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LotRO, F2P and You *Update*
Rocketeer
Member UncommonPosts: 1,303
LotRO EU is Dead, Long life the LotRO Global Service.
Simply put, there no longer is a Codemasters EU service, instead everyone now plays on a newly unified service under Turbine in the US.
0.1 Migrate your Account from EU to US. https://transfer.lotro.com/
Im not kidding you, there is a Account Transfer Window and you do NOT want to miss this. This is a account transfer, not just a char transfer, CM is legally unable to share your account data with Turbine without your consent. Once this window closes in a couple of ?months? your old CM account will be lost forever, https://transfer.lotro.com/ is the site used to transfer your account. As always on the internet verify your on the correct site by checking the certificates the site holds and its encryption because this transfer does require you to enter your username and PW.
0.2 Servers stay as they are, apart from Landroval.
Official RP server before, official RP server after. Landroval got bumped up to a RP encouraged flag with no changes to its actual ruleset. The old EU RP servers from CM are now operating under Turbine as RP servers with the following ruleset that is in addition to the normal rules though it takes precedence over it on the RP servers(though not landroval, its only RP encouraged, these rules do not apply there).
0.3. Turbine will continue French and German native clients.
To make this more clear, everyone will be able to play on any server in either English, French or German. Same client, you just choose the language. The Servers though will keep their Language designators(EN, FR and DE), so no worry about accidentially rolling on a server full of germans talking gibberish at you.
0.4 CM boxes and GTCs are voided!
You know the drill, new publisher etc. The Turbine account system does NOT recognize the keys of anything sold by CM. Do not buy any leftover pieces bearing the CM logo in your local stores even if its cheap, it simply won't work. Also be careful of only sales or sites like ebay and make sure you buy things that are for the US servers.
Rev. 0.5
1. F2P, what does it mean incase of LotRO?
It means you get the gameclient as a free download at LotRO.com. The site checks your location via your IP and automatically tries to choose the right account/client for you, please verify you got the right one. It also means you can create an account for free and log into the game without being required to enter CC information or some other payment method. The European version is run by Codemasters, the US service by Turbine. CM have a multilingual client(English, French, German) and support. You can play on either or both, there is also a Russian, Korean, Japanese and Chinese site but i know nothing about them. Take lag due to distance into account when choosing where to play, though Europe to U.S. and vice versa is playable.
2. The Store.
Yes there is a ingame store. It uses a currency called Turbine Points, this currency can be bought via the usual means(CC, Paypal, C&B etc) or earned ingame by completing Deeds(around 5k TPs currently known to be earnable, per char). There is a wide variety of items offered, things like pretty and not so pretty cosmetic clothes, consumables from healing potions to one use items granting you rested XP etcpp. Most important though is that a huge pile of content in the game is sold via this store. The good news is that all content is a once per account sale, the bad news is that basicly all quests, instances and Deeds beyond the racial starting areas and Lonelands needs to be bought with points(as far as we know they are always combined in Questpacks, Skirmishes might be sold seperately).
To give you a rough idea, 1k points cost about 10-15$. An expansion costs between 1.5-2.3k points, a questpack for an area that always includes all quests and instances in that area(even raids) around 350-800. You earn between 3-15 TP per Deed. A normal Zone has between 100-245 TP worth of Deeds to do, instances will have less. Points through deeds get earned per character, but get into a account wide pool. Same Deeds on different chars still gives the full Points.
The store currently holds no High Quality gear that would usually be aquired in instances, the 3 relics(upgrades for your weapon) from a community poll that got recently added are a debated issue since they can be used for endgame, discussion about those starts at post 39 in this thread. Wether there are plans to add true endgame gear to the store remains to be see, it is however doubtful since Turbine is usign a store model revolving around content, consumables and convenience sales. Directly selling gear aquired in the content they sell would be shooting them in their own food since it would hurt both content and consumable sales.
3. Who gets what content?
3.1 Similarities - Everyone gets this/has to buy this
3.1.1 Character Slots
The base of charslots is 5 per server, it gets adjusted by MoM expansion(+2), Adventure Pack(+2) and Store bought slots(+1, up to 8x). So the maximum of characters per server would be 17 for VIP, 15 For Premium and 10 for Free players.
3.1.2 Storage
The base storage of your char is 5 Bags with 15 places each, Premium and Free players only get 3(upgradeable via TPs to base). You also get a bankvault with 30 spaces that can be upgraded 6 times with either ingame gold or TPs, the last two upgrades for a total of 8 are only available with TPs(150 space total). There is a option for a shared storage, its included with the Adventure Pack and has otherwise to be bought via the store. It has a base of 20 spaces which are accessible to all your characters on the server and can be upgraded multiple times via TPs(max 50 afaik).
Additionally the variaty of thrash loot has been decreased, and the stacksize increased.
3.1.3 Expansions and other Content
MoM - The Mines of Moria.
Full Expansion. Sold via ingame store or boxed in regular stores. Regular store version(complete edition) has 30 days of VIP access included. This gives access to Warden and Runekeeper classes, two more charslots, +10 levelmaximum, Legendary Items(LIs) aswell as several new zones and instances. Its a prerequisite for SoM.
SoM - Siege of Mirkwood
Smaller Expansion. Sold via ingame store. Gives access to a new zone, new instances, +5 levelmaximum, 6 new skirmishes and removes limits from Skirmish play.
Adventure pack
DLC. Deprecated afaik, sales before F2P are honored and grant shared storage + 2 charslots regardless of account status.
3.2 Account Types
Independent of the store there are three access levels which are called VIP, Premium and Free that have a huge influence about what you get and how much its going to cost you to see/do something. Your account go through some or all of these phases, however once premium or VIP you can never become a free player again.
Free - You successfully created an account without spending money
You get -3 base Charslots(2 total) and can access all Quests, Instances and Deeds in the racial starting zones plus Lonelands and you can play the entire Epic storyline without being forced to spend TP in the store. Content beyond that has to be bought by spendind TPs in the Store, but will be available accountwide forever. Major limits in regards to chatting up zones, sending tells to multiple people at the same time or using the auction house(buy only). Crafting, bagspace, max gold, traits and swift travel are restricted. Limit removals, charslots, bagspace and content can still be bought through earned TPs like a premium player. You do not get rested XP and can not do any form of Monsterplay. You also have the lowest priority in Server queues.
Notice: The act of buying TPs would make you premium. The spending of earned TPs however would not.
Premium - Your LotRO account was atleast once involved in earning Turbine/Codemasters money(at any point in time).
You get 2 base characterslots less(3 total, modified further as explained in 3.1.3). You have similar limits as a Free player, but they are usually less severe. Your priority in server queues is higher and you get customer support for 30 days following the purchase of TPs. The main difference between Free and Premium though is that the latter will have alot more TPs to spend getting what he wants, while a free player will have to ration his TPs in a way that improves his TP income(so he can get more content). Your quality of life can be increased greatly by spending as little as 10$ worth of TPs to get two zones to level in post starting zones.
EX VIP, Currently Premium
The act of becoming VIP removes any char limits like travel, gold, bag, bank or trait restrictions, these charlimits do NOT get reintroduced once you stop being VIP, they are however only removed for chars that have been created or logged in during your VIP time. And yes that means becoming VIP for one month is alot cheaper than removing the charlimits one by one in the store for every char.
VIP - Active monthly payment at Industry standard prices(i.e. around 10-15$ a month)
They get everything Subscribers get today, and will get things in the future todays Subscribers would have gotten if they hadnt become VIPs due to the F2P release. Read that again and take it literally. That means they generally do not have to buy Quests, Deeds or Instances in the Store, but it does not include any of the content or perks of the expansions. It does include a 500 turbine points per month stipend though. They are able to participate in Monsterplay on both sides. This is basicly P2P as we know and love(or hate) it.
Notice: Lifetimers are always and permanently VIPs.
3.3 Value
Premium and VIP payments run contraire to each other. The more content you buy, the less value you get for your VIP subscription. In an extreme case you would pay 15$ each month just for two character slots, rested XP, swift travel and monsterplay. The opposite extreme would be someone being a VIP for years and then dropping to a premium status with huge content holes(Moria and Mirkwood will likely at some point become medium level content, the latest zone enedwaith is already not included in them).
So do your math if you want to safe money.
4. Random Tipps, Tricks and Info
You can enter Zones without buying them, just not do Quests, Deeds or Instances in them. This does also apply to Zones contained in the Expansions.
Free/Premium membership goes from slightly better than Free to almost as good as Lifetime, the more time you spend twinking(or the slower you level) the more time you will be able to play without paying. Also if you level 3-5 chars through a zone the deeds can make the zone pay for itself(notice the clever amount of chars required, free players get 2 on a single server).
TPs are account wide. If a Free player is persistant enough he can get all content ingame aswell as remove all gameplay related disadvantages by farming Deeds on multiple servers(Server priority, chat & auction limitations are afaik hardcoded into being not a VIP). If you think Lineage was not that bad you might find it acceptable.
Turbine wants to bring Monsterplay as a Store item to premium and free players in the future.
Expansions are particularly good bang for your buck especially storebought MoM boxes.
Comments
Nice post. Deserves a sticky.
I recently was looking for this info elsewhere and had to search for it. When I did find it it was confusing but I eventually got it. Nice job throwing it all together in an easy to understand way!
Thanks for the helpful post. Would you be able to expand a bit upon this:
If your willing to pay either go VIP or Premium, dont go 6 month VIP and then decide to rebuy all the stuff you had access to the last 6 months because you dropped your sub but want to level a twink. Both is economically viable in different circumstances, use common sense and plan ahead.
I don't quite understand what you're trying to say there.
Great post!
So what about the ones that bought the 9,99$ complete pack offer , played the one month included and then quit?Where do we fall to?
Excellent post! Thanks for putting this together for us.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Very good list and helpful to those who may be interested in trying the game out. Good job.
Just a quick correction though on your Tips portion. Free players don't become Premium when they spend bought points, they become Premium when they buy the points. Whether or not they use those points after buying them doesn't affect what type of account they have. This way they gain the benefits of Premium immediately after buying points even if they save the points for later when a good sale comes along on the items they want. You can also add in there somewhere that Premium status is permanent...you can upgrade Premium to VIP and cancelling VIP reverts you back to Premium but you will never be downgraded from Premium back to Free status. Thus, spending even the cheapest amount of real money on a one-time purchase of the smallest Point bundle is a very good deal for any Free player due to the permanent benefits you listed in your post.
@Phelim - What the stuff you quoted means is that, in the long term, it's cheaper to pick which type of account you want (VIP or Premium) and stick with it. VIP is like a monthly rental of all content while premium is permanently buying the content. If you rent (subscribe) for 6 months and then drop your sub and go premium and buy the content you're basically paying twice for the same content. Same thing if you're buying the content as Premium and then become a subscriber where you get that content for free as part of the subscription. Basically the more you spend as one account type the more you "wasted" by swapping over to another. So, look into the benefits of each and decide early which way you wanna go. Of course if money is not an issue for you then you can swap back and forth between VIP and Premium whenever you want and it's no problem.
Since you paid Turbine money in the past your account will automatically be Premium. If you decide to resubscribe then you will be VIP for as long as you maintain the subscription.
So, I've been trying to figure something out. My fiancee and I both played some time ago, so we'd be elidgible for premium status right away. We only own the original content. Should we buy the expansions right away or will we be buying all that content piecemeal through the in-game store anyway? I've having trouble collating all the info available to figure this out. Thanks.
Well....depends on your playstyle, and how much of a financial committment you're willing to make
You can still find some Mines of Moria (although they're getting rare now) physical boxes around - usually for under $10. Upgrading with one of those would give you 30 days VIP status by way of the 30 free days of play time. Upgrading through the in-game store only gives your account access to the Moria areas and benefits (level cap raise, etc)
You can also go through the Turbine store and get Lotro complete (base game and both expacs) for 29.99 (digital download). It also includes 30 free days (so - 30 days of VIP again)
If you're both fairly serious about playing - I'd recommend the upgrade now route - and if you're going to be playing alot (and/or many alts) subbing for at least a while (multi month plans are currently available 3,6,9,12 for 10$ per month) is worth it. On the other hand, if you're both very casual and/or not willing to sub - then just go with the 'pay as you play' route.
FWIW, I got in the beta...and 3 days later purchased the 30$ upgrade from the Turbine Store and subscribed
Personally i would try to aquire MoM, and if your in europe the Adventurer pack(because its way cheaper in the EU). I wouldnt worry about mirkwood much as even MoM alone has almost enough TPs in deeds to earn Mirkwood. If you account for the 500 TP that 30 days of VIP would get you your basically safe.
I wouldnt try to fast level through the content though in the 30 day VIP time, play normally and buy strategically placed Questpacks like lonelands for 350 TPs. Lonelands alone basically extends your levelrange to level ~30-35, and its for all your chars and for as long as the game runs. If you then add trollshaws you could get to about level ~45, which would only leave you with a couple levels till you could enter MoM. Which would give you a very solid path for aslong as you want it. Later on you could then start to flesh it out by getting other zones(for instances and alts etc).
Really good guide! Seems like a bit complicated to figure out, maybe Turbine should add a 5 euro/month sub to get the levels done for saving players..that would make some runescapers scratch their head as they payt the same for their browser game hahaha.
Have a nice update, apparently the Monsterplay situation got clarified:
Free players can't do it.
Premium players can participate as Free people(the good guys)
VIPs can participate as Free People or Creeps.
Source
Edit: Or not, apparently you cant trust those codies, waiting for launch to check for myself and update the info.
Yeah, the patch notes posted this morning specifically say only VIPs can participate on either side in PvMP.
as someone who has never played but realizes this might be a good time to jump in (new servers, nothing good coming out etc..)
i was thinking of buying the 30 dollar game+expansion packs.
my questions:
1. will there still be things i have to pay for? other than a monthly fee i mean.
2. i read about premium classes, would they be available to someone who purchases the $30 game?
I dont know what you mean with the 30 dollar game(there have been so many offers and deals ...). If you spend 30$ you should get the base game, mines of moria and siege of mirkwood + 30 days gametime. Im going to assume you meant such a pack, since you used plural when talking about expansions.
About your questions:
1. There will be nothing you have to pay for to play or experience the game if you subscribe. There will however still be things in the store that might interest you. Though with its current sluggishness and bad describtions(no preview of cosmetic clothes etc) i have a hard time seeing anyone browsing around the store and finding interesting stuff. But no, you wont suddenly stand in the wilderness/some instance and suddenly say "dang i have to go to the store to buy xy", you can safely ignore the store and it wont ever come around to bite you.
2. Its misleading to call them premium classes imho, they are very simply put just classes that got introduced with moria. Assuch you need moria for them, if you have that than you will have access to the classes no questions asked.
I have quick question here regarding F2P and buying the original game and MoM. If I start F2P and decide to buy base game and/or MoM expansion, what do I get in the game? Of course, I don't plan to turn into a subscriber, I just want to know what registering this will offer me.
For the record, LotRO is NOT F2P in Europe at the moment. On the 8th of September, it was announced that the launch of V3B2 was going to be delayed. There is no hard date for when the patch will go live, but Codemaster CMs have said they are aiming for a late September release.
Nice post. The OP mentions under account types that there are limitations on things like max gold and crafting based on account type. Is there a resource somewhere that lists exactly what the options and restrictions are for each account type on all game aspects?
The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
~Omar Khayyam
for F2P gold max is set to 5 gold , and crafting can not pass lvl 3 mastery . ive seen no site yet listing all the restrictions only sites listing the perks to each account type. free to play is also restricted to useing there gold only in AH sales and npc sales they can not player from player trade.
ill go re scan now maybe some where thres a list of restrictions i missed.
5 gold max?? Wow, forget about mounts. Where did you find that info? I couldn't find anything on the official site that spelled things out. Tho I guess they figure if they keep folks unclear, some might ante up some cash "just to be sure" they get what ever it is they want.
The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
~Omar Khayyam
You can't play Lotro 100% for free.
You will need to sink cash into the shop or become a VIP.
I plan on spending about 60 bucks total which is still way cheaper than any p2p mmo that I play.
Be smart, ask on the forums what zones/hub/skirmishes you should buy when leveling and then buy the xpacs, grab character slots, bags, AH slots and other stuff.
If your not willing to pay there are plently F2p games that will let you grind for life to get half way to cap for free.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Actually, mounts are only 200 and 500 silver now. The lower cost is the "basic" slow mount while the other is the standard mount that use to be a few gold. You can "purchase" the riding ability at level 5 OR wait till level 20 and do the race course quest. This is actually spelled out in a quest you get early on (around level 5) in the quest instructions that are placed in your inventory. And yes, so-called f2p'ers are capped in the amount of gold they can have at around 5. I believe that is in the f2p faq.
Let's party like it is 1863!
The only reason to buy the base game is 30 days VIP, the reason to buy MoM is 2 new classes, charslots, +10 levelcap and the content it offers. Best idea is usually to buy a complete edition of moria that combines the advantage of both.
Also goldcap for free players is afaik 2 gold, 5 gold it is for premiums i think. Ironically i cant check this stuff on my account yet since im still VIP, im waiting for me to drop to premium so i can actually check those things.
Edit: The problem isn't actually the gold cap. The problem for F2P are the anti goldfarmer limits active on these accounts. For example you can't sell items in the AH, yet you can also not sell items via face to face in direct trade either.
Thanks, all I wanted to know. Shame they kinda gimped F2P audience with quest packs so much, but what can you do.
It's not all bad. Every questpack is an investment now unlike your subscription. If you fall on hard times money wise you will keep everything you aquired, without having to argue with your better half why those 15$ a month are essential for your quality of life.