There is still a group of players who cling to the old ideology that free equates to terrible community, imminent shut down, and dying developer. I don’t think I need to count out how many people were screaming on forums before the Lord of the Rings Online free to play shift about how this would ruin the game, and that current subscribers would drop the game like a sack of rotting flesh-bricks, and how the community would be inundated with children and social deviants who would do nothing but grief (read: making Chuck Norris jokes over region chat).
So when I forward Turbine’s announcement at GDC that their revenue has doubled, with over half of players using the Turbine store, I recognize that people will simply deny this information as Turbine misrepresenting facts to inflate their figures. There is no convincing someone who flat out denies Turbine’s figures of the free to play launch having a bigger reception than the game’s original launch, or that 20% of past subscribers have returned to the game, or that peak player counts are triple their previous level.
I personally have a premium account, seeing as I bought the Lord of the Rings special edition for $1 in a Christmas sale some years ago, but I have yet to put any money into the Turbine store. One can argue long term stability, but ultimately all we have to go on is speculation as to whether or not the game will sustain these figures. Over half of your game’s population using the cash shop is an incredibly high figure, however, presuming Turbine doesn’t include the VIP subscribers who receive an “allowance” of Turbine points each month.
Perhaps this is just a boom for Lord of the Rings Online, but Turbine can worry about how the population levels out as it happens, rather than listening to screams more frantic than the children playing in traffic outside my window.
MMO Fallout 