LOTRO: Lord of the Revenue Online

Money money money…..MONEEEY!

According to Rock Paper Shotgun and Develop Turbine has scored another
success with their newly turned free to play MMO, Lord of the Rings
Online. Apparently since the game went free to play they’ve
increased their revenue three fold.

I have to
imagine the guys at Turbine are both extremely pleased and very
angry at the same time. Sure, they’re making much more money now
with their two free to play games than they ever did before, but
now they’ve used up all of their MMOs. What are they gonna make
free to play now? Perhaps we’ll see a relaunch of the Turbine
website in the near future. They could add a cash shop to purchase
forums, help, game information etc. They’d probably also make a ton
of money doing it.

I’m personally pretty happy
about this. I only have so much money, but I have a ton of MMOs I’d
love to play. Turbine succeeded this well with both of their games
could lead to many more MMOs going free to play. As long as they
aren’t SOE I’d say there is a good chance I’ll enjoy any of the
MMOs I’m interested in going free to play.

Well,
back to gaming.

Champions Online Free to Play!

I woke up this morning to some of the best news I’ve heard in a while.

That is from an email stating that in Q1, 2011 Champions Online will have a free-to-play option. I have wanted this since I played it for a free month thanks to BlueKae. This game is very fun, but it always seemed too shallow for me to pay a subscription fee, especially compared to all of the other pay to play MMOs out there, including their own Star Trek Online (I still need to try those episode dealies).

Now from this little email I can’t tell whether they will make a good implementation of F2P gaming, but I do have a theory. Based on the wording, note that Champions Online is not “going free to play” but is instead gaining “a free to play option”. My guess is that it will be implemented more along the lines of Evequest II Extended. You’ll have a free server, and very limited character customization options, which you can pay for. No travel powers unless you pay a one time fee, etc.

However this turns out, I am at current VERY excited about this news. If it’s done even half decently I will have gained a new F2P game to mess around with, for which I have gained a new found enjoyment. I’m currently playing LOTRO, Runes of Magic, DDO and Vindictus. I have EverQuest II Extended on my hard drive, but I only want to play as the Ratonga and I haven’t bought them yet.

Edit: I found an FAQ for Champions Online F2P thanks to Tobold, and most of my predictions are wrong. Take special note of this.

LOTRO Free to Play, World of GODDAMMIT WTF!?!

Warning! Explicit content contained herein.

I won’t write much about this, but as I’m sure you’ve heard LOTRO is going Free to Play. I’m fine with it. Turbine has done an amazing job with Dungeons and Dragons Online, and while I like LOTRO it’s never held me strong enough to stay subscribed until end game. This will allow me to pay $5 here for a zone, complete that zone in a month or two, and then pay for the next zone, all at my own pace.

Not to mention, I wasn’t subscribed anyway, so I don’t have the right to complain. All those people that WERE subscribed or had lifetime subscriptions, they have a right, but not me. I wasn’t helping keep this game or it’s community g0ing strong and so I can’t really be upset by the thought of being able to justify playing it again, nor can I be angry that it might “ruin the game and bring about the end times of video games!” as so many people seem to be fearing.

LOTRO has another thing going for it with the switch to free. Right now it’s arguably the second best, or maybe lower, subscription MMO on the market. After this it will be the single best free to play game period. They stand to make an amazing amount of money with this as people come running from games like Allods or Florenzia or Wizards 101. Also, to all the lifetime subscription people out there who may be upset, you knew that lifetime didn’t really mean lifetime. Besides, it’s an online game, and those were supposed to be the most dynamic games. Embrace the change.

On to World of Warcraft and some of the things that really PISS me off about the game. I know it’s said that it is the most polished game on it’s kind and that may be true, but that doesn’t mean that it is without flaws and glitches. Glitches like mobs getting stuck in rocks. This has happened to be A LOT the last couple of days.

Another thing that drives me insane is that, for 90% of the game (I.E. until you get into Northrend and get the quest gear) your characters armor looks like total crap. My pally is currently in a blue and gold shirt, black pants, gold shoulderpads, pink belt and silver gloves, with a yellow miners hat on. Who the fuckity fuck thought that this was a good idea?

I can understand having appearance gear. It wasn’t in the game to begin with and they just don’t want to spend the time to implement it (PLEASE DO THIS!) but I can’t imagine the developers sitting back and watching people level up in beta and no saying “You know Mike, everyone looks like ass….maybe we should make them, I don’t know, match a little?”. Then again maybe that happened, and that person was fired.

We all want to progress, and in WoW part of that is the look of your character, but that doesn’t begin to look better until almost end game. Maybe there should be a decent look throughout that steadily gets cooler and cooler as you go, but either always matches, or give us appearance gear, or at LEAST dye’s so we can make it match.