LOTRO to relaunch as free to play?

I may never end up leaving Mordor, but I’m cool with $20 if I get there.

You leave Mordor for like 80+ hours doing quests across northern Rhovanion before returning to Mordor again (Morgul Vale)…then immediately right back into northen Rhovanion.

Well, at least I’m not alone.

https://massivelyop.com/2020/10/22/lotro-legendarium-is-lotro-at-war-with-orcs-or-with-its-playerbase/

DDO is getting a new one too. Here’s what the store page looks like for comparison:

https://store-new.standingstonegames.com/ddo/expansions

It’s approx the size of 2 quest packs, and a new race.

I’ve always bought the super-max editions of expansions for LOTRO. But yeah, this time I just went with the $20 basic kit.

I’m cool with them now charging even VIPs for quest packs, as long as the price is low. Frankly I always thought that they were too generous with the content for those paying $100/year for the subscription. They’ve added some quality-of-life improvements for VIPs which I assume are meant to make up for removing the new content from the sub. And new content over the past couple of years has been surprisingly good IMO, especially given that the main story is long over.

Yeah, it’s annoying that they’ve added in huge grinds later in the game in a way to push buying shortcuts. But I’m mostly not biting. Helps that I’m not an end-game/raiding player, and I’m in no hurry.

So, this probably had a lot to do with the recent changes:

EG7 ACQUIRES DAYBREAK GAMES

https://www.enadglobal7.com/

Although, this was in part of the slides about that acquisition for 2022:

Summary:
Planning visual and technical updates for LOTRO for PC and nextgen consoles to capitalize on Amazon’s highly publicized large investment (~$500mm) in LOTR TV series"

Weird company. Their staff page shows how many shares each member owns and that the CEO was born in 1987.

Here are some mildly interesting numbers:

https://massivelyop.com/2020/12/02/everything-we-just-learned-about-daybreak-thanks-to-eg7/

Among other things it looks like Daybreak has always owned SSG.

I’m assuming this is stuff from the slides @Demolira linked but ain’t got time to read all that. :)

Well I resubbed today after a short break. Just in time for Yule, my favorite of the festivals.

That is fascinating! EQ still brings in over $10m/year! I would never have guessed original EQ books more than LOTRO.

Glad to see LOTRO doing well too.

Yeah, $10M YTD (Sept) isn’t bad. To me EQ and LOTRO have the same numbers, which bodes well for LOTRO sticking around, since EQ has. That’s enough to staff a small group of dedicated folks and throw a few shekels to the investors.

I suspect that the recent “mini-expansion” hoopla was about bumping some numbers for this acquisition. Get more folks to buy what used to be a given with VIP, perhaps draw in a thousand or so with a one-month VIP sub.

I don’t know, but I think this change won’t hurt, and may help.

That said, their comment about piggy-backing on attention to Amazon’s LOTR series to boost revenue seems like a big stretch to me.

They did sucker me into getting the new expansion because the Yule Festival asked me to do a mission, which is apparently only a feature of the new expansion. Turned out the missions are pretty fun so far.

Are folks tracking that this game is coming to XSX and PS5 at some point? I don’t know when, just saw that it was announced in December.

I haven’t played LOTRO in years… although I technically have a lifetime sub from back when I started playing it in the beta.

Since the new LotR pen and paper RPG is coming out this year I am itching to get back to this for stimulation. I never got very far. I am mainly a solo player, is still Captain the easy choice? I want relatively chill experience. I know Warden wasn’t bad but very clicky. What’s the latest?

Captain is probably one of the slowest choices, with constant screaming. Warden is easy and can do anything and a good choice. guardian with a two-hander is very strong, and quite easy to play as well, and really can’t die.
I’ve heard Beorning are pretty good as well, but they are a purchased race, though, as Warden is as well.

Hunter is probably the easiest class to play.

I’ve played a lot of Hunter and Warden and Burglar.

-Hunter is both amongst the easier to play and has the most travel skills. Furthermore the hunters travel skills is an embarrassment of riches when most classes have zero and only get them via reputation reward vendors which almost always requires max rep: Kindred.
-Warden is the only other class with travel skills but they are much harder to play well and they still have less travel skills than the Hunter. Warden is amongst the only class that can complete lots of small fellowship content handily solo.
-Burglar is the only class that has a viable alternative play style: easily bypass large swaths of combat just by stealth making a lot of very dangerous areas much easier/quicker to get through at the cost of combat XP.

Thanks, looks like I need to try out several ones. Hunter sounds nice but probably needs a lot.of kiting? Warden really looks cool too.