The Massively comments section giveth once more:
My favorite part of F2P is how most people perceive converting to that business model is a failure when the two MMO’s on that spear headed the movement, LOTRO and DDO, saw revenue increases of 200-500%.Doubling your revenue will be the cancer that kills the industry apparently. – wakwazu
Yay regurgitating a (very old) PR release. It must be true.
Do NOT quote numbers that have NEVER been claimed and are not true. I am a long term shareholder in Time-Warner and I can for certain tell you that is and has never been the case. The gaming arm of Time-Warner has been losing money every year since the Turbine acquisition (look it up in their public documents) and has only been kept from complete disaster from their one-off titles, not their MMOs.
Turbine only ever claimed the doubling of revenue in their first quarter following F2P, when they still had long-term loyal customers. Now that they have completely alienated that base, they have never said anything about their revenue again since that time and choose to talk about their users (of which 90% don’t spend a dime on the game). Now Turbine is dealing with a shrinking paying customer base so they come up with increasingly more expensive expansions ($70 for Riders of Rohan) with less content than a typical expansions would hold.
Turbine may be making more money on F2P than they did on P2P, but it doesn’t mean they are making money. There is a big, big difference. – Stock
Oh.
Well at least LotRO improved overall after going F2P, actually making money or not, right?
In the case of LOTRO specifically though, it is my personal opinion that WB’s greed spoiled the game after it went F2P. The in-game ads are garish and too numerous, “lockbox” drops too frequent, and the final nail in the coffin (for me) was the selling of improved stat gear (better than what crafters could create) in the cash shop. For me, LOTRO is a prime example of a great game sliding too far down the F2P “slippery slope.” – Eve
Clearly just one rogue opinion everyone! Surely LotRO players overall love immersion-adding in-game ads, The One Ring in the item shop, and being reminded to pay every few seconds. Sounds like the LotRO I originally hoped for back in 2007, that’s for sure!
But then, I’ve sorta forgotten what the um… mainstream MMO market is like, since I’ve been playing ‘niche’ titles like EVE for so long. Oddly I have a feeling Goonswarm has more active members than all the players logging into DDO today, and CCP is making money off EVE while LotRO is not, but still, EVE is niche yo, so it’s really apples to oranges.
Or rotting graves to fine wine, but whatever. Much like repeating “F2P is the future” every year, repeating that EVE is a niche game compared to… something will surely make it true eventually.
