Back when Turbine relinquished control of Dungeons and Dragons Online from Codemasters, following the game’s transition to free to play, a lot of us guessed that Lord of the Rings would undergo the same treatment, especially when Codemasters delayed the transition by two months due to contractual issues. With Turbine’s acquisition by Warner Bros, it was only a matter of time before Lord of the Rings Europe transitioned back to its developer’s hands.
Luckily, we have an actual date this time. On June 1st, Lord of the Rings Online will merge into one megaservice. In order to prepare, anyone with a Codemasters account will be required to transition their details over to Turbine, in an account migration process that will be released at an unspecified time before the transition. All characters and items, as well as VIP points will be moved over, and remaining VIP time will transition over. You will have to reenter your billing details, as those will not transfer (due to privacy laws). The forums will not be transferring, and Turbine warns against items in the auction house come June 1st. In addition, Turbine will not be accepting any Codemasters brand serial codes, so if you’re sitting on one, best use it before the service transitions.
It’s that Cylon picture again! Must be another Dungeons and Dragons Online story. Technically when Turbine stated that they were “taking back” the Dungeons and Dragons service in Europe, from Codemasters, they shut the service down entirely. Instead, European Dungeons and Dragons players were transitioned over to the North American service, where they’ve been ever since. Not exactly a global service, especially considering it was one only available in English…Sorry!
Today, however, Turbine announced the launch of Dungeons and Dragons Global, and new languages with it. German and French players will be happy to know that their languages are now officially supported.
“We’ve successfully migrated players from the former European service and we are very excited to begin welcoming thousands more to DDO Unlimited,” said Fernando Paiz, Executive Producer of DDO Unlimited. “This is going to be another outstanding year for the game as we continue to roll out new content and features for our growing legions of players. We’re very excited to begin engaging directly with German and French speaking players and look forward to introducing them to a truly premium free to play MMORPG.”
Head over to this link to read a whole bunch of advertising lingo, or just go to ddo.com to sign up for an account. More on Dungeons and Dragons Online as it appears.
It’s been a surprisingly long time since I’ve had an opportunity to write about Dungeons and Dragons Online (since last June, actually). Those of you who play or follow Dungeons and Dragons Online may remember Turbine’s announcement last year that they would be taking back Dungeons and Dragons from Codemasters. Codemasters, who was operating the MMO in Europe, was still operating under the subscription system. Due to contractual issues, Turbine ended up canning the game’s operation in Europe altogether, and players were instead transferred over to US based servers.
Luckily, however, Turbine is bringing the game back to Europe, with support for German and French language. The current estimate is “2011,” for release. MMO Fallout will bring you more information as it appears. Players who transferred over to the North American service can likely expect their accounts to be transferable to the European service when it does launch.
Back in 2009, Jagex implemented a jobs system on Runescape mainly for new players where they could take tasks doing menial work with low level skills in return for gold, as well as an occasional experience lamp. This gave players a reason to work on their crafting and combat skills for a reward other than what is commonly known as vendor trash. Of course, this feature was removed due to low player participation, but the point still stands: It was a useful system.
Turbine is bringing 250 new quests into Lord of the Rings Online in the form of a task system. Using a similar idea to Runescape, players will take up bulletin board messages in towns offering repeatable quests, tasking players with gathering vendor trash from nearby mobs in return for an experience reward to augment the grinding process, as well as an occasional reputation reward. These will also go towards new deeds offering unique cloaks.
The tasks are limited, however, starting at five per day and going up to 10 by completing deeds or purchasing the increase through the store. This system is mainly for free players who wish to augment their leveling but don’t want to pay for zone packs. Players may also only take a task up to four levels over the task (A level 8 task can only be completed up to level 12, for example).
Being an MMO Journalist affords one the opportunity to make fun of a company, yell at them for a stupid mistake, and then praise them all in one day, or even in one article. Given that I’ve managed to fake myself as a trusted journalist this far, I think I can afford to take some of those perks with me.
MMO Fallout is all about the PR, so naturally my editorials revolve around public relations, and how developers and publishers react when the times are good, and when the times are bad. I’ve talked about everything from subscription convenience in Final Fantasy XIV, to the turing test for MMOs, to identity crisis, permanent death, to more famously charge-backs. I’ve discussed the public relations nightmare that was the Allods Online cash shop, the Aion server mergers, Turbine’s fraudulent surveys, the Square-Enix HR rep who said Final Fantasy XI was shutting down this year, Atlantica Online’s near-fraudulent charity scheme, and far more.
Forums are a place where we go to communicate with the developers on a mass scale. When something bad happens in-game, like say a bunch of players get banned under suspicious circumstances, or a massive void appeared where a city used to be, killing everyone who was standing in it prior to a patch. It also happens to be a place where developers can keep users up to date on breaking news, like why players should steer clear of ___ because it is killing people randomly.
What irks me the most, however, is that in the grand majority of these cases the developers manage to inflame the situation by, doing what? Deleting threads and posts made on the subject. What this tells your players is that while you have someone with enough time to scan the forums and delete their posts complaining about this issue, you apparently don’t give enough of a rat’s ass to have that same person just give a response and negate the need for the threads.
Of course I am most recently referring to Turbine, and an accidental mass banning on Dungeons and Dragons Online that left thousands of players locked out of their accounts for more than just a while, which Turbine later announced as a glitch in the automated system that handles bans for exploits. Massively had an article on it, since the mass bans happened to crash in on their public event on DDO. Of course, when the rants started hitting the forums players were met with threads being locked, deleted, and forum infractions handed out.
Part of working in retail has taught me that when you screw up, you can’t blame the customer for getting pissed, a point many of these developers seem to have missed. You can’t falsely accuse someone of cheating, ban them with no real explanation or method of appeal, and then expect them to not head to the fastest method of handing feedback in a white hot rage. This compounds when most of them just want information, something that you do not supply until it is at your own convenience.
As much as I’m sure my viewers think it pains me to knock Turbine; this isn’t good PR, especially toward those paying your bills. The bans themselves don’t even factor in as, as I have said, mistakes happen. Instead of letting people vent while you leave them in the dark, you decide to add insult to injury and give up infractions because people had a crazy notion to get angry over unjustified bans. The comments of the developer being too busy fixing the problem to comment on it are also utter garbage. This always crops up when an incident like this takes place, and every time those throwing around this talking point fail to respond to a simple comment: It takes less than a minute to write up “we’re aware of the situation, working on it,” on a forum. Hell, I did it in fifteen seconds, and doing so did not hinder my completion of this article.
So I will reiterate what I have said time and time again: Response means everything, and right now Turbine are about a step behind Star Vault’s “sorry, no patch to fix this gaping void in the map because the developers are off for the weekend,” in terms of taking a bad situation and turning the flames up to 11.
Over here at MMO Fallout, we follow the mantra of publishing and forwarding ego-driven banter, and generally for the sole purpose of its comedic value. Much like how most humorous situations begin with a simple “hey, look what I can do,” the MMO world is no exception to events that begin with high self esteem and end with someone face planting into a stop sign.
When tasked with finding an analogy to describe Battlestar Galactica to Star Wars, the only thing I could come up with was to look at each franchise’s latest foray into media. Caprica, a prequel series to Battlestar Galactica, was cancelled at season one due to low ratings, before the season had even finished. On the other hand, Star Wars: Clone Wars grossed almost $70 million worldwide in theaters, and another $20 million in DVD sales, despite low scores from critics.
So when Bigpoint, the developer behind Battlestar Galactica Online, comes out at the London Games Conference and says that The Old Republic will never be profitable, I can only assume he means to imply that Battlestar Galactica will either perform better, or at the very least become profitable. Given that Battlestar Galactica is being developed on the UNITY engine (Cartoon Network’s Fusionfall as another example) as a browser based MMO, I like to think it can be said that it won’t take much to cover the development costs of this venture into the MMOG realm.
With Turbine taking Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons Online free to play and doing greatly by it, there is an air of elitism coming from the less popular of the free to play ilk toward the companies that maintain subscriptions, like the Grover Dill to the Scut Farkus, the loud annoying toadies who hide behind the guy who can actually put up a fight. What companies like Bigpoint don’t realize when they preach Turbine is that Turbine has infiltrated the free to play cash shop from within and has set the stage into motion that will utterly demolish the existing standard, all the while the very people they are trashing are holding them up like dopes.
What Lord of the Rings has done is they have taken the best of the free to play cash shop idea, namely no up front fees and no in-your-face costs until you’ve leveled up a bit, with a cash shop that sells things people will actually want to buy. But Turbine introduced what can be formally called a price ceiling to the model, where once a player goes over $15 a month, they can choose the flat rate subscription, and get the same content another cash shop grinder might cost up to and over a hundred dollars a month for, for the same flat rate. Not only will they get the same flat rate, but Turbine gives free cash shop points for extras each month.
Bigpoint invoking Turbine is like Justin Beiber invoking Keith Urban. Yes, you are using a popular example to bring up the rest of the genre, almost none of which who can attest to the same success that Turbine has had with Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online. That would be like me invoking Blizzard by saying that none of the free to play ventures hold a candle to twelve million paying players (regardless of whether or not they pay a subscription or hourly rate, they are paying).
But people will tell me not to publish this, as it gives Bigpoint exactly what they want: Publicity, and I say give them more publicity, because publicity exponentially emphasizes the response, and when Battlestar Galactica eventually does take its leap off of the development branch, Bigpoint is either going to make a grand entrance or fall flat on its face.
Bigpoint may think itself cool trash talking a company that could literally drown them in a sea of development money, but as George Carlin once said:
“You ain’t cool, you’re chilly. And chilly ain’t never been cool.”
Here at MMO Fallout, I don’t think it is any surprise that Turbine is essentially my deity, and for numerous reasons. The one I’d like to get into today is what I call The Great Safety Net, not invented but popularized by Turbine. Before Dungeons and Dragons Online went free to play as a saving grace, an MMO losing its subscription was generally accompanied by an announcement that the game would be shutting down. The company couldn’t sustain the title anymore, and hell since the game was shutting down in a few months why not let everyone enjoy it while it lasts?
Dungeons and Dragons Online is a perfect example of a game that was falling down hard, and moved to what was, at the time, a fairly experimental system involving Turbine points, a VIP system, an allowance, and the contents of the item shop itself. Of course, communities saw this and immediately called the impending death of the game. After Turbine launched the free to play effort, Dungeons and Dragons increased its paying subscribers by 40%, with a 500% increase in sales over the first year.
So why do I say Turbine saved the industry? With Dungeons and Dragons Online, Turbine has proven that there is an option other than simply shuttering a title. Following Dungeons and Dragons Online, Turbine has proven that even a healthy title can become an even bigger cash cow when Lord of the Rings Online went free to play. Since Dungeons and Dragons Online, we’ve seen Everquest II move to free to play, alongside Pirates of the Burning Sea, and upcoming Champions Online, Global Agenda, Alganon, and more. Even the normal banter has changed. In many of the forums I visit, the phrase has changed from “I wonder how long until it shuts down” to “I wonder how long until they go f2p with a cash shop.”
Granted, taking the plunge into free to play cash shop is not a guarantee at success, but rather it’s like putting a cast on your horse’s broken leg in hopes that it will heal, rather than outright shooting it. In the case of Chronicles of Spellborn, well you can’t go free to play if your developer goes out of business. Perhaps if Turbine had popularized this just a year or two earlier, we might still be playing Tabula Rasa, The Matrix Online, and other titles.
More and more we can see companies experimenting with or thinking about the Turbine model. Sony is getting into the system with Pirates of the Burning Sea and Everquest II. Funcom and Mythic have discussed such moves with Age of Conan and Warhammer Online respectively, noting that the option is not off the table but not being considered at the moment. Cryptic is taking Champions Online to such a model. The option is no longer cake or death.
Of course, there are some companies that would rather shoot the horse than risk the cast, although with the popularity of Dungeons and Dragons Online, more of those companies might start seeing the light. I’m looking at you, NCsoft.
Which MMOs would you like to see go free to play? Drop us a comment below. Want MMO Fallout beamed directly to your email account? Sign up in the sidebar. Follow us on Twitter: @mmofallout.
Starting next Monday, the 25th, Codemasters will open up the test realms for Lord of the Rings Online’s transition to free to play, which you can sign up for here. Codemasters is saying that the more people who sign up, the faster the testing can take place (meaning the testing is likely for stability and population capacity under high stress) and the faster that the service can transition on the live servers.
Here's your dice, Europe
It’s almost Friday, which means we’re about a day early on the weekly Lord of the Rings Online: Europegate update, but who cares about keeping up to nonexistent traditions? We have good news finally! Starting next Monday, the 25th, Codemasters will open up the test realms for Lord of the Rings Online’s transition to free to play, which you can sign up for here. Codemasters is saying that the more people who sign up, the faster the testing can take place (meaning the testing is likely for stability and population capacity under high stress) and the faster that the service can transition on the live servers.
Is anyone still reading this? Good. Those of you who sign up and participate in the trial will receive 500 Turbine points (or would they be Codemaster Points?) towards the store once the game goes live. The only information we have on timing is “shortly thereafter,” which can mean anything coming from the company that told us over a month ago that the European service would go free to play in “just a couple weeks,” granted their issues were contractual and thus irrelevant to this new update.
Will this be enough to bring back European players who are on the North American servers, likely some of whom have invested both cash and time into their new characters? Only time will tell.
I’ve been speculating for a while now that there is more to this delay of Lord of the Rings Online in Europe than Codemasters has been explaining. On my earlier articles, I noted my thoughts that Turbine had something to do with the delays, although my assumption that Turbine was attempting to take back LOTRO in Europe was obviously incorrect. Codemasters’ General Manager David Solari put out a notice today that the issues were not, in fact, technical, and that Codemasters was having contractual issues that were delaying the launch of LOTRO F2P EU.
“This is the reason why we have been unable to provide you with any substantial information as to when we will go Free-to-Play, despite the desire to share this with you. Unfortunately a contract was required in order to go Free-to-Play and this has taken much longer to conclude than expected.”
My money says this can be traced back to money, namely how much Turbine wanted in royalties and how much Codemasters wanted to pay under the new contract. Either way, the contract has been concluded, and Codemasters is on their way to a full free to play launch.
We can confirm the launch is imminent and we should be able to announce the dates later this week/early next week.
You can read the rest of Solari’s comments at the above link. More on Lord of the Rings Online as it appears.
MMO players are subjectively patient. As any player can tell you, delays happen for many reasons. An update that wasn’t tested properly, a wayward system that was unable to handle the server load, maintenance that had to be extended longer than expected. As players, however, we have our temporary ways around this system. Our server going offline may lead us to an alt we have on a more reliable server, or if the game is down universally we may go play another game. Often times, however, these events build up until our temporary fix becomes permanent. The guild might be relocating to this new server, or a player might quit the game out of frustration and go join another.
I’ve been entertaining the idea that Turbine must be loving the fact that Codemasters has fully bugged up the Lord of the Rings Online relaunch in Europe, because my research into both the European and American LOTRO forums turns up a lot of disgruntled European players packing bags and downloading the American client, foregoing their current characters and achievements in return for a system that should have been in place a month ago. Of course, one might expect that players coming over to the American servers will be less inclined to stay when Codemasters makes their move, over server location and lag issues.
But, what if Turbine made an offer that would entice European players to keep their American accounts, and even fork over some cash? As I write this, the Turbine sale is going to end in one minute. Today, Turbine placed three major quest packs on sale for 75% off each, offering 300 quests combined, a few new factions, and new instances.
Granted, this wouldn’t be the first time a developer sucker-punched one of its publishers right in the teeth, but for some reason I never saw such an event coming from Turbine. Yes, Turbine has a masters degree in “hey let’s give this a shot,” but (assuming my theory is correct) I don’t think we could have seen such an event coming where Turbine would be actively drawing subscribers from Codemasters.
Hopefully this works out for Turbine, and LOTRO worldwide. More on Lord of the Rings Online as it appears.
MMO Fallout 