143 replies to this topic

[cossieuk]

Raedwulf, on 25 July 2011 - 19:29, said:

As far as I remember, the original subscription was £11.99 / month, whilst the lifetime was £99. The figure that has always stuck in my mind is that I was playing free after about 8 1/2 months. I've been here over 4 years now. I can hardly complain.

Normal lifetime was £150.  I think the £99 offer was originally from one of the special editions.

[Doro]

Again I'm having to suffer people saying that Lifetimers are playing for free or not contributing. My wallet says different.

I paid £20 for the first two months of sub about 3 years ago. I then paid £140 for a lifetime account. £20 on Moria, £15 on Mirkwood and now £30 on Isengard comes to a grand total of £225.

If your main problem is that I've paid all that in the past not now, I'd like to point out my lifetime account could be seen as pretty much like me paying around £3.50 per month (the lifetime cost divided by the months I've been playing).

So stop pretending you're any better for stupidly paying for a subscription. If Turbine wanted more of my money they should have just made big and better expansions and charged more. For now, I'm satisfied that my £225 is more than enough to justify my lifetime account.

[cossieuk]

Now all you need to do is workout how many hours you have played so you can see the hourly cost of playing the game.  For me it is less than 7p an hour which is a bargain

[Dalthalion]

Interesting idea, except that you aren't being charged by the hour.  Whether you play a little or a lot, you're still getting charged the same amount per month (or every several months, if you went with a multi-month option).

Of course, I admit that my point of view may be skewed by my lifetime account status, and I don't have to play in specific intervals to make my account seem "worth the expense".

[cossieuk]

Dalthalion, on 25 July 2011 - 20:46, said:

Interesting idea, except that you aren't being charged by the hour.  Whether you play a little or a lot, you're still getting charged the same amount per month (or every several months, if you went with a multi-month option).

Of course, I admit that my point of view may be skewed by my lifetime account status, and I don't have to play in specific intervals to make my account seem "worth the expense".

I worked it out once for myself, just to see what it was.  It serves no real usage except when someone moans that you are spending to much money on the game.  It is good to ask them what else you can do for 7p an hour.

I also have a lifetime so the cost per hour is falling and if you work out the cost of my 500 monthly points then eventually Turbine are paying me to play  

[Dolnor]

I guess I am one of those strange blokes that actually pay for points bundles even though I am a Lifer.  Many (if not most) Lifers tend to see as just a freebie. I see LOTRO as a club...by helping subsidise the club, I help ensure that it will be around for a while longer.

And yes, originally the Lifetime was £99.99 at the end of Beta but the US Founder's Lifetime cost was $200 USD....

Quote

Greetings Dolnor

As of 23:59 on Sunday 8th April 2007 The Lord of the Rings
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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----

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[Vardiel]

Doro, on 25 July 2011 - 20:29, said:

Again I'm having to suffer people saying that Lifetimers are playing for free or not contributing. My wallet says different.

I paid £20 for the first two months of sub about 3 years ago. I then paid £140 for a lifetime account. £20 on Moria, £15 on Mirkwood and now £30 on Isengard comes to a grand total of £225.

If your main problem is that I've paid all that in the past not now, I'd like to point out my lifetime account could be seen as pretty much like me paying around £3.50 per month (the lifetime cost divided by the months I've been playing).

So stop pretending you're any better for stupidly paying for a subscription. If Turbine wanted more of my money they should have just made big and better expansions and charged more. For now, I'm satisfied that my £225 is more than enough to justify my lifetime account.

Above quoted for truth, for myself aswell. I was a montly subscriber for awhile, until the time cards became harder to find. Then I used paypal to buy 3 month deals. I got the Lifetime at the last discount period I think, barely. I also got one point bundle when the bonus points were double (points and bonus points? weird concept) so I've spent a whole lot of money on the game. Granted it would be a lot more if I would've been subscriber the whole time.

But the most important deal for me in the Lifetime subscription is freedom. I don't feel forced to play since I just paid for this month. It is silly I know, but the ability to play or not to play without guilt of "wasting money" is important to me.

The rest is rant:
This is my first, and so far the only game I have paid monthly for. The whole concept of pouring cash constantly into a game when other games are single-shot expenses, seems insane to me even now. The amount of revenue of MMO's compared to regular games must be huge. And we pay. No wonder World of Warcraft keeps getting tested by companies who want to leech even slightly from that cash cow. I can't help remembering how many hours I spent on Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction. Maybe more than I have for Lotro (I'm around 5000 hours in at the moment, give or take a few hundred). Compare those near similar hours to the total amount of money the games have gained. Is it any wonder I jumped at Lifetime the moment it was possible, even if it was a big chunk of my salary at the time?

[Fuin]

Hmm...sorry if people felt offended with my freebies term. Of course everyone who payed at least once be if for points, subscription or lifetime did contribute for game and can't really be called as such. My reasoning was wholly from Turbine side, and the truth is that lifetimers vs subscriber doesn't bring money here and now. They of course got the money upfront, but after those Y x monthly subscription months, lifetimers stopped paying vs subscriber who would play for the very same time.

Anyways instead making subscribers more valuable customers, by for example giving them better deal than lifetimers/premiums, Turbine ignored that and went cash shop way - offering better deals for all those who would like to spend extra cash, regardless of their payment plan or lack of thereof. But as it's have it's ups(keeping lifetimers happy) it has it's downs(cash shop offering advantages).

Sure it's not that bad really as exactly as mentioned a good player without cash shop features is better than poor one with them. But what if You take a good player without cash shop stuff vs same one with? I already can see the difference, not big, but noticeable. And I'll be pessimistic here and say that it'll only become more and more noticeable as to keep cash shop profitable they'll need to offer new stuff constantly. And fullf alone won't cut it.

[Laurinaohtar]

And there it is, the final end of any of this convenience and not advantage pretence, Creeps can now buy skills in the store.

http://forums.lotro....vMP-info-please

The slippery slope just became a sheer cliff face, all bets are off now I think.

[Blaize]

Whoa, what??  

[Brrokk]

Duh. I've paid for this great game so that I can play it. But wait a moment, if I pay even more I won't have to play it so much. That makes sense, doesn't it???

[LordVorontur]

Brrokk, on 27 August 2011 - 17:11, said:

Duh. I've paid for this great game so that I can play it. But wait a moment, if I pay even more I won't have to play it so much. That makes sense, doesn't it???

Yep. Makes perfect sense

[Vardiel]

LordVorontur, on 27 August 2011 - 19:28, said:

Yep. Makes perfect sense

It makes Turbinelly sense.

[Mabusian]

Laurinaohtar, on 26 August 2011 - 20:17, said:

And there it is, the final end of any of this convenience and not advantage pretence, Creeps can now buy skills in the store.

http://forums.lotro....vMP-info-please

The slippery slope just became a sheer cliff face, all bets are off now I think.

Let's sum this up. Only VIPs will be able to join the Freep side where they are facing creeps who can buy their skills instead of earning them. Looks like a kind of masochism to me.

[Hiawatta]

Uhmz really nice..... rank 1 spiders with aoe poison.... makes leveling a lot faster..... LOL

[Spheric]

I wonder who at Turbine is going to be the first to face palm and go "Doh!"

From a premier top-of-the-line MMORPG to a low-rent Asian style production line MMORPG in one fell year. That's some serious brand remodeling right there.

So sad.

[Mockingbird]

Quote

Indeed lifers are Turbine biggest mistake. These most loayal players that should be base of income were turned into freebies.

I am going to respond to this because I have seen this sentiment expressed on the official forums a fair bit as well and it is unfair.

The fact is that most Lifers made a gamble originally and paid out a hefty sum of money to get the lifetime subscription with no guarantees that over the long run lotro would be a game they play longterm. In general they are not the kind of people who want something for nothing.

I am a lifer and got the special offer lifetime from codemasters around the time F2P was announced. It cost £75

36 months subscription (approx £8 per month): £288
Lifetime: £75
Moria: £30 (can't remember exactly)
Mirkwood: £20
Adventure Pack: £5
Total: £418

The above is what I have spent on my account. My husband has an account which he has spent the same on and we have a third account for my mother which has been mostly premium (with a couple of months VIP) for the past year.

Just prior to the announcement of ROI I was considering buying my first points bundle - I held off until I knew more about ROI and have decided not to give Turbine anymore money until they start treating their playerbase more fairly.

At the same time most lifetime players I know are quite willing to purchase points when there are things they want to buy from the store on the grounds that they like to contribute to the cost of running and developing the game in exchange for some store fluff.

Lifers are most likely still a very loyal player base and while some may hoard points and spend them carefully I am confident that on the whole they are still a solid source of income for Turbine and should not be easily dismissed as 'freebies'.

[Jackalope]

Silirien, on 26 May 2011 - 12:46, said:

Let's make sure this cut-throat commercial approach is advertised across the industry

TSW has already announced a cash shop being introduced into the game at launch. And that discussion is also quite a rant fest. People are being labelled communist for opposing an obvious money grab. Or told they don't understand economics.

Mabusian, on 29 August 2011 - 08:58, said:

Let's sum this up. Only VIPs will be able to join the Freep side where they are facing creeps who can buy their skills instead of earning them. Looks like a kind of masochism to me.

It's been suggested that VIP players avoid the moors totally because of that. If no one goes in there, those creeps have no reason to support the store, and it hits Turbine in the pocketbook directly. Of course, there is no guarantee that they won't open up parts of ROI to open MPvP either, making players have to run the gauntlet just to quest. If they can go back on their store promises, and WB now owns the license, we don't know just how much control they have over it. It might be that when WB purchased it, they inked new words that make them able to do just that.

[Calendae]

open PvP would be the end of lotro, I still don't think, they're that stupid.

then again ... *sigh*

[Vardiel]

Calendae, on 12 September 2011 - 11:25, said:

open PvP would be the end of lotro, I still don't think, they're that stupid.

then again ... *sigh*

You know what they used to call people who argued against open PVP, and people who didn't like when someone just killed lower levels or newbies? Carebears. This was considered a degrading or at least a rude term for people who were "too casual." This was happening a lot in a game I used to play. It shows a bit of that attitude you can find in an open world PVP game. Lotro was never designed to be a PVP game. PvMP was added as a bonus, neglected and not really balanced.

So in short, I agree. Open PVP is totally against what Lotro is. I certainly hope that PVE and PvMP stay as they are, mostly separate parts of the game.

----

I haven't played PvMP very much, some Creep'ing now and then. It doesn't strike my fancy, despite my streaks of player versus player enthusiasm. It's not balanced, it doesn't work very well and I somehow don't like how PvMP is handled in Lotro.