Pumping Irony

A day late and a dollar short on writing this, eh? Hey, I was more motivated to play the game rather than write about it this past weekend. Plenty of others have done the writing, and I agree with most of what other informed and reasonable (thus automatically disqualifying Keen) bloggers and writers have already said.

I’ll openly admit, despite being “in the know” about how Turbine handled things in DDO, that my first reaction to the LOTRO announcement was a sharp gasp, followed by a Darth Vader-esque “Nooooooooooooo!” But that reaction was caused by years of exposure to what “Free to Play” or “F2P” has meant under the predominantly Asian model. A few seconds later, my mind returned to reality and I realized this will most likely be a great thing not only for LOTRO, but also something the other developers and publisher may want to watch with a keen eye.

What will it mean for me, personally? Looking at the VIP Chart on the Beta Signup page, nothing is going to change in my own gaming, aside from finally giving me a few options I’ve been wanting. I am a Founder and a Lifetime member, which means I will automatically become a VIP member without the subscription and I’ll still get the 500 Turbine Points in addition to the Loyalty Reward points for my existing account status.

Do I feel disappointed because I bought the Lifetime membership and three years later the business model is changing? Of course not, why should I? The Lifetime membership was $200 up front which gives my account access to the game for the entirety of its life with no monthly subscription. That isn’t changing with the new business model. Also, that $200 was worth roughly 18 months of subscribing to the game, which is now celebrating it’s three year anniversary. Even with the few breaks I’ve taken, that Lifetime has more than paid for itself and I have been playing for free for quite some time now.

Was the Lifetime part of the problem? Most of us celebrated Turbine for trying something new in allowing the Lifetime memberships. Was it short-sighted of them? Perhaps, though I can’t imagine they went into this without the bean-counters doing the math first. Then again, it was Turbine who said the “typical” MMO player subscribes to a single MMO for a total of roughly 18 months — exactly the value of the Lifetime membership. Now that in many cases, such as my own, where the Lifetime has paid for itself and we are seen as “moochers” getting the full game for free, Turbine has been accused of attempting to monetize the Lifetime members, starting with the Adventure Pack for the Mirkwood mini-expansion a few months ago. Of course they are. They are first and foremost a business, and businesses need income. Personally, I am in a situation of having far more money than time, and I wouldn’t mind continuing to support my game of choice but have had no means to do so other than purchasing the two expansions that have released. The new business model will give me that option, though it’s entirely possible that the bonus + monthly Turbine Points I’ll be accruing will cover the couple of options I am currently interested in, still leaving me in a position of not contributing additional income to Turbine.

While we may have been pleased that LOTRO offered the Lifetime memberships, we were much more skeptical when Flagship offered them for Hellgate: London. When Flagship sank, we were practically astounded that Cryptic had the audacity to offer them for Champions Online and Star Trek Online – especially given Cryptic’s modus operandi for producing games that are rather lacking in the depth and longevity departments. I feel safe in stating my belief that the Lifetime experiment was well-warranted and worth the attempt but has worn out its welcome and usefulness; I doubt we see many more of them offered.

Why do it at all? We can easily look back at DDO – which had 65,000 subscribers at its peak and probably half that at the time of its F2P announcement – and say the switch was to save the game. Not only did it save the game, the game’s reputation and exposure has increased, it’s player base has increased 500% and subscribers (VIP members) have increased 300% since the switch, and it has added two servers. Does that automatically mean the exact same thing will happen for LOTRO? Absolutely not, though Turbine is going ahead and adding two more LOTRO servers right away rather than adding one like they did for DDO then the second one came later when it was needed. LOTRO doesn’t need saving like DDO did. After the first few months of launch, LOTRO settled into the comfortable population range of approximately 250K to 300K, give or take, according to most educated guesstimates. It has maintained that same population for three years. It has slowly lost players but gained new players at roughly the same rate via the same revolving door population we see on the majority of other subscription MMOG’s. In other words, while the total population has been fine and providing steady income for Turbine, it is also stagnant. I could probably say the same of EQ2 and most other subscription MMOG’s that have released prior to 2008. The hybrid “freemium” model allows more choices for game access, thereby opening the potential for increasing the total player base, providing all players with more people to adventure with, interact with, and befriend, regardless how long or how often any of us chooses to play. I never read anything of EQ2 growing. EQ2 already has each zone individually packaged and could very easily fit the model Turbine and KingsIsle are leading the way with. Vanguard is merging to a single server and is in desperate need of something to gain players, though I suspect SOE is well on their way to phasing it out like they did with Matrix Online, leaving it on life support until finally no one remains on the development team then shutting it down. Despite having recently launched a great expansion, Funcom would do well to adopt a similar model for Age of Conan and their upcoming The Secret World. Same for Cryptic and their games, rather than forcibly double-dipping their customers.

Interestingly, if you look at Turbine’s slideshow presentation on DDO at the Virtual Goods Summit last year, while DDO saw a 500% increase in total players, they were seeing 22% of the players making purchases in the DDO Store. The basic math says that the monetary income is still at 100% of what DDO was earning before the switch, but I’m  certain there’s more to it than those simple numbers. Semi-related side note: Turbine always refused to release population and income numbers, and due to their status as an independent studio were able to get away with it. Now that Turbine is part of Warner Bros. will their numbers be published in quarterly or annual financials? Also noted is that many of the top-selling items are consumables, which fits in with the overarching F2P model already. With LOTRO, that’s a catch since LOTRO does have a full crafting system. A fear that scholars in particular could be affected if the potions and scrolls they craft were available for sale in the LOTRO Store. Turbine has stated they are very keenly aware of this and the Store will not impinge on crafters, but we’ll have to wait until Beta and the re-launch to see. Looking at the VIP Chart again, however, I can make some predictions. All players will earn Destiny Points but only VIP Members can spend them. I predict all Destiny Point consumables will be placed in the LOTRO Store so players have access to those benefits but also provides an attraction for the VIP Membership. Rest XP (technically it’s called Enhanced XP in-game) has the same limitations. We can already spend Destiny Points for two bubbles worth of Enhanced XP but I will predict Turbine creates a few more tiers of Enhanced XP items for sale in the Store.

Quite frankly, I would be in favor of the LOTRO Store selling levels if I wanted to instantly have a level 50 or 60 or 65 character – with the restriction that I already have a character of that level. I can look at my Minstrel alt, who was created back in the day strictly for grouping in instances and raids, not for leveling and soloing. The raid group I was in practically power-leveled the minstrel to 50 within a couple weeks and immediately got her into the instance scene my Lore-master was already involved in. That hasn’t changed now, and I’m dreading having to solo her through Moria and beyond when my only goal for her is end-game content. I have other classes I want to level, but not that one. I would gladly pay Turbine Points to instantly bump her to level 65 so I can get on with what I want her to do.

One concern I do have with the new business model is a change in world design. The Shadows of Angmar game gave us the “seamless” open world of Eriador to adventure and explore. Mines of Moria gave us a separate “world” to load into but again was seamless and open. However, since then we’ve been given Lothlorien and Mirkwood, which are neatly-packaged individual zones – one might go so far as to call them public instances – with no means of “seamless” travel. We know the next landmass to be added to the game is Enedwaith, a level 62-65 zone. Will Enedwaith and all future landmass expansions be “instanced” individual regions for sale in the LOTRO Store or will Turbine maintain some “world integrity” and continue development with seamless travel options? Looking at what the plan for the Free players, it seems they’ll get all of Eriador (the original Shadows of Angmar game) for free, but only the initial starter zones – Breeland, Ered Luin and The Shire – will have any quests. Those should get Free players to level 20. After that, they are free to travel all of Eriador and can grind monsters to their heart’s content to level (slowly since LOTRO offers little XP per kill; the bulk of the XP is from quest rewards) or they can purchase Quest Packs in the LOTRO Store to gain access to all the NPC quests in a given region or regions. That gives me hope that Turbine has the means to continue building Middle Earth as an open and mostly-seamless world rather than DDO-izing (or perhaps AoC-izing would be more appropriate?) the game into packaged zones for sale that we have to load into as we’re seeing now with Lothlorien and Mirkwood.

While I am 110% in favor of this switch, I am not going to jump on the bandwagon that the days of subscriptions are over and F2P/RMT is the future. Well, RMT is a big part of the future, but I digress. What I foresee coming to an end is the days of only subscription or only F2P. We’ve had that for well over a decade, and the fact is customers like having choices. In MMO’s alone there are so many of them that one single title rarely keeps our attention for long. Like it or not, admit it or not, but most of us are Tourists at heart. It was one thing in 1999 if you played EQ and only EQ. There was only EQ, AC or UO to choose from and most players back then picked one and stuck with it. That is no longer the case, and developers are finally accepting that fact. I’ll echo DDOCast host Jerry’s sentiments from his interview on Episode 40a of the Casual Stroll to Mordor podcast that for the past decade developers have had the attitude of “play our game, and only our game!” Now, they’re waking up to the fact that we players cannot or do not behave that way any longer and are beginning to have the attitude of “play our game, too!”  Turbine is among a select few studios now on the cutting edge of what will slowly evolve into how we access our online games in the future, and has nothing to do with the “death” of one model or the other, but rather that I think we’re nearing the end of the days that MMO studios force their customers to put all their eggs in one basket, and start providing customers with alternative choices instead.

Finally, the existing community has been fearful and decrying that the community will downgrade into a cesspool of Barrens chat when the Free players overrun Middle Earth faster than the forces of Mordor. Bollocks! Just look back a year after DDO’s announcement and you’ll see the exact same fears. DDO’s community was so small already, it didn’t take them long to band together under a flag of elitism and snub their noses at the incoming Free players and the behavior they would surely bring. The reality is that, at worst, the maturity of the DDO community stayed the same but from what I’ve seen it seems to have improved. LOTRO has always been known for its mature community, certainly, but it has never been totally pure and free of the immaturity and “community degradation” that so many are fearing. I had people on my ignore list back in Beta. During launch there were gold spammers. The Brandywine server was once (possibly still is, I don’t play there anymore) nicknamed “BrandyWoW” because having the largest server population also meant the largest population of idiots. To this day there are still Barrens Chat-quality conversations in the OOC channels, and don’t even get me started on what often takes place in the user-created GLFF channels. Every single one of you GLFF douchebags who engage daily in the tired arguments over “Guardian tanking in Overpower stance sucks!” or “Wardens suck!” or “Corpse jumping makes you a giant douche!” and countless others have already lost every single right to complain about any “degradation of community” because you are already exactly what you’re complaining about. Go look in the mirror and shut up. Sure, initially the kiddies will come, but guess what? LOTRO’s design and game play won’t sustain them; they’ll go back to WoW with its fast action and Power Ranger shoulder pads or whatever other game has already supported their behavior. What we will gain is what we already want: more players who have the maturity we expect, the desire to play, but perhaps were unable to afford or justify the monthly subscription. Just like it took a few months after launch for things to settle down, it will settle down after a few months after the switch as well.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 10th, 2010 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Lord of the Rings Online, MMO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.