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LotR Online's Free-To-Play Switch Tripled Revenue
Last June, Turbine made the decision to switch Lord of the Rings Online from a subscription-based business model to a free-to-play model supported by microtransactions. In a podcast interview with Ten Ton Hammer, Turbine executives revealed that the switch has gone well for the company, with game revenues roughly tripling. The active player base has also grown significantly in that time. Executive Producer Kate Paiz said, "This really echoes a lot of what we've seen throughout the entertainment industry in general. It's really about letting players make their choices about how they play."
Yes, allowing people to actually pay (and play) when they want to, and not be forced to feel like they HAVE to get their money's worth with a subscription system, is proven to be better for both the gamer AND the company.
I quit a long time ago when it was a subscription plan, and the switch drew me back fairly quickly. I think I'll be subbing again as well. I fully appreciate Turbines move in this - the flexibility is very nice.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
Gross doesn't equal net. Operating costs went up substantially as well and most of the money they made was from an influx of players that came in and bought things in game, like quest packs and such... Most of which is permanent so they will not continue to purchase more unless they make more. They basically resold a game that had already been made to players that had already purchased it but no longer wanted to pay a monthly fee. Once those players have bought up all that content (again) they are done spending money unless Turbine generates a lot more content. I'll give them credit, their free to play model is the best one out yet... but they certainly didn't triple their profits.
I hosted a 300+ person MMO server from 2003 to 2005 on a home computer (not even a beefy one either). It never even came close to max load (peak was about 40% of CPU/RAM with almost all users on at once). They take less resources than you would think.
Unfortunately they still want a month fee to play MonsterPlay which is the only truly unique thing about LoTRO! Rest of the game is just a restricted Tolkien setting. Sadly I stopped playing because Turbine never did any support, expansions or did any effort for Monsterplay. Once a year on April fools day you got to chase chicken players and splat them which was vastly amusing the first time. What other game can you play as a real monster (4 legged warg, 6 legged spider, etc) against other people?
- Gronk!
Precisely, there's been a fair number of games in recent times taking that approach. The ones which allowed access to content that couldn't be gotten without donating tended to fair poorly. The problem being that either the content was pointless and trivial or it ended up breaking the game for people that couldn't afford to pay. And if they have to pay in order to get the content in order to keep up, you may as well require that people play.
Turbine does cash-shops properly. I play DDO, but I hear LotR is the same: none of the items you can buy for cash are particularly useful in the end-game. The Korean MMOs are different: cash and plenty of it is the only way to be competitive in the end game. But that turns off most US players, and the Turbine games don't use that model.
At least in DDO, most of the utility items you can buy for cash don't work in raids. The equippable items you can buy are nice when your first character is level 3, but are basically vendor trash items (still, when you're just starting off, paying 50 cents for a +2 sword or whatever can be attractive, but no one will be impressed by it). The main thing people buy is content, just piecemeal instead of subscription-based: a dungeon here, a playable race there.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It was never unprofitable.
That may be true, but if they were making a profit it was a tiny one. A good friend of mine works at Turbine, and things were very tight and not looking good for a long time. It sounds like they were very close to shutting down entirely when Warner Bros. bought them last year and brought a nice infusion of cash, which allowed them to try the free-to-play model that seems to be working out well (also allowed them to hire some new people and pay the bonuses and raises they had been going without for years).
You've never played turbines f2p model then. I haven't played lotro but I have played DDO since it went f2p, and turbine has a huge difference in style then many f2p models. You generally can reach max level without even the slightest issue as a f2p player, The equipment in the cash shop, is all easy to find vendor trash that I get 10 items equal or better to them in a 15 minute dungeon run at level 9. The only major thing in the cash shop is extra instances that you can run. Essentially for $3-$7 you get permanant access to newer dungeons etc... Basically gives you more variety if you are playing a ton of characters. On top of that, you earn cash shop money for just running the game, so if there is one location you really want to get to, but didn't want to buy from the cash shop to get it, you can earn it instead. Assuming the Kid with the unlimmited credit card who spends $500 a month, going against say me who spends $15 every 2-3 months when something I want is on sale, my character is just as powerful as theirs are, there is no clear and obvious way to tell even in intense gameplay if someone spends a ton in the cash shop, short of maybe there armor is shiner (armor appearance kits, we'd still most likely be wearing equivalent gear but theirs might be dyed to look the way they want it)
That may be true, but if they were making a profit it was a tiny one. A good friend of mine works at Turbine, and things were very tight and not looking good for a long time. It sounds like they were very close to shutting down entirely when Warner Bros. bought them last year and brought a nice infusion of cash, which allowed them to try the free-to-play model that seems to be working out well (also allowed them to hire some new people and pay the bonuses and raises they had been going without for years)
The DDO switch to free-to-play happened well before the Warner buyout, and the profitability shown by that change is, I suspect, one of the things that made Warner think they were a good acquisition. The LotRO switch to F2P was just a follow-up, with the hopes that it would prove as profitable as the DDO switch had been.
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
What I'd be curious about is the extent to which this has changed player demographics.
Back when I was playing LotRO, one of the primary attractions was that the average player was several years older than on WoW and similar subscription-based MMOs (something in the early 30's, according to Turbine folks at Austin GDC). This had a significant effect: a whole lot less of the trash-talking and harassment that tends to come with younger playerbases. Free-to-play games such as Runescape tend to attract younger people (primarily for economic reasons), but with that comes more behavioral problems.
Can folks who have been through the change tell me whether the free-to-play model has brought a change in the "character" of the playerbase? I might want to come back, but not if the primary attraction (a serious, literary playerbase who are there for the backstory and setting) is now a "u r teh g@y" pit.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Check out the EVE Dev Blogs for extremely detailed information on users, blades, racks, nodes, etc. They have some excellent data on how they balance users on a blade and how the action happening within drastically affects each blade.
Missile Module Impact pt 1
Missile Module Impact pt 2
Fixing the Lag Blog Series
Lots of really interesting in depth information about how the code works, the tools they use for finding problems within the code, how their servers are configured, etc. Great read from a technical point of view
LotRO is primarily a subscription based game still. That's what Turbine wants most players to be I think. But it has two other options: the completely free-to-play players, and the player that spends some money to buy just what they want. Subscription gives you everything you need and nothing vital is left out that you would need to spend extra money on, but you do get some points each month that you can spend on fluff if you want. The completely free-to-play is mostly an extended free trial. You can slowly earn points as a free player and try to do the full game for free, but it gets more and more inconvenient over time (you can level up to max level and can go anywhere, but you don't have most of the quests unless you spend points to purchase them). If you spend any money at all (or used to subscribe) then you can become a middle-ground premium player, with fewer restrictions than a free player.