Lotro, once a great game destroyed...

VincerKaden

Originally posted by Starbuck1771

Originally posted by Karahandras

Originally posted by DavisFlight

LotRO was never a great game.

 

Middle Earth Online was a great game, made by passionate innovative devs.

LotRO was the result of scrapping most of the good content and dumping out a cheap WoW clone. The only real good aspects of LotRO are leftovers from MEO's development.

It was only a matter of time.

Have to agree with this, if it was so great it wouldn't have been a ghost town and had to go f2p.  But I agree with the analysis of the cash shop.

It wasn't a ghost town. It went F2P when WB got the company during the fall of Atari. WB was the worst choice as the new owners of Turbine inc. Just like EA shouldnt have gotten Bioware  from Atari because TOR is a total disgrace to the genre.

Definitely was not a ghost town when it went F2P. I figured they made the switch to F2P because of how well DDO did after making the switch. They projected to make more money with the new payment model.

Calling a game "great" or not is subjective. I liked it. I still like it. It's entertained me for years on and off. To me, it's a great game.

xalvi

Originally posted by Vayman

Originally posted by Starbuck1771

Originally posted by Karahandras

Originally posted by DavisFlight

LotRO was never a great game.

 

Middle Earth Online was a great game, made by passionate innovative devs.

LotRO was the result of scrapping most of the good content and dumping out a cheap WoW clone. The only real good aspects of LotRO are leftovers from MEO's development.

It was only a matter of time.

Have to agree with this, if it was so great it wouldn't have been a ghost town and had to go f2p.  But I agree with the analysis of the cash shop.

It wasn't a ghost town. It went F2P when WB got the company during the fall of Atari. WB was the worst choice as the new owners of Turbine inc. Just like EA shouldnt have gotten Bioware  from Atari because TOR is a total disgrace to the genre.

Definitely was not a ghost town when it went F2P. I figured they made the switch to F2P because of how well DDO did after making the switch. They projected to make more money with the new payment model.

Calling a game "great" or not is subjective. I liked it. I still like it. It's entertained me for years on and off. To me, it's a great game.

 

Idk which server you were on saying lotro was not a ghost town before F2P but other than that you are dead wrong. The only servers that had "real" life on was the three big servers brandy,elendilmir, and landy. I tried every other server because i don't like big servers and boy it was if i heard e-crickets. 

They made the transition because they simply did not make enough profit to keep the game running, mostly due to their bad lifetime deal. The ones loyal to the game obv bought it while the people who saw this game had many game breaking flaws simply left.

So in a way you are correct they made it F2P to increase profits, but neccessary profits otherwise it would shut down. 

 

p.s - saying its a great game is subjective. But comparing this game to other new mmos im pretty sure one can say that this game is simply outdatted. Just saying...

Po_gg

Originally posted by xalvi

Originally posted by Vayman

Definitely was not a ghost town when it went F2P. I figured they made the switch to F2P because of how well DDO did after making the switch. They projected to make more money with the new payment model.

Calling a game "great" or not is subjective. I liked it. I still like it. It's entertained me for years on and off. To me, it's a great game.

 

Idk which server you were on saying lotro was not a ghost town before F2P but other than that you are dead wrong. The only servers that had "real" life on was the three big servers brandy,elendilmir, and landy. I tried every other server because i don't like big servers and boy it was if i heard e-crickets. 

They made the transition because they simply did not make enough profit to keep the game running, mostly due to their bad lifetime deal. The ones loyal to the game obv bought it while the people who saw this game had many game breaking flaws simply left.

So in a way you are correct they made it F2P to increase profits, but neccessary profits otherwise it would shut down. 

I agree with Vayman both on that DDO's success had a huge part in LotRO's switch (I even red somewhere that Turbine opened the new servers by the experiences with DDO's conversion), and on the part that it wasn't a ghost town. At least here with Codies, based on the login charts.

 

And I agree with you on the LTA case. I mean, it wasn't a "bad lifetime deal" at all, on the contrary. (I still regret that I skipped it on the second offer... damn foolish me). It was a so good offer that it backfired on them, literally everyone and their grandmas bought the LTA. With one huge income boost Turbine managed to "cull" the subscribing population

And since it's "lifetime", the effect won't go away. There are players who haven't bought anything since LTA, got even Isengard and Rohan for free with the monthly 500TP stipend. And it's a pretty large group, but of course the f2p switch and the new player influx diminished their % within the whole playerbase.

 

So, the first part of your statement seems correct, "So in a way you are correct they made it F2P to increase profits", though I think the game wasn't anywhere near to shutdown. Maybe they started to feel the effect of the many LTA's not paying the monthly $15, but "otherwise it would shut down" - I don't think so. Of course, it's not a fact, I can't be sure of it, just a hunch

strellok

I played this game since beta and SoA were the best times, Moria xpac was pretty awesome too.

Then it went downhill. Later "expansions" were okay or outright terrible.

If you compare LOTRO from 2007,2008 to 2013 you can clearly see this is a dead game. Its not a game, its a business made only for money, not for the game anymore. Developer's focus is wrong, they produce horrible content and people know it. Most decent communities on 2nd populated server just...dissappeared.

All I can say that its a shame. This game was just epic and people loved its world.

 

If you are a lonely soloer, though, you still have some fun.

caelach

Just played this after a long absence (except for festivals). It crashed twice in less than an hour. I used to sing the praises of this game. Now, these fools have ruined it in so many ways.

Antiquated

Originally posted by Dibdabs
YES! - a "pay to win thread".  This is both new and interesting.

Whew. I was expecting "this patch wrecked my game!" (a perennial gamer favorite).

At least it's not "NGE oh noes", this time.

didjerama

Originally posted by sfc1971

Turbine had with the original game, pre-moria, a decent little sleeper hit on their hands. It was WoW for people that don't like the "intensity" of WoW. And with that I mean anything from the famous barren chat to having to grind just to be able to join a raid. 

The game eventually (before Moria) had two raids, one big and one smaller which gave somewhat okay rewards you didn't need. Raiding was about raiding and not about getting phat loot. I lead plenty, especially Helegrod, were anyone was welcome as long as they met the level requirement to get inside in the first place. 

This would be unthinkable in WoW. Lotro was a nice casual MMORPG and was slowly growing.

But apparently not fast enough because with the release of the Moria expansion, the game took a radically different approach. It introduced an area that was literaly a dungeon and dungeon with no "run free" parts. With that I mean that in the original outdoor areas, you could always find a path with no enemies to harass you on your way to an area OR you could at least reach a spot where you can "run free" of your pursuers without picking up new ones. Not so in Moria, just endless corridors with enemies just widely spaced enough that you would always be under attack. The bypass for collapsed bridge was particullaly insulting, just one corrider just narrow enough to have the single mobs always attack you as you run past. Either run the entire bloody long way under attack or spend an hour or two fighting them. BORING!

Moria also introduced gated content, instances you had to grind before being allowed to do the expansion raid.  For people who by that time had many alts, it promised to be an unsurmountable hurdle and the end content was regonized by many as not worth the hassle. Ever since the introduction Turbine has made countless changes, everytime claiming that this time they had fully satisfied their customers needs... they haven't yet.

Legendary gear was another Moria abonimation and again often changed.

It was basically Moria that ended Lotro as a casual friendly MMORPG and with F2P it opened the flood gates to the kiddies who want WoW but can't afford it. The problem with that approach was simple, the old paying customers left and the new free loaders didn't bring in enough cash. So Turbine went into cash shop overdrive trying to sell stuff like dyes which basically were free in the game proper and finally resorting to pure p2w driving away more old paying customers and getting only free loaders in return.

The game would have been far better if 9/10 of moria had been cut and instead the time had been spent on a nice non-gated raid and some outdoor alternative areas. It had the RP market locked up but wanted to attract the barren crowd instead. Well. They succeeded.

Radiance gear and legendary items destroyed LOTRO and it has never fully recovered.

avalon1000

Originally posted by didjerama

Originally posted by sfc1971

Turbine had with the original game, pre-moria, a decent little sleeper hit on their hands. It was WoW for people that don't like the "intensity" of WoW. And with that I mean anything from the famous barren chat to having to grind just to be able to join a raid. 

The game eventually (before Moria) had two raids, one big and one smaller which gave somewhat okay rewards you didn't need. Raiding was about raiding and not about getting phat loot. I lead plenty, especially Helegrod, were anyone was welcome as long as they met the level requirement to get inside in the first place. 

This would be unthinkable in WoW. Lotro was a nice casual MMORPG and was slowly growing.

But apparently not fast enough because with the release of the Moria expansion, the game took a radically different approach. It introduced an area that was literaly a dungeon and dungeon with no "run free" parts. With that I mean that in the original outdoor areas, you could always find a path with no enemies to harass you on your way to an area OR you could at least reach a spot where you can "run free" of your pursuers without picking up new ones. Not so in Moria, just endless corridors with enemies just widely spaced enough that you would always be under attack. The bypass for collapsed bridge was particullaly insulting, just one corrider just narrow enough to have the single mobs always attack you as you run past. Either run the entire bloody long way under attack or spend an hour or two fighting them. BORING!

Moria also introduced gated content, instances you had to grind before being allowed to do the expansion raid.  For people who by that time had many alts, it promised to be an unsurmountable hurdle and the end content was regonized by many as not worth the hassle. Ever since the introduction Turbine has made countless changes, everytime claiming that this time they had fully satisfied their customers needs... they haven't yet.

Legendary gear was another Moria abonimation and again often changed.

It was basically Moria that ended Lotro as a casual friendly MMORPG and with F2P it opened the flood gates to the kiddies who want WoW but can't afford it. The problem with that approach was simple, the old paying customers left and the new free loaders didn't bring in enough cash. So Turbine went into cash shop overdrive trying to sell stuff like dyes which basically were free in the game proper and finally resorting to pure p2w driving away more old paying customers and getting only free loaders in return.

The game would have been far better if 9/10 of moria had been cut and instead the time had been spent on a nice non-gated raid and some outdoor alternative areas. It had the RP market locked up but wanted to attract the barren crowd instead. Well. They succeeded.

Radiance gear and legendary items destroyed LOTRO and it has never fully recovered.

Radiance gear was a horrible idea from the start. Most of the RAID people are gone so therefore they feel that it is not necessary to provide content for them anymore (instead of coming up with creative new RAIDs that will bring them back).

Legendary items would have been a great idea if you kept your special legendary item and leveled it up instead of throwing it away for a new one every five levels or so. Turbine really blew it on this one....in so many ways.

And as I have stated before the combat is just so very bad by today's standards and the characters look mostly just awful.

The game is in decline and yes the best days were the days of SOA by far. Moria was not bad, but I liked SOA better.