In 2007 (a whole eight years ago) Turbine launched Lord of the Rings Online (that makes you feel pretty old huh?), following hot on the trail of the film trilogy when Lord of the Ring catapulted into the stratosphere from the initial launch of The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001 (fourteen years ago, now THAT has to make you feel old….). The games original release was a huge success, giving players the first real opportunity to live as and among the residents of Middle Earth in a full fleshed out MMORPG and going up against Sauron and his dark army. The game has been on a slow decline for many years as the MMORPG market has flourished, the developers struggling to keep their other MMORPG Dungeons & Dragons Online afloat, it was a constant juggling act for the team made only harder with a spate of layoffs last year. Over the years a number of issues have gone unaddressed that are contributing to the ever decreasing population, here are some of our biggest problems:

 

• A Terrible Business Model - The return on what you pay for is pretty bad. For everyone person that makes an MMO for love and passion of the idea or franchise there are a dozen people above them thinking about how to make money from it, that is the nature of the gaming industry and we’ve seen plenty of great games be ruined by “good business”. The problem Turbine has with LOTRO is that it launched during a period where subscription based MMORPGs were the norm, but fell on the cusp of the F2P model coming to fruition and switched to free to play in 2010. For some games it works out fine, the likes of Star Wars: The Old Republic managed to recover with the quick switch to F2P a little while after launch, the problem with Turbine is that you essentially still have to subscribe for what is the main guts of the game, or at least purchase Turbine points to buy new content when it is released. Case in point are the Quest Packs, which give access to new areas, new long quest chains, and act as mini DLC content that as a VIP subscriber ($14.99/month) players get access to automatically, none VIPs can purchase individual Quest Packs for at the lowest 595 Points (lowest bundle of points you can buy is 600points for $8…), so in that respect it becomes a bit of a no brainer to subscribe if you want to play the new content. It doesn’t stop there though, the “Updates Patches” that change or add core content also end up being a list of features that you can buy… where every other game still provides new content to F2P players Turbine go out of their way to provide very little for free beyond the base content. Insult to injury when they release “Expansions” that cost up to $30 the VIP subscribers don’t even get access to these and still have to pay for them, and these aren’t some absolutely world changing expansions the likes we’ve seen in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, just a few extra zones with some extra quests and a new system and the occasional level cap increase… Turbine need to stop milking the players dry as all it seems like is that they’re trying to get the last few dollars from the dwindling playerbase before the game goes out for good.


• New Classes - The release of new classes is.. a joke. With each update and expansion the one big question everyone always has is “Are there any new classes?”, not a major surprise given that the game only launched with 7 originally, got an extra 2 added in the Mines of Moria expansion a year later….. and then nothing until last November. No new classes on an already low roster for SIX years. The newest “class” is the skin-changing Beorning that can turn back and forth into a bear, the problem is that the Beorning class is locked to the Beorning race, so you’re pretty restricted already (I mean it makes sense from a lore perspective, but if it’s your one new class in six years then it would have been perhaps better to go with something that’s more universal). The kicker though? Players still need to purchase the new class if they want access to it. Waiting six years, for a sub-par class, that you don’t even get for free….


• Tedious PvP (PvPM) - Players PvP just for the sake of PvPing. We really like the idea of the PvPM system where instead of fighting as their characters players can unlock Freefolk or monsters to fight with (who you can fight as and what classes you can access depends on whether or not you are a subscriber of course). The problem is that there is absolutely no objective based combat and players simply fight each other just for the sake of having PvP, making the game a glorified deathmatch… but without the fun. We’d love to see some more objective based missions with Orcs trying to storm a village and being defended by free folk, or ambush a traveling caravan, the types of things LOTRO would love to be immersed in. Instead players get a tedious PvP system that they have to pay for… Anyone who is involved in the LOTRO community will probably be aware of the “tell all” forum post made by ex-Turbine employee “Aylwen” who gave a lot of behind the scenes information on the development of the game, specifically saying that originally the people at the top didn’t want PvP in the game and the PvPM system was something tacked on at the last minute that never really had the resources dedicated to it to make it anything substantial. Well it shows.


• PVE Balancing - Content fluctuates between being super easy or ridiculously hard. We don’t know why but the developers have never seemed to be able to get the PVE balancing right; players either struggle to fight sub level 100 content when they themselves are at level 100 cap, or the levelling process is so easy in places where players have recorded themselves getting by on simple auto-attacks with no real input. This only emphasises the underlying core issues of the game: all the mechanics and features are there, but that doesn’t mean they always work well. As the game is supposed to be focused on PvE, with PVPM being given a bit of a permanent back seat development wise, we would have presumed that the paying subscribers who are purchasing extra PVE content would at least have access to content and a system that works as intended…

 

So that’s what we’d change with Lord of the Rings Online, but more importantly what do you believe should be changed? What do you think could/should be added to improve the game? What would you add to your own personal wish list? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2015 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.