Lord of the Rings Online Free to Play a Big Success

Since going free to play The Lord of the Rings Online has enjoyed a 400% increase in active playerbase and a 200% increase in monthly revenues. Turbine also announced that the game now generates more money in optional monthly subscriptions than it did back when it was pay to play. I don’t think the game enjoyed the same level of success that Dungeons and Dragons Online did upon re-launching as a free to play game, but that’s mostly because The Lord of the Rings Online was already successful and profitable to begin with whereas Dungeons and Dragons Online had a tiny playerbase that was slowly dwindling away. Needless to say though, Turbine has once again proven that the free to play business model is a viable one. Not everyone is ignoring Turbine’s success with free to play.

Sony Online Entertainment recently made their flagship MMORPG EverQuest 2 free to play. But that’s old news that I’ve talked about in the past. What’s more interesting is that Pirates of the Burning Sea will also be relaunching as a free to play title in the coming months. And yes, it’s official. The company announced that they will be shifting to a free to play game when their latest expansion goes live. Since Turbine made Dungeons and Dragons Online free to play, Electronic Arts has tried their luck in free to play too. Over the last few years EA has released Battlefield Heroes, Lord of Ultima, FIFA Online and Tiger Woods Online as free to play titles, but has been hesitant to convert any of their current pay to play titles such as Dark Age of Camelot of Warhammer Online to free to play, which I think they should seriously consider doing. Both Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online aren’t very popular and are in clear decline. Dark Age of Camelot used to have 30+ servers but has 3 today. Warhammer Online launched with some 35+ servers but its down to 4. They need to do something to revitalize these games and going free to play could work. Free trials for those MMOs just isn’t cutting it.

With Dungeons and Dragons Online, The Lord of the Rings Online and EverQuest 2 now free to play, I think there’s a lot of pressure on Funcom to make Age of Conan Free to Play and on NCSoft to make City of Heroes and Lineage 2 free to play. As more and more pay to play games become free to play, game companies will realize that demanding a monthly fee to access a game is going to get harder and harder. I don’t think World of Warcraft really has to worry, as they’re still the market leader in the space, but smaller less successful MMORPGs like Champions Online and even Star Trek Online will need to eventually begin embracing free to play, as pay to play has been on a decline since Turbine made Dungeons and Dragons Online free to play. Plus, high quality free to play games like Runes of Magic, Fists of Fu and Heroes of Three Kingdoms are also putting pressure on pay to play games to re-consider their business models.

High Quality Free to Play Games

Just because a game is “free to play”, doesn’t mean it’s “low quality”. There’s a pretty terrible stereotype out there, mostly amongst forums for pay to play MMOs like World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online, that free to play means “low quality and bad”. What many of these folks bashing F2P don’t realize is that many pay to play games have gone free to play. Dungeons and Dragons Online from Turbine and Archlord from Webzen were both once subscription based pay to play MMORPGs, but are now free to play titles with cash shops.

There are many MANY free to play games out right now that are much “higher quality” than other pay to play games as well. Allods Online from gPotato for example had a 12+ million dollar budget. I’m not saying that Allods Online is “better” than pay to play games, but it’s certainly on the same level in terms of quality. Black Prophecy from Gamigo looks just as “good” as Eve Online from CCP, and it’s completely free. Well, not completely, as it does have a cash shop, but it’s still free to play. Martial Empires from Gamgio has also proven that free to play does not have to be “cheap.”

I do have to admit though, that there are a lot of very cheap free to play Chinese and Korean MMORPGs. Games like Age of Armor from Snail Games and Avalon Heroes from Alaplaya. In fact, there are easily 50+ “terrible” MMORPGs, which no human should play. I think that many pay to play players are turned off from free to play games because they’ve had poor experienced with these cheap games. Pro tip guys, skip games like Azuga: Age of Chaos and Battle of Destiny and stick with the Triple-A titles like Runes of Magic, Dungeons and Dragons Online and Allods Online.

So is free to play better than pay to play? I think so, but I don’t think it’s fair to generalize things. World of Warcraft is still an unmatched title in quality, content and variety. I don’t think any free to play game can come close to it. But there are free to play games that rival, if not surpass other pay to play MMORPGs – Especially the second tier pay to play games like Dark Age of Camelot and Pirates of the Burning Sea. I feel that some of these second tier games should go free to play, as there’s no reason to pay for them when there are better titles available.

Downloading Eve Online.. Again

I’m going to give Eve Online another chance. I just created my 14 day MMO free trial account and I’m downloading the game right now. I’m downloading at a cool 3MB/s so my client should be done in 13 minutes. Eve Online is a gave I’ve always wanted to get into, but for some reason never could. Twice I quit the game before finishing its tutorial. Yeah, the game is that intimidating. I’ve read a lot about it on MMORPG review sites and aside from Ultima Onlineback in 1999 it is by far the most ‘open” and PvP heavy pay to play MMORPG ever. Players can kill each other just about anywhere in the universe. Neat huh? Unfortunately even though Eve Online sounds really cool it has one of the steepest learning curves ever.

One aspect of the game I dislike is that older accounts are ALWAYS more powerful than newer one. The skill progression system is pretty random. Players gain skill all the time, even when they’re logged off with no max skill cap. With the amount of skills in the game, it’s impossible for anyone to master them all, so players tend to specialize. I mean, you could master them all, but it would take like 20+ years. Older accounts have ultimately more learned skills than newer ones – no matter what. Most MMORPGs including free to play ones like Gates of Andaron from GameForge,Neo Steam from Atlus Online and even Magic World Online from EnjoyMMO are built so no player late game is more powerful than others. The whole older accounts have more skills thing is pretty silly in my opinion. Luckily though, there are so many skill trees, it doesn’t make sense for anyone to even TRY learning everything. EVERYONE specializes, so a 1 month old player could have more skill in one type of skill than a player who has been playing for years.

Eve Online has so many interesting aspects that I really want to dive into. The game supposedly has one of the coolest in game economies ever. Even more so than Luminary: Rise of the Goonzufrom ijji, which had a stellar in game economy. Heck, I remember reading a big Eve Online bank scandal in The New York Times. How many other big in game scams get published in such a reputable paper? None. Eve Online also has a massive Corporation vs Corporation PvP system. Players can band together and form Corps which are guilds in game. These Corps can band together to form alliances, and alliances can control various outposts and territory in space. It’s not uncommon for thousands of ships to be in one area at once to battle it out. Yeah, Thousands of players. The only other game with that kind of massive PvP is Aika Online from gPotato, which boasts 1000 vs 1000 PvP.

Anyway folks. I’m almost done with my free trial download. I’ll make sure to let you know if I get passed the free trial this time!