LotRO for Free? Three tiers for Elven Players under the sky …

So evidently folks are all a-twitter (and a-Twitter) about the announcement by Turbine that they are changing the payment model.

Effectively, it’s a Wizards 101 style of subscription added to the existing model.  There are now three tiers of play — Free, Premium, and VIP. These are described in the table copied at the end of the post.

Free is pretty straightforward.

Anyone can join the game for free when LOTRO Free-to-Play is available. To get started, simply download the game for free at www.lotro.com. No payment or credit card is required.

Premium …

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.

Are you a former subscriber to LOTRO? Did you purchase and play the game in the past but never subscribed? In either case, you are automatically upgraded to Premium status when you come back to play.

And VIP …

For a monthly fee, the VIP program offers the best value and the most options for players who like the convenience of having unlimited access to all game content and features. VIP players also receive 500 Turbine Points per month and exclusive benefits like priority access to servers, 5 character slots per server, a 20-slot wardrobe for cosmetic items, full customer service, and much more! You can upgrade to VIP at any time by visiting https://myaccount.turbine.com once LOTRO Free-to-Play is available. If you are already a subscriber, just maintain your active subscription to be automatically upgraded to VIP!

In other words, if you’re currently a subscriber, you end up with having VIP status, meaning you get access to pretty much everything.  If you’re Lifetime subscriber, you’re a Lifetime VIPer.

This all goes live this fall.

So, this all sounds pretty straightforward.  Current subscribers see no apparent change (I’m not clear enough on the current subscriptions to know all the details, but VIP looks pretty in-line with what I recall).  But for occasional or casual players, or former players who maybe just want to re-dabble, there’s now an avenue for them to do so. And micro-transactions should mean a better revenue stream for Turbine, which can only be good for the game, right? Indeed, Free-to-Play / microtransaction model actually seems to increase regular subscriptions (via Doyce).

Avo IMed that this has a lot of LotRO people crying “DOOOOOOOOOOM!”  Per the above article, some thoughts:

The big fear is that this will somehow ‘ruin’ the game by doing one of two things. First, it could break the game mechanically a la SWG’s NGE. This comparison was actually brought up over there, but I think it’s fantastically unlikely. Nothing in the announcement or in the existing model that Turbine is already using implies that sweeping changes will be made to the underlying mechanics, and it’s hard to see why Turbine would think such a thing desirable with what’s already one of the top games in the market (assuming WoW to be an aberrant exception, which it is.)

The other feared outcome is that the move to FTP will result in a large influx of additional players, presumably increasing the asshat factor. This is more likely than an NGE-type catastrophe. It’s possible, but I think any such effect is likely to be mitigated by LotRO’s nature – LotRO is a slow-boiling, casual-friendly game, and asshats aren’t likely to stay long.

I really don’t see this the latter is an issue.  If the early, heady, startup days of the game survived with higher crowds, I don’t see it being brought down by this. The “asshats” aren’t going to join an “old” game. There will likely be more noobs, but that should be considered a good thing.

Even at the VIP level, it does look like there will be more microtransactions, which is the sort of fiddly stuff I dislike in such a model.  But overall, I think this is positive for LotRO.  And it certainly makes it more likely that, at such time as we choose to return to it — it will be there for us to return to.

Below: the detailed table of “what you get at different levels”: