindle [EN]
- Celduin [FR]
By former subscribers, I should point out Turbine includes beta testers in that category. So if you’re returning for the sweet free to play action, you should be downloading the client now (to beat the rush) and gearing up for the 8th when you can reserve your username on one of the new servers (free players aren’t stuck on these servers, it’s a matter of preference). Turbine, to my understanding, is not allowing transfers to these new servers.
More on Lord of the Rings Online as it descends into free to play.
Alganon Going Free To Play…Again.
“Back in June, I decided to put a moratorium on articles dealing with the pending litigation between David Allen and Quest Online, mainly owing to my desire to publish something about Alganon that didn’t have to do with lawsuits or the back and forth blog posting between Derek Smart and David Allen. That being said, I haven’t had much to talk about lately on the title, although I still push to find something new from the indie MMO. A lot of quotes from Derek Smart detailing the events leading up to and following David Allen’s forced departure and the direction he is taking Alganon, but that’s about it.”
I know what you’re thinking: That’s some pretty devilish timing, Omali. You wish for some news to publish about Alganon and BAM! down it comes from the sky. As many of you will remember, Alganon earlier this year dropped its subscription model until the game could fully launch under a free to play model with a cash shop. Up until now, Alganon has required you to purchase a client, one that has been permanently slashed to around $20 on most digital distribution websites.
So Quest Online is making it even easier to get into the game by removing the cost of the client. Starting this Friday (the 13th), you will no longer need a client to play Alganon. If you’ve already purchased the client (like I did), then Quest Online is offering you perks in the form of more character slots, higher ability/level caps, a higher quest limit, and more right off the bat, that players coming into the free-client game will have to pay for access to.
In the newsletter, Quest Online has also announced two new classes (Champion and Reaver) that are redesigned from the soldier class, with more updates being added, and more content on the way.
With literally no barrier to entry, now is the best time it has ever been to get into Alganon.
Craig Morrison: F2P Age of Conan A Possibility
With Age of Conan entering the Korean markets came the announcement that the title would follow the normal Korean model: Free to play with cash shop, leading some to speculate as to whether or not Funcom would transition the model over to the Western hemisphere. Over on the Funcom forums, Producer Craig Morrison chimed in to tell players that the free to play model is not planned to come over to the west, but that Funcom is not saying no forever (I’ve heard this phrase too many times this month).
“That isn’t a ‘yes, it will happen’ or a ‘No, it will never happen’ it’s a ‘We will always keep our options open and be open minded to business models that will most benefit the project.’…being close minded one way or another is rarely a good thing.”
He is correct. The Korean market is vastly different from the American and European markets, and subscription based games die fast. Even World of Warcraft runs in China on a pay-per-hour system.
“That is why we have different versions of the game. They are different markets, work in different ways, with different traditions and expectations and we will always endeavour to try and ensure the right decisions are made for the game in each specific territory, and for those decisions to be different as appropriate.”
So, for the time being, there will be no free to play Age of Conan in the west. More on Age of Conan as it appears.
Dungeons and Dragons Online Going Free To Play August
I know what you’re asking: Omali! Dungeons and Dragons Online is already free to play! To which I answer: Not in Europe. No, for the past ten months or so North American players have been enjoying the freshly free to play Dungeons and Dragons Online, while our compatriots over the ocean have not. When Turbine’s title went into cash-shop-freemium mode this past September, the dungeon crawler saw an enormous revival both in players and revenue. Since then, Turbine has added yet another server, and has seen increases in revenue in the triple digits.
This fall, not to be out of line with a few other developers, Turbine is taking back Dungeons and Dragons Online in Europe, from the current publisher Codemasters (this is not the first time Codemasters has lost their rights to an MMO), where the title will be reworked and re-released under the Eberron Unlimited title. I don’t think many people should be surprised at this, given the recent introduction of Warner Bros. into the workplace, as well as Europe’s transition being in the cards for some time now.
Turbine is promising that the transition will go as smoothly as possible, hopefully even more smoothly since the transition has already happened once. Dungeons and Dragons Online is currently the third most played MMO in the US, according to NPD Group.
More on Dungeons and Dragons Online as it appears.
Star Trek Online: Could Be Going F2P?
Since Star Trek Online’s launch, the game has been doing pretty well for itself. Granted, it probably hasn’t jumped into the top-10, but if the quantity of updates is anything to go on, Cryptic must be happy as it is with their current population. Of course, no company would say no to more customers. With the recent swapping of Dungeons and Dragons, Global Agenda, among others, and the upcoming model change to Lord of the Rings Online, we can only sit back and wonder how many other MMOs will change to the freemium model, and if Cryptic’s Producer Daniel Stahl has anything to say about it, Star Trek Online may as well. In a forum posting, Stahl said:
“I could easily see STO going into a hybrid model similar to what Lotro is doing. In that model, subscriptions stay as is – but you allow people to play for free but heavily limit what they can do – which in essence creates a robust way to demo the game and then if you want to keep playing, you either pay for every little thing you are interested in, or you subscribe and don’t have to worry about it.
Turbine seems to have some interesting plans and looking at how DDO has turned around, its worth taking note.”
Pardon my correction, but from my experience with Dungeons and Dragons Online, the system isn’t about “heavily limiting” what free players can do. Stahl is correct on all fronts, however, with Dungeons and Dragons making a massive turnaround for Turbine when the title changed models.
Could a model change be exactly what the doctor had in store for Cryptic? More on this as it appears.
Global Agenda Going 100% Guild Wars Model
Before I go into the news story, I’d just like to make one of my opinions public: I have a very big hunch that the era of B-list MMOs keeping the $15 a month fee is moving towards its end. Obviously I can’t predict where the market will wind up, but I earnestly believe that we are in the beginning of a shift where we will see a number of MMOs lower their subscription price, go freemium, or entirely free to play. Developers are seeing how many more players they can grab at a lower price, with the influx of new people paying far outweighing the group who was willing to pay the full price. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and despite complaints by a very vocal minority, the benefits can far overshadow the negatives if done correctly.
Global Agenda, being a part-MMO title that launched this February, became so successful that Hi-Rez had to add a new server to accommodate overseas players. I do get the hunch that, much like a certain Cities XL game that came out in 2009 and shut down in March, Global Agenda’s paid MMO side is not doing as well as the company had hoped. Oddly enough, this seems to be a trend with games that release with one half free, one half paid content, unless the game’s name is Guild Wars of course.
Hi-Rez Studios announced today that Global Agenda is going free to play (well, the subscription portion was), and speaking of Guild Wars, Global Agenda will be channeling Arenanet’s policy of having the game itself be free to play, with option paid expansion packs. Expansion packs are expected to release only once or twice per year, at rates similar to non-subscription game expansions (I haven’t purchased a non-subscription expansion since the Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons. Twenty to thirty dollars sounds about right). Token awards for pre-subscribers will end on the 25th of June, and Hi-Rez has assured us that if the level cap expands, players will not need to buy an expansion pack to access the higher level cap.
Global Agenda is one of the few MMOs I don’t follow too closely, and I’m quite certain that the community will fill in the blanks behind this change, but look at it this way: At least Hi-Rez didn’t take the path of Cities XL and simply close up shop because not enough people were subscribing.
By the way: Global Agenda is 33% off on Steam until July 5th. What great timing.
Play Lord of the Rings Online, Free Forever…
Get your defibrillator and heart medication out, and take a seat. In a move that will no doubt send shock-waves through the industry, Turbine has announced that Lord of the Rings Online is going free-to-play, following the system of Dungeons and Dragons Online. Starting this fall, players in Europe and North America will have access to the game for free, no subscription.
“Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is bringing quality games based on The Lord of the Rings to multiple platforms, and the franchise’s expansive adventure story lends itself perfectly for LOTRO free-to-play, giving a wide range of players the opportunity to experience the game, We are focused on expanding our game franchises onto new digital platforms to maximize quality experiences for gamers worldwide and LOTRO’s new model is a great leading example of this.”
-Jeff Junge, Warner Bros
From my understanding, the original Lord of the Rings game will be available for free, with expansions sold much like Dungeons and Dragons Online’s adventure packs, alongside convenience items, quest packs, and more. Or, buy VIP access and get hold of everything plus a nominal allowance of Turbine points, for a flat monthly fee! According to the announcement, up to level 50 is free.
More on Lord of the Rings Online as it appears.
MMO Fallout 