And you thought the OF were bad...

[Almagnus1 80]

This reddit post sums up exactly why LotRO is going to be the paste eater MMO that's too dumb to die.

[Amenhir 106]

And all that subscription money going towards WoW is why that game has millions of players and Lotro has 34.  

[Doro 773]

I may be misreading this, but it seems like they're saying they're happy they can play the game without ever having to actually cough up any money. I can see the appeal of a game where you slowly unlock content for free just by playing it, and I've often thought if I didn't have a Lifer account I would've done exactly that as a Premium player.

[PJ. 17]

1 hour ago, Doro said:

I may be misreading this, but it seems like they're saying they're happy they can play the game without ever having to actually cough up any money. I can see the appeal of a game where you slowly unlock content for free just by playing it, and I've often thought if I didn't have a Lifer account I would've done exactly that as a Premium player.

That’s how I read it too 

[Almagnus1 80]

5 hours ago, Doro said:

I may be misreading this, but it seems like they're saying they're happy they can play the game without ever having to actually cough up any money. I can see the appeal of a game where you slowly unlock content for free just by playing it, and I've often thought if I didn't have a Lifer account I would've done exactly that as a Premium player.

That's kinda the problem... F2P doesn't really work unless you have a way to monetize the hell out of it with sacrificing the quality of your game in the progress.  Warframe is an example of F2P done right.  LotRO is an example of F2P done wrong.

And if you really stop and think about the title, why isn't the best part the world you're in rather than your ability to pay (or not)?

[Doro 773]

47 minutes ago, Almagnus1 said:

That's kinda the problem... F2P doesn't really work unless you have a way to monetize the hell out of it with sacrificing the quality of your game in the progress.  Warframe is an example of F2P done right.  LotRO is an example of F2P done wrong.

And if you really stop and think about the title, why isn't the best part the world you're in rather than your ability to pay (or not)?

I've never liked that they went F2P. I've never liked that they keep putting Store-only items in. The whole thing has a distinct "EA: We fuck the game" feel about it. However, I can see that for someone who never knew otherwise, they'd not see a problem. They set their standard at a much lower point than was previously available, and that's just the nature of the beast. It fucks the rest of us over and results in a consistently shitty game from then onwards, but the perspective will depend on when you join.

In terms of why an ability to not pay might be considered the best part, well it depends on your reasoning. Getting anything for free is nice, but it's especially good if you also think what's given is good. For example, if I got a free steak dinner from my favourite steakhouse, it wouldn't matter how good the steak was, the best part would be that it was free. Not that LotRO is a steak, it's more like the scraps powerwashed off the carcass and mushed together, but still.

[berry 9]

At the early parts of the game grinding is okish, but once you advance in the game around level 85ish it become much harder to earn points and also more and more game mechanics encourage you to spend points to advance, avoid a hell of grind in terms of gearing and etc.

No need to mention in terms of quality the difference of between the pre level 75 and post 75  is huge, so of course this game is very appealing to new players.

 

[TheKickman 9]

On 4/21/2019 at 4:42 AM, berry said:

At the early parts of the game grinding is okish, but once you advance in the game around level 85ish it become much harder to earn points and also more and more game mechanics encourage you to spend points to advance, avoid a hell of grind in terms of gearing and etc.

No need to mention in terms of quality the difference of between the pre level 75 and post 75  is huge, so of course this game is very appealing to new players.

 

But most new players dont even reach Moria oince they hit the paywalls and start seeing how the game wants to milk you they leave.  Instead of focusing on a game where people want to spend money to support it (like GTA 5 Online) they want to bet there is 1 whale in every 100 new players who will drop a few hundred