LotRO March Producer's letter offers glimpse of fun to come

Could Smaug possibly be making an appearance?

Oh, and BTW, we GET it, Turbine, you sell things in your cash shop. We haven't forgotten. =P

I'm surprised and very happy that we're getting another update so soon. I was expecting them to be on a quarterly update cycle but that's a 2 month update cycle. Hopefully it continues cause May till November offers room for an Update 4 in August.

"We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on [...] the new additions to the LOTRO Store."

Is that so? What about the people rightfully complaining about them, especially the VIPs who are treated pretty much like the rest?

Leaving that aside, let's hope future updates rely more on in game content, and less on adding things to the store.

Does this mean we will see DX 11 textures on every item besides water?

The awkward and blatant store plugs really turned people off this letter. Why on earth did she open with a commercial for store items in the first paragraph? I was rolling my eyes by the end of the second sentence, and it was hard to take the rest of the letter seriously.

Seriously turbine, tone it down a notch.

I haven't minded the store until now...but, as much as I regularly disagree with some of the commenters here, I'm going to have to agree this time. Things have gotten a bit much with the store. I think it might be time for them to take a step back and ask themselves if they're not pushing new "freemium" boundaries here.

Meh. They only seem to be interested in making content for raiders, which is probably what, 1% of the population of LOTRO?

But I'm sure they spend a lot on store potions (and scrolls to improve their LIs), so I guess that's who they will cater to here on out...

Nothing like four mentions of the store or store items in the first paragraph. Any doubt where Turbine's focus is now? I've been playing this game since open beta, but it's getting harder and harder to stomach certain things. The "buy now" buttons all over the place are beyond crass and the overriding reason for the atrocious character panel revamp seems to solely to provide panels that don't have the tacky ad on it. Yet.

While I'm pleased to finally see the badly needed new content, I will admit to being vastly disappointed in Update 2. The burglar "update" was a cruel joke, parts of the new instances are boringly and predictably linear, and all of the otherwise-welcome additions such as more cosmetic slots and more milestones slots are store-only items. (Hey, there's a store!) And as far as removing the LI-relic removal skill from the game and into the store - well, that's not quite what I thought they meant when they said store revenue would provide funds for development. As someone on the game's forums aptly said, LotRO needs more story and less store.

The release gave a glimpse into the scary reality that the game may well become slave to the store, instead of the store serving the game. It also proved there is a dwindling value to VIP subscriptions, especially for long term players. It wouldn't be too far fetched to think that Turbine is trying to drive everyone to a premium account, although the completely disregard for the value of a constant revenue stream is sort of odd.

The best thing that LotRO has going for it is that it is still Middle-earth, and not even Turbine's rampant greed has ruined that.