Lord of the Rings Online announced today that people who pre-ordered would get a locked-down $9.99/month subscription fee (DAoC did this as well), or $199 for a lifetime subscription! That’s pretty impressive.
It gets better. As well as the usual pre-order stuff (access to the beta, a couple of unique items), if you pre-order your beta characters rolls over to the live server. How many times did I hear how much people would pay to take their WoW beta characters to the live servers (hint: we’d see a lot more dwarf mages). I would have played WoW at release if I could have brought my druid and mage to live.
It’s not the first game to do that (Nexus: Kingdom of the Winds, my first MMO, did this, and I just got an email yesterday that Dungeon Runners is doing the same), but the practice has been rare for MMOs of this scope. Combined with their Pay Once, Play Forever plan, though, that’s making me a little more excited about the title. I was planning on making Star Trek Online my next game after EQ2, but I may take a detour to check out LotR.
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Decided to take a look at the gameplay videos for LotRO on Youtube (and here’s a very nice one -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfAL5rvrYeg&NR).
It looks like Vanguard with an even more WoW-ish interface. As the player talks with NPCs, I appreciate ever more that in EQ2, the NPCs talk back with real voices. Watching that video was like living in a world where annoying bagpipe music makes it impossible to speak.
Is it true? No other MMO features NPCs that really talk to you? *Shudder* Excuse me for a minute while I go listen to Saruman… I mean, Lucan D’Lere… talk to me about the pleasures of Freeport life.