Lord Of The Rings Online Free-to-Play Triplets

Where are they taking this game? They’re taking it to Isengard? To Isengard? Are they taking the game to Isengard? Well, before you do, here’s some awesome news.

Lord Of The Rings Online (LOTRO) announced to drop the obligatory $15 monthly subscriptions and remodeled it as a free-to-play, last September. Only one month later, Turbine announced that the revenue had doubled up., but it seems that news has been hit right out of the park or Shire or whatever.
 

Creating hot chicks in  Lord Of The Rings Online, just because.

 

In a recent Podcast with TenTonHammer, Turbine Director of Communications Adam Mersky stated that the revenue for LOTRO has now tripled! Not only that, but there’s also been an explosion in player activity; with a million new accounts, 20 percent of forlorn players returned and a quadrupled active base.

This has probably to do with the fact the free-to-play LOTRO micromanages a lot of the extra content, such as expansions, characters, items, etc.. And of course, they still offer a way to subscribe for unlimited content usage. Still, as such the model works well as it follows Turbine’s earlier success, Dungeons & Dragons Online, which rose 500 percent after going free-to-play in 2009.
 

Lord Of The Rings Online looks epic enough.

 

Executive Producer Kate Paiz mentioned: “We are super-pleased with how so many of our players have responded fantastically. We're getting so many new players in and the world feels alive and vibrant." She went on to say: “It's really about letting players make their choices about how they play. People are like 'I own my choices. You give me the power and I'll decide if you're cool enough for me.'”

If you ever needed a reason as a developer to let people play your game for free, I think these examples are more than enough to count as a success story, so I hope everyone’s listening. Turbine is set to expand the game with ‘Rise Of Isengard’ later this year, also raising the level cap to 70. Best of luck goes out to them on their quest.

Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed.