Lord of the Rings Online

[Vindicta™]

Announcing The Lord of the Rings Online's Move to Free-to-Play!

Today is an important day for LOTRO: we’ve announced that this fall, LOTRO will begin offering a Free-to-Play option! Players will be able to download the game and adventure in Middle-earth for free. With Free-to-Play comes the addition of the LOTRO Store, where players will have immediate in-game access to a wide variety of special items, account services, and convenience items.

Will there be a Free-to-Play Beta and when will it start?

Yes! The Beta will start in the very near future. We’ll begin accepting signups immediately at www.lotro.com/betasignup!

When does LOTRO F2P go live?

Free-to-Play will go live when Volume 3, Book 2 releases this fall.

More @ Announcing The Lord of the Rings Online's Move to Free-to-Play! | The Lord of the Rings Online

Difference between Free Player, Premium Player & VIP: LOTRO Free to Play Plan Comparison

The Lord of the Rings Online Home | The Lord of the Rings Online

[Gatts]

2 gold limit? i hope stuff costs like 12 silver.

[1stsim144]

O_O
OH MY GOD!!!!!! (in Janice's voice from "Friends")

At last!!!! >_<

[RoflKnife]

Awesome, I love this subscription model that Turbine introduced. First DDO, now LotRO. I enjoyed the LotRO beta, would not mind playing it actively now that it's free.

[SOC]

So is this just going to be another F2P MMORPG with a broken cash shop?

[boomsticky]

How interesting...

Will keep an eye on this ;o

[RoflKnife]

Originally Posted by SOC

So is this just going to be another F2P MMORPG with a broken cash shop?

Absolutely not. They're going to handle this the same way they handled DDO. 99% of what you're missing as a F2P can be bought in the cash shop, and you get cash shop currency for PLAYING THE GAME. That's right, free cash shop money for just PLAYING THE GOD DAMN GAME. The only things the DDO cash shop had was general healing items, basic equipment, stuff that can be bought just for convenience like PERMANENT item bags, general NPC store items on the go, content packs for the F2P, and...yeah. All the exp pots and such are very expensive, and not really worth it. 1 hour of 2x exp for like, $3. Yeah.

Anything that could POSSIBLY, SOMEHOW, give a "cash shop" player an advantage, costs a ridiculous amount of money, and quite frankly, would be far more sensible to obtain via the game.

[Vindicta™]

You may now walk into Mordor, have fun.

[NoeJeko]

Heh, I just saw a press release about this go out on the wire this morning.

[RoflKnife]

Excellent, thanks for the update Vind. DLing now. Will update with what server I'll be playing on if anyone wants to join me.

[Tea]

It seems a number of games that used to be p2p have gone f2p .. probably to get more audience to play. I might try this out.. im poking around on ff14 atm though.. RK give me feedback nao!~

[RoflKnife]

Playing on Darrowdelf, new server. Game is still as great as I remember, and even better, although the attack animations and sounds seem kinda lackluster.

IGN: RoflKnife

[Vindicta™]

If anyone wants to find me, I'm on Elendilmir.

[Zeke]

So I signed up for the f2p beta thingy. How long does it usually take? >:

[Noctis]

Originally Posted by Zeke

So I signed up for the f2p beta thingy. How long does it usually take? >:

It's not in beta anymore. So... sign up, download, and then play.

[flaris]

For anybody planning to play, you can only get to about level 20-25 before you have to buy the quest pack. "F2P" pretty much means trial in this case.

[RoflKnife]

Actually that's only if you want quests. You can just level of skirmishes or killing monsters if you wanted too. (Skirmish isn't so bad, monster killing is boring grind.) Also it is F2P. You can "cash shop" currency for FREE by PLAYING THE GAME. Then you use said earned currency from playing the game to get what you want. Will it take a while? Somewhat, as you'll get half-3/4 of what you need by naturally playing the game, the rest of the free points you actually need to divert focus on.

[SOC]

I tried it, but I really didn't like it. It feels more or less like a watered down version of WoW, really cartoony and just nothing like other LotR games (namely Third Age) that I look up to. The story (at least from my Gondor Man Ranger perspective) is serious and pretty entertaining, but the game just feels so unsatisfying and even clunky at times. Every time you hit a monster you just feel so weak and bored. The character animations aren't very fun to watch, and half the time I got sick of running around and wanting to fight and when I was fighting I was sick of that and wanted to run around. It just never felt like I was having fun.

But, that's just my opinion. For a free game, you're pretty limited too. I was right when I said "just another unbalanced cash shop free MMORPG" but if you just plan on playing this game for a month or so and not putting too much dedication into it, then I guess you'll like it. If you're in a LotR mood and want a good LotR game to play, I don't recommend it. I also don't recommend it for any serious MMORPG player that wants a new free MMORPG to make home with. If you want to pay to play it, you might feel comfort with it if you prefer games like WoW.