After seeing their monumental success with Dungeons
and Dragons Online going free to play, Turbine has set their sights on
their other flagship MMORPG...

A time long ago, it was considered
rather embarassing for an MMO to go from a subscription based model to
free-to-play model. Not only are there millions of stereotypes
surrounding the quality (or lack thereof) of free-to-play games in
comparison to subscription based games, but there are some assumptions
that just come from playing a game that's being given away for free.
Well, those assumptions and stereotypes can now be safely put to rest,
as Turbine has just
announced that their critically acclaimed subscription-based MMORPG,
Lord of the Rings Online, will be going free to play for
everyone!
This announcement comes almost a year after their other MMORPG,
Dungeons and Dragons Online, also made that free to play transition and
has experienced monumental growth since then. Turbine will also be
following DDO's F2P marketing strategy by selling expansions, quest
packs, helpful items and account services piecemeal. Players can also
join LotRO's VIP program to get unlimited access to all of the
game's content for one price. The beta for LotRO will begin June 16th,
2010, with the official launch of the game planned for some time in
fall.

does that mean they ll limit content unless we pay ._.

ya lol

which is a bit stupid

It's not stupid.
You get a chance to play a p2p game for free and see yourself how it is like and if you ll enjoy it.
Then you can pay for it if you really do.

Well Neo, if those core DDO players would have made for a bigger community (number wise that play the game) the switch wouldn't have been necessary ^^

But DDO even though not dead was quite damn empty.

Talking about dead games, TcoS is a sad story =( such a great game with no players o_0 anyway DDO had almost a compareable feel to it.

Turbine Inc. recently announced the Lord of the
Rings Online, will be going free-to-play. Adam
Mersky, Director of Communications, and Kate Paiz,
Executive Producer, were kind enough to join us in an interview about
the change. For those who wish to listen to the interview, instead of
reading the transcription, that can be found below.


Michael
Fuchs: Turbine Recently Announced that Lord of the
Rings Online Will Be Going Free-To-Play. What spurred this decision?

Kate
Paiz: Well, we looked deeply at the DDO transition last year,
and the benefits that it brought to the game and the way the community
in DDO responded to it. And we felt that it was a very strategic move
for LOTRO to go ahead and open the game up to millions of new players,
and we've gotten a lot of feedback in LOTRO as well that "I love the
game, but I don't love the cost". There is just something about having a
subscription that just turns off some players. They just like the
notion of having a recurring cost on their credit card every month. And
we analyzed the game, and what we could do, and we felt that it was it
was very good for our community and the experience of general gameplay
to say "You know, you're right. There's a lot of this game that you can
have for free, and it's yours." And now we expect to have the same
success with it that DDO has had.


Michael Fuchs:
Excellent! In the announcement it was stated that players will have the
ability to buy expansion packs, premium content, additional character
slots, potions, character customization, and more. What are some
examples of these and how much would you imagine they cost?

Kate
Paiz: Well, of course it is something that we are definitely
going to be through a lot in beta and testing different price points and
understand that better, but preliminarily, it will be the kind of thing
you can expect that consumables and other one-time use items will vary
from a couple of pennies to maybe a couple of dollars for the high-end,
most beneficial ones – something like a potion that brings you back to
life will sort of be on the higher end of that. Perhaps a speed boost or
a low level health potion would be on the lower end. Content packs
themselves, again, we're talking about a pack in which the content model
in LOTRO is very different from DDO in that we're handling it
differently. The entire world from the Shire all the way to the Misty
Mountains is going to be traversable for free. You can walk anywhere.
Obviously if the monsters are too high leveled the monsters may kill
you. But you can walk anywhere and hunt monsters on the landscape. But
occasionally you'll run into an NPC that has a locked icon over their
head, and if you buy, through the interface, you'll be able to buy a
region that comes with eighty to two-hundred quests in it, and then that
was going to be in the price point of, again, varying from feedback in
beta, but most likely in the price ranged of five to ten dollars.


Michael Fuchs:
Will any of the premium content give paying players an advantage over
free to play players?

Kate Paiz:
Well…that's hard to answer because it's a different kind of concept. All
of the core story, the story that tells the experiences of the
Fellowship and allows you to interact in the story of the main book is
going to be free. And the free players are going to have the opportunity
to roam the landscape without limits in the pre-Moria area. And the
game is to play the epic story. Players are going to have the
opportunity to earn Turbine points through gameplay. So it's the players
who really want to experience every bit of content in the game. There
is the possibility of for those Turbine Points and finding a way to make
a choice between the time you put in and the money option, if you chose
to go that way. I would say that there isn't a strong difference
between the experience of a regular VIP player and someone who plays for
free. Someone who's free can decide to put in the time, but, if we're
talking moment to moment, it depends on how you're playing your
character. Does that make sense? It's a little complicated the way we
set it up.

Michael Fuchs: No, that makes
sense. It's good.

Kate Paiz: Okay.


Michael Fuchs:
For Dungeons and Dragons Online, players earn Turbine Points by
completing the higher difficulty levels for the quests. How will players
earn Turbine Points in Lord of the Rings Online?

Kate
Paiz: It's through Deeds. So, we give you deeds for
exploration or for killing monsters or for a variety of other things,
such as surviving. And now many of the deeds have Turbine Points as
rewards. So, as you go through the game and finish quests, you can check
the deeds panel to see what you need to do to get the points. There
will also be some normal quests that give Turbine Point rewards and that
will clearly be explained in the quest panel when you take it.

Michael
Fuchs: How will Turbine deal with accounts that have
already purchased a life-time membership?

Kate
Paiz: Well, you know, life-time subscribers in the past have
become life-time VIPs. They'll get all of the content that we release,
in the same way that they have previously. There really isn't a change
in their experience, with the exception of now they get 500 points per
month, which is part of their life-time subscription (just as recurring
paying VIPs do.)


Michael Fuchs:
Will this change bring any gameplay changes to Lord of the Rings
Online? Or is it purely in how players pay for the game?

Kate
Paiz: We certainly haven't done anything like making the game
harder or reduced drops of potions in vendors, or things like that.
We've kept the game as much the same as possible. Certainly we had to
make some choices around the cost of running the service and carrying
the load of all these free players. So, probably, the little things
around auction access or inventory space have changed for the free
players. But we've worked really hard to make sure that that's not going
to make the free players feel like they have less in gameplay, and
certainly one of the main purposes of our beta over the next several
months is to validate that the game is very fun, very engaging, and is
absolutely balanced for free players.

Adam Mersky:
And you asked about content coming along with this update?

Michael
Fuchs: Correct

Adam Mersky:
So, not just the changes there, but we also have a new region…

Kate
Paiz: Right, so we have a new region that's going to continue
the story that we started at the beginning of the year. Players, after
level 65, will be able to help the rangers as they move south to go meet
Strider as he goes into Rohan and that completes a lot of the 2nd book
of the Two Towers content.


Michael Fuchs:
Is there anything else you'd like to tell your players or our readers?

Adam
Mersky: We, first of all, want to encourage everyone to come
signup for the new beta. That'll be starting in about 2 to 3 weeks. This
has been a huge success for us as a company, for our players in DDO;
it's really changed the game. I think that anyone who is concerned about
how this will affect them, they can just look at that and see what a
positive impact that's had. We've been providing players with the choice
of how to play the game and how to pay for it, and that's the future.
It was such a huge success, beyond anything we ever projected with DDO.
We envision that it will not only be a huge success for LOTRO but that
it's going to work in all of the future games that we bring out. We just
encourage players to come and check out the beta and stay tuned all
summer as we bring more updates about the new content coming and that
also, as well, we're going to be watching this fall.

We would like to thank Turbine for joining us in the interview, and
we eagerly look forward to the upcoming beta!