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Numbers in for LOTRO F2P Conversion
Superman0X
Member RarePosts: 2,292
Turbine Exec Kate Paiz stated in the presentation at GDC Austin that LOTRO had doubled revenues, added a million new customers, and had 4x the amount of active players. She also stated that 53% of players had used microtransactions.
It looks like they have had a sucessful re-launch, now we have to wait a month and see how it lasts.
--Duplicate Post--
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Exatclty, Reach lvl 65 and see how long that lasts. Run Sammath Gul 20 times and still not see a Symbol of celebrimbor and on the 21st time roll against 5 other toons and still not win it. Comeing from a dedicated player since CB(but not any longer) LOTRO has turned into a solo rpg until lvl 58 which you run the Grand Stairs numorous times until you get your Moria Armor set. Since all the instances (books) up to lvl 60 have went solo, once new players hit the stagees to NEED a fellowship comes around, they fail because they are not used to fellowing up til now. The best thing I liked about lotro was the seeing how other classes handle different sitruations. But the new crowd does not see that. They jump in a fellowship and when things go wrong they drop group in the middle of a boss fight. Remember when it took 20 times to figure out an instance, Full wipe and went back at it? Well the new players dont get that privelage and I wont share it with them. they dont deserve it.
I will leave you with this... I made it to lvl 65 on my last toon (Rune Keeper) withought a single Fellowship skipping all conntent and instances in Moria and headed straight to Mirkwood at lvl 61.
For all you new players of LOTRO. Remember what I said above. Good Luck.
This doesn't sound even remotely like my experience with LOTRO.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
I am curious about how the community is doing in Landroval my old server. Has f2p had any impact I wonder .
Not real numbers, just marketing double-talk.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
Cheyane, my wife and I have played on Landroval for several years now and have done so through the F2P transition. Population continues to be strong and the influx of new players does not, in my experience, appear to have had any detrimental impact on play. RPing is still alive and strong, although the layering that is now used has been recognized as a feature that my impeded RPing to some degree. During my play times there are not terribly many players about, but seeing that both my wife and I are at higher level, that would be expected with the newbs. In starter areas the population is booming and yet there does not appear to be any technical or community problems developed from this as of yet.
Increased player population is an increased player population. If they're talking about 3-4 times the PCU (Peak Concurrent Users) it had before the hybrid F2P move, then that's what it is. Let it have been say 150k-200k players before, then that means there's 450k-600k afterwards. It's easy to do some easy tests by doing a head count on some servers, before the move a lot of them hovered around 1000 online at the same time, if it is 2-4k now, then it's fair to say that their numbers might be accurate.
Besides, players don't really care about the exact numbers as long as they have healthy populations on their server.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
1 new player is an "increased population".
I'm not telling people not to be happy that there's more people playing their game, I'm just pointing out that this particular announcement by WB/Turbine really is nothing but junk outside of "more people are playing".
Marketing double-speak and hyperbole like this from Turbine is why people were running around before F2P swearing LotRO was in the top 3 mmo games in the market when in actuality it wasn't even close.
And to be fair, they're not the only company/developer to use this tactic, they all do. I just think it's time people realize the difference between "marketing truth" and truth. Many players of mmos who have been around the block a few times do realize the difference, but a greater number don't.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
From all i have read layering kicks in with around 100 people, sometimes alot sooner but that was a confirmed bug and is already fixed i think.
Also this is not marketing talk, not at all. This is marketing talk/truth whatever. Things like a doubling of revenue literally means they could have alot more people working on content than before, which is desireable for them now since its directly tied to even more revenue(questpacks/expansions are among the most expansive and bestselling items in the store).
Also the info about playernumbers is interesting, we don't care how many of them are paying customers, for those of us worried about Turbines financial wellbeing thats already covered with the "doubling of revenue". What we care about is having people to interact with, and a greater population means a faster absolute growth due to word of mouth.
Also it helps to put things into perspective with the other info we have gotten, for example a new raidcluster early 2011 which will also see the death of radiance and a new expansion around summer. If they promise us to improve the housing system soon i might even become agitated
.
We have our weekly rp event called "Ales and Tales" I am a part of the running of it. We were doing the event with 40-60ish participants before F2P. this has jumped to 90-110 since. It is verging on too many at one event. Layering is a huge problem for this and other large events. Lots of hate for layering going on. Just left a charity event for sick kids going on in Bree. There is a TON of rp going on and not just the Prancing Pony bar talk. Landroval is much more active than it was thats for sure.
Breeland chat has deteriorated seriously, but its not so bad in other regions. I suspect the bulk of the intiial surge is now hitting Forchel, or Angmar and due to the Enidwaith expansion, there is a new burst of activity in Moria and areas nearby. Landroval is now not number 2 or 3 in size anymore. It struggles to be in the top ten, but the population has grown by about 400% according to the charts I watch.
http://lux-hdro.de/images/live/weekly-logins-us.png
That is marvelous news. I always enjoyed the rp stuff on Land. I think that the chat thing is inevitable but as long as it is manageable it should not be too dire. Comunity is so very important in a game and I would have hated it to have been ruined but you have allayed those fears.
I think Turbine has to be disappointed with only a 200% increase. D&D was 500%. And this despite a huge explosion in player population. 10x would be my guess. Servers that were once barren are now full.
But as I said before on the official forums, they only have themselves to blame. There is very little in the item mall worth buying for the long term player, except the stat/virtue boosts which are insanely overpriced at $5 for +1/+10.
Which I find very worrisome, becuase it gives them all the more incentive to make new content basically require thost very expensive buffs.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
I think DDO had higher returns because they had a much lower player base when the game went F2P.
I do not know where do you get this experience from, but your knowledge of LOTRO is tenuous at best. Do you know for instance that you do not need to run SG to get the Symbol, but you can run 3 man classic instances such as the School / Library HM to get it? Took me 2 weeks to get two of them.
And honestly it does not require to be a genius to learn how to group. And in fact, there are other contents before Moria when you can group (Dol Dinen quest for instance, GA, GB, etc.).
Almost rarely had some bad experience in GS, also because I take some time to teach member of my kin. If you do not take the time to teach it, people won't learn for sure. There are a lot of new players out of there willing to learn. But being full of yourself, you do not even realize that, and keep the selfish knowledge all for yourself. Good for you.
Well, it's nice to hear they did this...but really unremarkable. I wouldn't have expected any less then this unless Turbine had totaly FUBAR'd thier relaunch.
The real question is not whether they had a good MONTH or even a good QUARTER.... that's short term thinking.... which unfortunately is what gets too many businesses in trouble these days. It's entirely possible for a business to make decisions which will double it's revenue for one quarter...but end up causing it to go bankrupt within a year or two. Not saying Turbine did this...just saying having a 1 month or 1 quarter boost in revenue doesn't say much about the staying power of a product.
Lets look and see where they are at after 6 , 9, 12 & 18 months.....and we'll be able to get a better idea of what the F2P move really means for the game. What you are seeing right now is basicaly PR speak of Kate waiving a banner saying "Look, I'm awesome!". Gotta wait quite a bit longer to see how this will really end up working out for the game and the community.
Since it is free, why not go check?
Can this be independently verified?
If not I just considers this empty talk.
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