Free? To Play Freakout

Lord of the Rings Online has recently stated that they have released a "Free to Play" option for their Massively Multiplayer RPG. Enticed by this proposal I took a look at it. Here's what I found.

Despite this being placed in the Free to Play Freakout tag it will work more like a "Pariah's Angry Rant" for reasons you shall see.

Turbine thinks what they are doing is releasing free to play content for their "Award Winning" game in order to give people a taste of the MMO so that hopefully they'd decide to pay for it down the line. What they've done, however, is spit in the face of anyone who doesn't want to pay for their game.

Here's how a great, successful, Free to Play MMO works: They offer full content access to ALL players. Make an account and you can access every single bit of content in the world. Then, add a cash shop, similar to what you can find on most Korean MMOs. Stock the cash shop with different buffs that give the payers certain advantages, such as increased EXP gain, or a faster mount. (Of course not something like a new class or equipment or stat boosts, that breaks the game). There, you've got a great base for an MMO that, if it's fun of course, will make you money and make you lots of fans who will WANT to pay you money.

What you DO NOT DO is this: Grant free players access to most zones, however, only give them quests in the first three that will take them to about level 25. Give them limited chat, crafting, storage, inventory, money cap, support, no permanent mount, etc. Instead have three levels of players: Free, Premium, and VIP. To get Premium, force them to purchase something from the store, whether it be points or actual content. Then to get VIP force them to pay A SUBSCRIPTION FOR YOUR FREE TO PLAY GAME.

If you don't see whats wrong with this then you are part of the problem. This game is not "Free to Play" it's "Free to Test" it's little more than an extended trial version. Turbine would be making so much more money if they'd follow the guidelines I set in the first paragraph, not only that, they'd have a much larger and more loyal fanbase. At the moment, they are offering Free to Play quality content for a Premium price. While there may be some Turbine sycophants out there, as there always is, that doesn't change the fact that this game is an insult to anyone who came there looking for a Free to Play game.

I am frankly infuriated that this is how it turned out. I had been eagerly awaiting the Free to Play release of LotRO as I don't currently have the means to support an MMO subscription, and this really felt like a slap to the face. Like they were some soup kitchen chef who looked out at all the hungry faces awaiting food, then as each person came by for their share they kicked them in the shins and gave them a few drops of soup. It's unacceptable that they think they can get away with this.

I wouldn't really be so upset about this if the game was better, if it was a game with the production quality and polish of something like World of Warcraft then I wouldn't be able to bash it so hard. But it's not, the combat is crude and clunky, everything feels swampy and delayed like you are walking waist deep in mud, and the crafting is restrictive, forcing you to take a set of three instead of giving you a choice of what you want. So if you were hoping to get Tailoring, Foresting, and Armorsmithing, for whatever reason, too bad, you're fucked. Then there's Turbine, which has become my new symbol for everything that is wrong with MMOs nowadays.

That's all for this hybridization of Free to Play Freakout and Pariah's Angry Rants, hope you enjoyed it

HappyPariah