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Free to play or just another way of saying Demo or Trial? My review.
fistorm
Member UncommonPosts: 868
I decided I would look into this free to play thing and what they are offering, as I have played for quite a few years and know what its like to level up normally as a paying player. I figured if its free why not check it out. I'm shocked at what I found out, things that are going to be huge disapointments for people who decide to play for free, and here are the biggest disapointments right here:
1. 1 character slot / server. If you ever try your hand at crafting, you'll find out very quickly that you will need mules to store stuff on. Your definatly going to need moria to get the two extra character slots if your thinking of saving stuff.
2. 3 inventory bags. Your already fighting to stay on top of your inventory with five as a member, and now your really going to have to sell things, your probably more then likely going to have to choose which quest rewards you really really want to keep and which ones to toss. You may not want to start crafting till you have more bags and mules.
3. 2 Gold limit. This is perhaps one of the worst damaging gameplay thing to have happen to you. You can't even buy your mount at 35 for 2g. Your going to have to purchase a higher limit definatly if your thinking about even having a horse, and most gear thats really nice is going to cost you well over 2g each. This is going to probably be the biggest disapointment ever for any free player.
4. Limited Chat, Auction, Mail.
Chat - This is probably going to be unbearable. If your chat is limited and you cannot enter a global chat channel, it is going to be 100x harder to get a group then it was before, If you cannot give tells, your not going to get a party period. Im not sure what the limit on chat is going to be but these two things are going to destroy your chance to get a group to run something with.
Auction - Youll probably be able to live with this if your able to get someone to craft you gear, instead of going through the auction. Like I said earlier buying gear thats really good is going to be out of the question with a 2g cap on yourself.
Mail - Who cares, most of the mail you get will be spam from goldsellers anyways.
5. 1-2 trait slots of one type. This is going to kill your gameplay and perhaps makes this freeplay more of a demo then an actual game. Some builds require 5 of same type of trait to give you really great bonus's that will make your character worth fellowshiping with. Without the ability to build a trait set of 5, you will probably get you killed more times then not on instance runs. This will be a must purchase if your playing for free and I wouldnt be supprised if some fellowships try to avoid you if you don't have all type slots opened up.
My Conclusion -
Could you play like this and still progress normaly without any purchases? The answer for me would have to be no, I do not see how it is possible for people running around with only 2 gold, trying to fight mobs with only two trait types and never getting parties because of limited chat could progress normally without wanting to quit because of it. it would make the free play nothing more then a demo or trial in my eyes. Me as a vetren player would not even return to the game to even attempt playing at freeplay because of those restrictions.
While expansions are nice enough to let you progress higher, it should also include a lift on the restrictions I have also pointed out, as you level up.
* Purchasers of the Mines of Moria™ expansion get access to the Mines of Moria region and content, premium classes (Rune-Keeper and Warden), legendary items feature, Tier 6 crafting feature, 2 extra character slots and a level cap of 60. Purchasers of the Siege of Mirkwood™ expansion get access to the Siege of Mirkwood region and content, a level cap of 65 and the Siege of Mirkwood skirmishes.
Comments
ALL free to play games are like this. So what. If you want to do more, you will need to spend money. Why do you think people hate free to play so much? A heck of alot more went into creating this game than went into 4 story (the ftp game thats currently advertised on this page). If you pay you get more, just like all free to play games. They are trying to suck you in with free to play. Thats why its free.
Which is why the best deal is either being a lifetime member already, or paying the subscription (which will be a bit cheaper than it currently is). It may not be perfect, especially if you loathe cash shops and such, but the subscription option is the best choice that they have available (other than lifetime accounts, of course).
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
@OP:
I'll preface this by stating that I hate the F2P business model (not just Turbine's, but all of the #$%@^&;$ things). The previous poster was correct when they said that all F2Ps are generally like this, the only difference is that LotRO is more upfront on what your limits are instead of just gating loot drop percentages and experience points behind the scenes, then manipulating them downward when people progress too fast. You know exactly what your limits are, and you know exactly how much it will cost to get around them (though, we have no idea how far down the rabbit hole the consumable trade will eventually take us, like in most F2Ps).
Things to be aware of:
You can level 1-50 (the SoA cap) via mob grinding with no problem. You'll also be able to craft your own armor or weapons to the cap. Back in the early stages of the game, when group-only quests in Angmar were the only high-end content available, I leveled purely on mobgrinding from 48-50). Will it be as fast or fun as questing? No. Will leveling up in any other F2P game be as fast and fun if you don't buy experience boosters with cash? No.
The second you buy anything in the store, you're automatically (and permanently) upgraded from Free Player to Premium Player. "You are automatically upgraded from Free player to Premium player status with your first purchase of Turbine Points in the LOTRO Store. LOTRO grants all Premium players 2 extra character slots, extends the maximum amount of gold you can carry from 2 gold to 5 gold, and provides you with a higher login priority, more mail and chat options, full access to all of LOTRO's Community features, and 30 days of full customer service from the time of your last purchase." So, as you suggested, just making a purchase raises many of the caps, even if that purchase is only $5.00.
If you've ever subscribed in the past, if you've ever purchased an expansion, if you ever subscribe in the future, you'll never be lower than a Premium account, even if you don't maintain that subscription.
Regarding chat and auction limits: "Free players can send in-game mail less frequently than Premium players and VIPs. Free players can use in-game chat but cannot send more than one tell every 5 seconds. Free players can bid and buyout auctions in the Auction House but cannot post items. These restrictions can be removed at any time in the LOTRO Store by purchasing the corresponding items."
I have no idea where this idea comes from that free-to-play games are really free. They are not now, nor have they ever been. They let you play them at the minimum possible level (huge grind, low drops, limited gear), then charge you smaller individual prices to get larger overall sums from you for the "full product." The whole point of the model was originally to get around the piracy issues in Asia by giving the client away and charging for things only the publisher could control, but it moved beyond that years and years ago.
The point has never, ever been to spend millions making games that hundreds of thousands of people play without paying a cent; that way lies bankruptcy. You snare the ones that will pay (by giving obvious benefits and status to those who do), you drive away the ones that won't (by making free play exponentially more frustrating and less rewarding the deeper into the game you go); that way lies huge financial gains. Free-to-Play isn't a "gift" given to the players, it's a tactic designed by astute businessmen adept at marketing it as a gift given to players.
LotRO's model does limit you, but the longest, hardest road to the top of the mountain is still available.
You get a character, and that character can be any class or race from the original game.
You can level that character all the way to the cap in the original game (the same cap subscribers who haven't purchased expansions have).
That character can craft and harvest all the way to the cap in the original game.
That character can do all of the epics from the original game (the main feature for most LotRO players, subscriber or otherwise).
You get some gold (enough to buy basic gear on the auction house).
You get some inventory (enough to hold potions, extra weapons and a bit of loot).
You get some bank space (RoM makes you rent bank space with cash- you can't even buy it).
You get some quests (enough to know whether or not you like the system).
If you spend money on anything at all in the game, anything, you get more character slots (now you can craft weapons and armor and potions with crafting alts), your gold cap is more than doubled, most chat limitations are lifted and you get access to customer support (the most expensive aspect of running any MMO). All of those chat limitations and gold caps you have a problem with are there to prevent gold-sellers/gold-spammers from using the F2P system to churn out expendable characters one after another. With a gold cap, they can't hold enough to sell; with chat limits, they can't spam channels directing you to their sites. The limits reduce their overall numbers by restricting full access to only those gold-sellers willing to subscribe or purchase upgrades, making them much easier to police.
Now, if a gamer is just not willing to spend any money at all to play, even a one-time fee of $5.00, then what exactly is it Turbine gains from giving them access to their servers? Word-of-mouth? They'll have plenty of that anyway. More bodies in the newbie zones? They'll have plenty of those, too, and hopefully some of those bodies will spend some money. It's all about the money, after all. If people are solely looking for something free to do during summer vacation, they're not going to find a satisfying experience online outside of Guild Wars (and even there, your bank space is severely limited without paying $9.99 per additional 20 slots). Gaming is a business, not philanthropy. Free doesn't exist1.
1The text-based exceptions: http://www.mudconnect.com/index.html
I gotta disagree with that first point. I have over 250 hours on my main character in the game, he's at 45.
Grinding to a level is really hard. You need to kill something like 500 creatures or so.
Where I am, you need 150,000 xp to level up. How much do you get a kill? 300 xp or so, and that's with rest experience doubling it.
Say 2 minutes a kill (which is perhaps being optimistic) and that's like 17 hours. Just to gain a level.
And non VIP members don't get rest XP (nor the ability to use destiny points to boost the rate).
OTOH, if you do skirmishes, that's a help. Like 4500 for doing it sucessfully, plus 50 monster kills.
But then again, in either case, you need to be (at least) slightly autistic to be able to do repetitive things over and over and over and over. Then again, many MMORPGers seem to be.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
Oh, absolutely, it's a mind-numbing bore, but it's a mind-numbing bore that's completely within the realm of possibility. That's how most F2Ps operate, and it's why experience boosters sell so well. In this case, there aren't any experience boosters [yet], but they charge for the ability to get rest experience, access to quests, and other such means to speed the process up. It stinks, but it's not unusual at all for the general business model. If anything, it's less of a rip-off because the things you're buying are permanent and account-wide, rather than consumable +xp potions or tokens.
Not really. Many of the f2p I've tried didn't limit your character slot to only 1, didn't limit your gold or chat.
This thread make me laugh. Another great game goes f2p and people still find things to gripe about. Amazing....
This game has been around for three years, anyone who was going to play this game has or is playing it. They have done several free trials and "come back weekends" which eveidently didnt bring the interest in the game they hoped for. It remains to be seen if making it "free" will get people who would'nt pay to play it to spend money on the game. People are begging for beta keys for a game that was released 3 years ago. My though is that if something isnt worth paying for it probably isnt worth much at all. But then, some people will take anything if its free. I agree that it is a great game, but it didnt get that way being F2P.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
Someone said the same thing about DDO. 2 million new users and 500% profit later that person was proven to be dead wrong. Also it look like according to this chart LOTRO was doing just fine but they saw how successful DDO was and wanted to move to their hybrid model.
Sorry for the big image.
In America I have bad teeth. If I lived in England my teeth would be perfect.
Looks like LOTRO had some pretty healthy numbers to make a F2P move instead of creating content to keep or attract subs while DDO was dead shortly after launch and that is the difference. Any LOTRO numbers after the F2P launch can be considered irrelevant as it will not mean anything in terms of income. 10 million people not paying or spending in the CS means nothing. As for the DDO profit, a 500% increase of profit in a dead game sounds huge but in reality 500% of nothing is still nothing. And no im not saying DDO made nothing before the F2P model just that for a game barely making it financially a 500% profit increase is not real impressive. I really no longer have a dog in this fight as ive cancelled my sub. I doubt that we will ever hear how many paying subs left but. as one poster here said, Turbine will shout loudly about how huge their playbase is but , as said, playerbase size means nothing in a F2P game. Ive read many posts here about how SOE games survive do to one or two paying the bills for the entire line up. Well, Turbines bill payer has decided to go F2P. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. I doubt Warner Bros will stand for much of a loss before pulling the plug on something. That will be the real indicator.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
Most estimates had DDO at about 15k subs. The subs were around $10-$15 a month. Based on this we can get a high/low count of new income based on the 500% increase.
15k subs X $10 = $150,000 per month X 500% = $750,000 low count.
15k subs X $15 = $225,000 per month X 500% = $1,125,000 high count.
Your argument is based on flawed logic. A 500% increase in profit actually is pretty damn impressive.
In America I have bad teeth. If I lived in England my teeth would be perfect.
Of course it is. Are you a regular subscriber to the game or one of the millions of new found players since word of the move to F2P? I ask because I have never seen the kind of support for this game that im seeing now.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
Runescape, the owners are multi-millionaires, why?
player base numbers matter, even in a free to play game, because people spend money on it when you let them.
Runes of Magic, one of the highest populated F2P, and most professionally done in my estimate, makes millions a month.
Wizard101, 10 million subscribes, most of them spend money like water in a monsoon.
...the list does go on, but I won't. There is a Huge reason companies are going to the F2P model, it's called money.
There ya go, with Ruescape and ROM quality, what more can you ask for?
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
See this is the problem with press releases and how the information gets repeated on forums.
Wizard 101 doesn't have 10 million subscribers. They have had 10 million accounts created.
That doesn't mean 10 million have ever paid to play the game. That doesn't mean 10 million people are playing right now. For all we know the game could have be around 50k or 500k. Who knows, but even so Wizard 101 is a subscription based game now.
There is a difference between getting millions of people to try a game and getting those same people to pay a dime. Some games have success and some don't.
I'm not knocking free to play, but I think in the case of turbine is has more to do with their games being a flop (DDO) or losing subscribers (LOTRO) than anything else.
Most of the games I see making the transition to f2p model feel like they are doing it, because they are having trouble competing in the subscription based market.
ok, I should have used a different word, like accounts... but you see, even with 'just accounts' they are making money hand over fist and adding content.
nice troll, mr. I quit.
see? I can do it too.
strawman arguement. you know LotRO has more quality than either. Somehow it doesn't seem like the quality will go backwards, so the arguement is moot at best.
That's not exactly true.
The gear for quests is very good. As you get higher and can do skirmishes you can get tokents to trade in for gear as well. It might not be top of the line radiance gear but it's more than usuable.
Also, as with the ddo system, you do get turbine points for questing and one could eventually trade those in for extra trait slots.
So one can play this game completely free but it might take a little longer to get a few things. Can one craft without spending a dime? Probably not as per the reasons you stated.
But for the people who don't have a lot of time and just want to do some questing in the few hours they have, I don't see any reason why they can't just log in and have fun.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I wasn't trying to single you out, but rather point out how press releases of amigious or misleading information usually gets translated into massive success.
For all we know Wiz101 could be opperating at a loss or breaking even. Posting that they have had millions of people try the game doesn't mean they are making money hand over fist.
Wiz101 and FreeRealms have both recently broke the 10 million account marker. Yet Wiz 101 only has 20 or so servers last I saw and Free Realms has half of that. I don't know about Wiz101, but I know that FreeRealms is so small in playable landmass that it would be crushed if more than 1,000 players were online at one time. It isn't like these servers can house tens of thousands of players, let alone hundreds or millions in some cases.
Imagine if a p2p game like EQ2 (20 servers) or warhammer (10 servers) claimed that they were getting 500,000 to 1 million new players each month as these free to play games are claiming. The servers would explode. Just imagine what it would be like on your server if several thousand new players joined your sever every single day nonstop for a year. How many days would it take for your server to fill up until no more players could log in?
To me it sounds like the turnover rate and drop out rate is bigger than anything we have ever seen, which makes me question the sustainability of these high profile free to play games.
It has more quality at the momnet yes. But those of you who think resources will be spent on content and not cash shop items and way to make folks buy them are fooling yourselves.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
I don't understand why it's going F2P if its sub numbers stil beat AOC's. Actually what's harder for me to believe is why it has more subs than AOC period. I was a LoTR fan before I was anything else and I still wouldn't play this game. I didn't see anything special in the trial and it looks so horrible. Graphics are old old old and interface is amatuer.
And, you are basing this prediction off of what?
An official crystal ball? or...
Complete assumption based off of paranoia and hate?
I'm thinking it's based off of the latter.
Im basing this off what the Mirkwood "xpac" consists of and the the inclusion of a $20 adventure pack that you could buy as well. Both of these items are of the calibre you would find in a cash shop of a F2P game. Also if you look around a bit you can see a map of the upcoming area to be released later. About the same size as Mirkwood but I cant recall if there was any reference to an increase in level cap. If you think these are acceptable items then you should be very happy with the new model. Im not immature enough to hate something as trivial as a video game and as for the paranoia, I think after being lied to twice by Tubine paranoia is a bit of a stretch even for fan of F2P. I am curious as to how bad the grind will be in the next "xpac" and what the price of hte tomes to alleviate the grind. Im curious, but not curious enough to continue paying a sub for the privilage of seeing it first hand.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
as much as i am interested in trying out the game again (bought the box when first released) there are several things i don't like about the so called FTP
no monster play (from what i've read) in the "free" version
i would still have to purchase the expansions - definitely don't buy boxes (or downloads) for "free" to play games
definitely don't like running into closed doors and having to pony up points every time i turn around
yes, i have played the "free" version of DDO and purchased plenty of points for use in the store but i wasn't excluded quite so much as it seems is going to be the case in LOTRO
Turbine, and I suppose their new overlords Warner Brothers, saw a significant rise in revenue when they took DDO to their hybrid model. They are hoping that lightning will strike twice. Remember, businesses are in the business of making money. Publiclly traded companies are in the business of making money for thier investors and are driven to maximize revenues no matter what.
As far as the game itself, it's good and bad in my opinion. Not quite how I would have created it but I'm not a developer and will most likely never be. So I have no say.
Other than that, it's the only lord of the rings mmorpg in town so I enjoy it for what it is and ignore, for the most part, what it isn't.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo