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V-E-ME Day: LotRO Europe announces launch date for free-to-play

by Justin Olivetti on Oct 29th 2010 11:00AM

Fantasy, Lord of the Rings Online, Launches, Free-to-Play, Legal

It's been a long time coming, and after some legal hemming and hawing, Codemasters announced that Lord of the Rings Online in Europe will be finally launching the much-anticipated free-to-play version of the game. On November 2nd, LotRO will open its doors to free players across Europe.

This comes after a two-month period of limbo for EU players, which began two days before the update launched in North America. Codemasters had cryptically announced that F2P would be put on hold for what turned out to be contractual reasons. Fortunately, it seems as though the red tape has been cut, and players are free to sample the same blessed bounty as their NA comrades.

This update also includes the new region of Enedwaith, the LotRO store, Volume III: Book 2 of the epic storyline and the Harvest Festival. Interested players can sign up for their free-to-play account at LotRO EU.

Source

Tags: breaking, Codemasters, enedwaith, europe, f2p, free-to-play, harvest-festival, harvestmath, lord-of-the-rings-online, lotro, lotro-eu, lotro-store, turbine, volume-3-book-2, volume-iii-book-2

Reader Comments (14)

FINALLY!

At last!

Good news.

They are still hoping to catch some people out though and advertising the product for sale through their official website (and charging a fee for purchasing the game), which is a bit wrong considering it should be free!

Well, technically it isn't free until Tuesday, so I guess they will remove the buy links then.

whoopiekay!
I hope there are still some people willing to play on the Europe servers though.
Two months of lurking from across the pond.... no sub, content updates...
Good-luck Codemasters!

I popped onto the f2p test night before last, and I haven't seen Archet so crowded literally since launch day, so I don't think they're going to have a problem in that regard :)

Their test server has been insane, packed at all hours of the day, massive queues and their GM events have been just mental fun.

I have to admit that I stopped playing LOTRO a long time ago, but it has been a blast to see the Codemasters staff go crazy and get involved with the players, both in spawning monsters and participating in PvP, even just chatting to players about anything and everything.

Not seen such a friendly approach from MMO staff before, its a refreshing change to the silence you normally get from such companies.

Nice.

At last! My regular guys will be happy to see the light of server again.

I didn't expect many people to show up for this (given that I've seen lots of people say they will play on the US servers). But as someone above me said, the server was packed and there were hour long waiting queues. So there are still lots of people who can't wait to play this despite the long wait.

Congrats EU!

Can somebody tell me how to actually make a 3d avatar?? !!!!

I don't think there's going to be a LOT of people who permanently abandon there EU accounts, if they've had them for a long time. My EU chars have years of play time on them, I'm certainly not going to abandon them just because I had to wait a month or so for the F2P switch.

Possibly, new players or those still unsettled on their servers will stay US-side, but otherwise I think we're going to see the same boom in player pop that the States saw. Which is, you know, great!

*their, you moron.

V-E-ME Day: LotRO Europe announces launch date for free-to-play

Reader Comments (14)

Posted: Oct 29th 2010 11:24AM Trippin said

Posted: Oct 29th 2010 11:25AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 29th 2010 11:44AM Snichy said

Posted: Oct 29th 2010 1:08PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 29th 2010 12:03PM ReijMan said

Posted: Oct 29th 2010 12:38PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 29th 2010 1:11PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 29th 2010 12:38PM dudes said

Posted: Oct 29th 2010 1:33PM pcgneurotic said

Posted: Oct 29th 2010 2:30PM Khorrax said

Posted: Oct 29th 2010 3:28PM Ocho said

Posted: Oct 30th 2010 5:07AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 31st 2010 3:30AM pcgneurotic said

Posted: Oct 31st 2010 3:30AM pcgneurotic said

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