LotRO's Kate Paiz praises community, addresses F2P switch

Over at Mordor or Bust, Lord of the Rings Online's new executive producer Kate Paiz sat down to talk about what's on every hobbit's mind: the transition to LotRO's free-to-play version this fall. Paiz took the reins of LotRO just as the F2P change was announced and is bringing her experience from DDO Unlimited's transition over to LotRO's team.

In the interview, Paiz spends a considerable amount of time both praising the community and reassuring it that these changes will benefit the game as a whole. One of the issues she addressed was the lack of Player versus Monster Player (PvMP) combat for non-subscribers, saying that it was necessary for now, but that may change in the future: "While we plan to introduce [PvMP] at some point in the future to the rest of the playerbase, we wanted to first focus on delivering the quality PvE game that we have to players in a way that continued to drive great interest and fun in the game."

While she declined to comment on whether Turbine would be giving refunds for lifetime subscribers who purchased that option shortly before the announcement of the F2P change, Paiz did say they'd like to offer lifetime VIP subscriptions again at some point. Paiz also said Turbine has "a lot of ideas" for additional classes, and it is working with the CDC to get LotRO launched in China.

You can read the full interview over at Mordor or Bust!

Reader Comments (8)

I hope the do offer the lifer option again, I would love to get me hands on it.

I have played WoW, EQ2, AoC, WAR, and a lot of other MMO's on the market. This is the only game that managed to tear me away from the crack that is WoW. I still go back to WoW to check the new expansion packs, but LOTRO is a much better game over all. I even like the PvMP play a lot better than the instanced stuff most other games use.

I understand that they want to focus on the PvE element of the game for the F2P crowd, but honestly, PvMP would be a HUGE draw for that crowd, and would attract a lot of people over to VIP if they had a taste. I am eager to have the F2P crowd in PvMP as it is, as far as I can see, the "last hope" for LOTRO's poor, neglected PvP. I hope they will come back to this sooner rather than later.

LotRO is the game I always 'go back to'. I always keep an active sub even if I am playing something else. I'd grab a Lifetime if my missus would let me :p

For those of you that do not know Gamasutra, it is a magazine for gamedevelopers (and people interested in game development) and it has been arround for more than a decade.
I am one of those that are still very sceptical of LOTROs move to F2P and I recently read an article on Gamasutra that brings some very relevant points to the discussion:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4319/the_designers_notebook_selling_.php

Mind you, this article was written by a game developer for other game developers (mostly) and not for gamers. So his perspective should be worth noting.

i doubt lotro will ever stoop to the level of the chinese f2p games used as examples in that article.

i would even go so far as to say chinese gamers are more willing to play badly balanced f2p titles than a western player because they lack a videogame culture with an appreciable amount of history behind it. japan and the west have been exposed to a large number of high quality titles on multiple platforms since the 80s and their perspectives have been molded accordingly.

in summary, what works in china wouldn't work over here. but we already kind of knew that from how often korean titles flop in the states.

I wished I had your optimism Wolf. If Turbine can have a large chunk of the chinese market, why even bother with the west? China is a much larger market.

did WoW in china have a horrifically unbalanced cash shop? i don't seem to remember any mention of that. of course WoW wasn't f2p, but it wasn't exactly a subscription model in china either. i think it was pay by the hour for most people who played from net cafes.

just because they're operating in china doesn't mean they will lower themselves to the same low standard other operators have. they might use game balance as something to make themselves stand out from the rest of the crowd.

and if they don't bother with game balance lotro china will still have seperate servers and cash shops. noone says the western and chinese cash shops have to be identical. imbalance could stay compartmentalized if it does happen.

i think the concerns of drop in community quality is much more applicable to lotro than anything. yes the community quality will probably take a hit, and people who say otherwise are lying to you. having played both sub and f2p games i know there is a large difference in community quality.

LotRO's Kate Paiz praises community, addresses F2P switch

Reader Comments (8)

Posted: Jul 12th 2010 6:21PM MrsAngelD said

Posted: Jul 12th 2010 6:24PM tehlexicon said

Posted: Jul 12th 2010 10:19PM ScottishViking said

Posted: Jul 13th 2010 4:56AM Dread said

Posted: Jul 13th 2010 2:35PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 13th 2010 3:43PM karnisov said

Posted: Jul 13th 2010 4:27PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 13th 2010 5:12PM karnisov said

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