Cracks in LotRO’s Armor?
This weekend, starting today, Turbine is offering lapsed Lord of the Rings Online subscribers a change to drop back in for a weekend. Great move on Turbine’s part, if you ask me, and indicative of their rock-solid commitment to improving LotRO and keeping it strong.
It makes me think, though. If LotRO’s subscription numbers are as good as many people assume they are, why do they need to be offering free time to former players? Not that I think it’s a bad idea regardless of how robust the revenue stream is – the cost to benefit ratio has to be very favorable, as I doubt seriously that even a much more aggressive free time program would put much extra strain on server infrastructure or the like. Possibly Turbine understands the MMO drug-dealer model better than most other MMO publishers; give people a little taste and hope you hook them for the long term. (No moral equivalency between drug pushers and MMO publishers in intended.) Then again, there’s that little niggling doubt… why did the head honcho at Turbine get fired a few months back? Is this an effort to regain some of a rapidly dwindling subscriber base?
That’s speculation, of course, and much as I might not enjoy playing LotRO I think it’s still a pretty good game, and I want their model of extremely heavy after-launch support to be very successful so that other providers will follow suit. So hopefully Turbine and LotRO are doing fine, and this is just smart thinking on their part.
I may drop in myself, actually, if I get the time; this weekend is looking busy and I want to get some EVE in after getting tied down playing Audiosurf most of this week.
May 9, 2008 at 11:05 am
Dropped in…and dropped back out
So many decisions for this game that were made just beg the question “Why?”
1. The UI has many quirks,.,,like the resize feature which really expands pixels, and if you have a large monitor (27″ 1920×1200) the pixels get blurry…so, no 1to1 pixel mapping
2. The mapping system really showed me they are WAY off here. I play EQ2, and after having played AoC also(which has the coolest mapping feature of any game) made me wonder..”Why cover my whole screen with this map”. There is no way to have the map open and walk around unless you want to watch an arrow move on screen…big mistake…
3. Texture loading. The way the textures are compressed, the system needs to open these as new characters appear or landscape features…and this causes the horrible hitching…this game actually ran worse for me than AoC which everyone is complaining about…I have 3 computers, and EVERY computer is unique and built by me…and each one hitches…which tells me it is most definitely the game
I really tried to give it a chance…but after an hour (and seeing my guild existed still…with 3 people…including myself…and all of the 47 other players were gone…and when I opened my friends list…out of 25 people…only 4 had logged back in recently…all the others logged in last year)
Yea…I think mmogcharts.com numbers look right to me.
May 9, 2008 at 11:40 am
Well, I won’t be trying it out again after all (see today’s post.) Nevertheless, I’ve given the game 3 chances - once in beta, once at launch, and once about six months later when they added DX10 support, and I found it to be all-around disappointing, although there were certainly things in there that I did like. I have an unopened retail box sitting on my shelf just waiting to be activated, and I have yet to be seriously tempted by it, although I would have taken a peek for a free weekend. I did not have the hitching problem you appear to have had, but I did notice the pixellation issue (24″ 1920×1200 here.) I think the game looks good (better than EQ2 with everything at max) but not as good as Vanguard (on high but not maximum settings,) and I found the overall art design to be generally flat and obviously inspired by the movies, but not as well-done.
It’s too bad, because I really wanted to like the game - it has lots of nice features. If either the basic gameplay or the Middle-Earth feel had been what I considered adequate, I would probably have stuck with it. I can see why some folks like it, but I was just not happy with it.
I think that the game’s lack of focus on endgame stuff is probably hurting overall retention after a certain point. If Moria (the site, not the expansion) has a huge amount of endgame content, that might make a big difference. For me, though… I don’t see myself subscribing again, even after the expansion, or ever, really. I gave EQ2 three chances, and it took on the third. I see no reason not to use a three strikes rule.
May 13, 2008 at 11:01 am
Agreed. I really gave it the old college try, and LOTRO is officially off my watch list until AFTER Moria releases (supposed changes in UI interests me)
Good luck in your gaming endeavors