Dungeons & Dragons Online started fairly strong for a new MMO, peaked early and fell into obscurity. People complained, loudly, that for a game built on the Guild Wars model (multiplayer hubs leading to solo/instanced content), they charged a bit much. Guild Wars, its inevitable competition, was after all free to play once you bought the box. Guild Wars also offered single player party play, a fairly unique combat mechanic and a strong RPG plot to take players through the story.
DDO, by contrast, had short story arcs called modules which had to be repeated ad infinitum in order to progress. Solo play was difficult for most classes. Turbine stepped up and fixed the flaws. They introduced many more modules, eased solo play with the addition of hirelings, and in the end, made a subscription optional. Similar to KingsIsle’s Wizard101, players could purchase modules to add options to their gameplay.
It worked wonders. DDO was on everyone’s mind; the population exploded with F2P players, and a good number of them opted to become subscribers and get everything for one monthly price. Nearly everyone would take advantage of the DDO Store.
Had Turbine caught lightning in a bottle, or was this the kind of lightning that never strikes twice?
Facing similar drops in subscribers, Mythic’s Warhammer Online and Funcom’s Age of Conan opened up their new player experiences to new players forever, no time limit. Players were encouraged to download the game for free and give it a try. The games are now both modest successes, having never reached the depths to which DDO had sunk.
DDOs move to “Freemium” changed the game for every “B” subscription MMO. Publishers had to ask themselves if Freemium could turn their game around. Someone would almost certainly point out that Freemium is something World of Warcraft simply would never copy. ANY game could do Freemium better than WoW. By shifting into a new revenue model, the WoW behemoth suddenly wasn’t nearly so scary.
Bloggers fingered SOE and Cryptic as the next companies to flirt with “freemium”. SOE had already published one MMO, Free Realms, with that very model. Cryptic’s heavily instanced, zone-based games, Star Trek Online and Champions Online, would be a good match for the DDO model.
Turbine’s announcement that The Lord of the Rings Online would follow Dungeons & Dragons Online into freemium territory was a bolt from the blue. LotRO was not considered a failure by any means. XFire ranks it as the #4 subscription MMO in its list, behind only WoW, Aion and EVE Online. Like those others, LotRO is an open world game.
Unlike DDO, though, LotRO does not stray far from the MMO norm. Where DDO only really competed with the fairly old Guild Wars, LotRO’s move will place it against such F2P competitors as Runes of Magic and Allods Online, lush F2P games that were designed specifically around free, open game play with very optional cash shops. LotRO by contrast would turn most of the world silent, unless you buy quest packs — only the starter area quests are given for free.
Since it is difficult to level in LotRO without doing quests, this essentially requires players to buy the quest packs. At least, anyway, until they can do skirmishes in their 30s.
Unlike DDO, LotRO was always considered a “AAA” game, made with the highest production values and very popular. With many free weekends and other promotions, it’s likely that almost everyone who had an interest in the game, also had a chance to play it. DDO’s star fell too quickly for that.
Here’s the crux. The game is still pretty much the same as it ever was. If you’re still a subscriber, nothing changes for you. If you’d subscribed but let it lapse, you’ll still find the game as you left it. If you tried it and didn’t care for it, nothing will have changed enough to change your mind.
The Lord of the Rings Online is, I feel, too POPULAR to make the easy switch to “freemium”. It might have worked for Tabula Rasa, might still work for Pirates of the Burning Sea, but LotRO has had its time in the sun, and if its fires are now cooling, I can’t see the move to freemium as anything but a very risky move.
Just because I’m weird like that, I went to XFire and downloaded stats for a few MMOs. Now, I want to say first off that I don’t trust XFire ranks AT ALL, and I think any projections of XFire users into total subscription numbers is just fantasy. However, these are not the only stats tracked by XFire. They also track the number of XFire users that have played a certain game each day, and the total number of minutes XFire users spent in that game.
I believe we can assume that XFire users are typical players of their games — they wouldn’t spend significantly more or less time in the game than a non-XFire user. So, dividing the number of minutes played each day by the number of players each day, should give a fairly accurate idea of the time an average player spends in game per gaming session. Click on the spreadsheet image above or check out the Google Docs version. I’ve sorted the games not by XFire rank, but by the minutes/user.
The top half of the list is entirely subscription games. The three “freemium” games on the list — DDO, Wizard101 and Runescape — seem to have their success based on quick bites of adventure, and not the long, drawn out gaming sessions common to the more traditional MMOs. (I would be more thrilled with EverQuest’s appearance at the top of the list if they didn’t encourage people to stay logged in 24/7).
We can imagine that if World of Warcraft were suddenly to go freemium, that most everyone would choose to go that route — and that those players who let their subscriptions lapse between patches and expansions would instead check in occasionally and perhaps end up playing — and paying — more.
Turbine’s gamble will be proving that a “AAA” game can make up the potential loss of subscribers with revenue from thousands more free players using the cash shop.
I wish Turbine well, but DDO and LotRO are so different that I just can’t see DDO’s success saying anything at all about LotRO’s.
12 thoughts on “Free2Play: The Remedy for All Ills”
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Missed you in DDO the other night. Or, did you roll a new character?
One minor point: You can’t repeat quests in DDO forever. There is eventually a pretty sizable xp penalty for running the same quest again and again. But, your point remains.
I’ll also disagree that DDO wasn’t intended to be a triple-A title. Both of the licenses were big and Turbine bragged about them a lot during the announcements. It just fell out that LotRO was a bit more successful than DDO, so it got more attention post-launch.
While I agree that Turbine can’t just clone the existing business model and slap it into LotRO and expect miracles, I think Turbine’s experience with DDO will make the process go smoother. They have insight into what works and what doesn’t. Hopefully we won’t get anything like the level sigils like they had in DDO that got eliminated quickly. I do think that trying to sell quests in an area does seem a bit… strange in the context of LotRO.
On the flipside, I think this could generate a lot more interest. As you said, LotRO is getting a bit long in the tooth here. This might give some people an excuse to go check it out again. It might also encourage some people who tried the game in beta or at launch to give it another go. I’ve read a lot of people saying that the game “isn’t very good” based on their old experiences in articles talking about the game going to the new business model. Others point out that their information is outdated, so I suspect there will be some people interested in trying out the game once again.
Anyway, we’ll see. As I’ve said a few times before, I’m cautiously optimistic here. I plan to continue subscribing if the game keeps me interested. 🙂 I’m not expecting miracles, though.
That is a Tabula Rasa screenshot. How I miss that game.
I’m betting there are a lot of people like me, that tried LotRO (trial), thought it was an okay game, but not worth paying $15 a month. I always figured it would be an interesting game to explore and visit now and then, if its model was along the lines of Guild Wars, and that is what I gave as feedback to Turbine when the trial ended and I didn’t subscribe. I certainly like the setting, being a Tolkien fan since I was very young.
When news of the switch to a hybrid model was announced, I quickly ordered the collector’s edition of Mines of Moria (a steal at under $10). I’ve read through the manual (what there is of it) and am really looking forward to playing. Also, during the trial I only played the hunter class, which I wasn’t too thrilled with. I’m planning on using the included 30 days to try out all the classes and see what the community is like. While the game has a reputation for a great community, I hope the majority aren’t like some of the people posting on forums about “not wanting the riff raff casuals” to play in “their game”.
So I’ll automatically be a ‘Premium’ and have access to the main stuff through Mines of Moria, if I read the FAQ correctly. Depending on how much I play the game I might buy the quest packs (if they are priced right) and certainly will buy more expansions as I get to that level. Seems like a win-win to me, current subscribers and lifers get pretty much what they have now but with more players around (most that aren’t “riff raff”), while those of us that would enjoy the game but probably only play occasionally, can join in when we have the time, without feeling cheated by having to pay a full subscription we hardly use. Heck, if I have the free time and really get into the game I’ll pay for a month or so of VIP now and then as well! My money is on this being a success and it has made me even less inclined to play anything with a regular subscription. As a Guild Wars player I’ve always felt I got a lot more enjoyment for my money with it than with subscription games.
Times are changing, F2P (cash shop) games are getting better and better, and hybrid models are the future (Guild Wars 2 is certainly looking good). In fact they are often offering more innovative features and ideas, not to mention just plain gaming fun, than any of the subscription games recently released. While I do subscribe to two games (one of which is, horrors, Aion, which I actually like), I’m having more fun playing the F2P titles, most recently the rather quaint Dragon Oath (thank you Tipa for the review) and Battles of the Immortals (which is a “just gonna kill a few more monsters” kind of fun).
Very interesting. I found the users/day column to be especially interesting. Only 78 users play WoW, each for roughly 199 mins? I am a bit confused, maybe you can help me with that. But it shows a lot about playstyle. Fallen Earth seems to be consumed in 4 hours chunks, while GW is played only for a bit less than 3 hours. EQ players must be so old school hardcore, 6 hours and 24 minutes? WoW… erm wow.
I hope you are right that nothing changes for the subscriber of LOTRO. I am not so sure about that. The game itself will change to accomodate for a F2P playstyle, I can imagine more check points like the boat to Mirkwood, the gate to Moria, the dwarf at the dungeon entrance asking for turbine points. I hope these checkpoints don’t interrupt the landscape on the road to Mordor. Especially as Rohan is supposed to be a far and wide lush land. I personally also imagine it to be full of horses, but I guess that was never mentioned in the books.
Regarding quest packs: People won’t be able to make progress without them. Period. I did not play LOTRO that long ago that I no longer can recall how I made my XP and levelled up. Killing 1000 Wargs, most of them in the North Downs, did not really level me up. I really had to look for every quest from Evendim to Trollshaws to get out of the North Downs. -> they are a wonderful zone IMO, I think it is this total feeling of not making progress at all that kills it for people. Dunno if they revamped Lone Lands are now much better, could not test it with my max level char, but both Lone Lands and North Downs were or are LOTRO subscription killers. People will need all quests to progress.
Now I don’t know the price if people want to buy all of Eriador’s pre-Moria zones AND quests (as I said, without the quests you simply won’t get ahead, even if you spend a lot of time killing and grinding), but if anyone wants to play LOTRO later when it goes F2P:
Get at least “Shadows of Angmar” (LOTRO original) and Mines of Moria (the expansion), they are sold for cheap and I really doubt you will get all the zones and quests there for a lower price than the ~10 bucks both games cost right now.
I wonder if content will trickle down a little faster and more massive than it did up to now. I started playing LOTRO fairly late, so I had all of SoA and Moria. IT WAS A BLAST. Then I got fairly comfortable in Moria and the tacked on Lothlorien zone (people just wanted to see sunlight again after years…^^) till Mirkwood got released. A wonderful zone. High quality entertainment. But in the end it is only one zone about the size of the North Downs with very few minor instances and a raid tacked on. And actually people farm the Swordhall only and ignore the others, run the 6 man dungeon over and over for the random Symbol of Celebrimbor and the raid is intentionally hard and dragged out to stall people for quite a while. For quite a while, the Enedwaith/F2P is still far away.
I so hope levelling through the instanced “teleport me” SKIRMISH instances does not become the norm. “But Skirmishes are wonderful”. I thought so, too. I know how annoying it is to get into Moria to the “Turtle” or some of the dungeons and that it takes some time till all are together, unless a Hunter and a Captain go around and pick up people with their special travel powers for instance.
Skirmishes are wonderful to experience the story questlines with whatever group size you have or want. They will probably also revitalize the old raids many people have not seen yet – I still did not kill the most massive and still unique raid encounter in LOTRO yet, the dragon of Helegrod http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Helegrod
As instanced and rather easy to add content, disconnected from the world I can see F2P making this kind of playstyle more popular. But the beauty of Middle Earth lies in Middle Earth itself. The gorgeous LOTRO landscapes and travelling there. And I say this, someone who does not mind instances (Guild Wars fan forever! ;)) at all.
I wish LOTRO would take some inspiration from WoW. Running dungeons with people from different servers might have drawbacks, but it would allow me to play with people I can’t play with at the moment. Take Apocalyptica and Akhetaten on Twitter for instance, both huge LOTRO fans, and we are all on different servers. This is really sad.
I hope they produce more landmass and content for the overland world of Middle Earth, even if I have to buy it as questpack and if this kind of content is harder for Turbine to create and takes more effort. If they go more the Skirmish route they will totally alienate me and, at least in my book, totally lose out even against Guild Wars 1 which is not getting anything major anymore. Not to mention Guild Wars 2.
The 78 users for WoW is what XFire reported. The numbers are clearly wrong, and are yet another reason not to put much weight on XFire numbers. Also, the minutes/user seem wildly inflated to me. But these are the numbers we have.
Thanks for the mention 🙂
I read on another Blog that prior to the switch interested players should consider buying LOTRO and the expansion. You can pick them both up for under $20 (if I priced them correctly) and as Yarr pointed out doing so will automatically make you a Premium member when they go F2P.
Of course buying Cash Shop points also makes you a Premium member so one could just drop $5 in the cash shop (or whatever the minimum amount of points are) and get the upgrade that way.
After having become a lifetime subscriber to LoTRO shortly after they offered it, I was unimpressed when the email arrived telling me it was going free to play. The list of perks I get for having shelled out $200 in the past was… meh.
Egat wrote:
The list of perks I get for having shelled out $200 in the past was… meh.
I still don’t understand this attitude. Lifetime subscribers are basically still getting the same thing subscribers are going to get, but without the subscription. Pretty much what lifetime subscribers currently get. So, why the “meh”?
I’m quite interested in how the game will play for non-subscribers. Out of interest I think I’ll probably create a new ‘free’ account just to see how it works. I do agree that what has worked for DDO may not really work for LOTRO, and to ‘Psychochild’, I also do not understand the reaction of folks who have bought the lifetime sub, the reaction seems to suggest the non-subscribers are getting a better deal. Which obviously they are not.
@Chad – It might be that the lifetime sub is not so super special anymore either. It’s not that they are getting less but someone can drop a few bucks now and be premium along with the “lifers”. I’m guessing that is what bites some players. You make and early and lump sum commitment when it’s a bit of a risk to do so then someone can come later and be on equal footing without that risk and large one-time investment. That’s my guess.
@Saylah – not trying to be pedantic, but I was interested in what the difference between a VIP (as I understand it this is a life time sub) and a Premium player would be:
http://www.lotro.com/betasignup/vipchart.html
As I understand it the premium player can’t drop a few pennies and get the same treatment. I could be wrong… it does happen