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Will Free To Play LotrO Kill WoW?

Monday Jun 7,2010 12:24 PM
By skurm
In Uncategorized

Big news recently : Lord of the Rings Online goes Free To Play.

The question on everyone’s mind is, will this make it more popular. As probably the second most popular fantasy DIKU MMORPG, removing the pay to play barrier to entry immediately makes it look like LotrO might suddenly bust out in a big way and steal some major market share from the Blizzard Behemoth.

But, having played a bit of LotrO before it was free, I don’t think it’ll happen. Why?

It’s a gigantic pain in the butt to download, patch and create an account. Turbine/Warner needs to work on this. Warcraft is far simpler to get up and running and playing, creating a new account is quick and easy and downloading the trial is a cinch, although it’s still a huge download. WoW has ‘Trial’ DVD’s for sale for a couple bucks in many major stores which helps alleviate this, and its’ also quite easy to get a copy from a friend, as easy as simply copying the folder over to your PC. Can you do this with LotrO? I don’t know. As fast as the ‘net is in most first world homes, there are still large numbers of people out there who don’t have access to fast, cheap internet.
I’m not sure of the existing LotrO community will welcome a horde of new, immature, young and/or annoying/selfish breed of gamer. New players might feel a little overwhelmed. The game also doesn’t quite reward people as instantly as WoW does. I’m not sure it’ll keep newbies interests long enough.
It lacks WoW’s stylization. Make no mistake the game world is beautiful, but character and set design follows a more ‘realistic’ look, as opposed to WoW’s ‘cartoony’ design. Fact is, cartoony works. It scratches the childlike part of our brain, the one fascinated by bright colours and overemphasized caricaturistic design. In some ways, the game feels ‘wooden’, down to the way your character walks and interacts with the world.
Paying a subscription actually isn’t that big a deal. Most gamers have money to burn. What matters is how easy it is to pay. Getting a subscription set up in WoW is a piece of cake, better yet game cards are available on almost any gaming store shelf. Accessibility is, in my opinion, far more important than getting a free ride.
It doesn’t offer the variety that WoW does. WoW has solo pve, small group pve, instanced large group/raid pve, small group arena/gladiatorial instanced pvp, large group instanced pvp, and world pvp. LotrO on the other hand mostly offers solo and small group pve.
Lastly, does it have as much staying power? Does it have that same ‘one more quest, one more dungeon run for one more piece of loot or emblem’ that WoW does? Does it dangle that carrot? From what I can see, LotrO attracts more of the roleplayer and explorer and less of the powergamer and ‘munchkin’, to use a term I picked up today. The thing is, powergamers and hardcore epeen players tend to attract casuals. For better or worse, Gearscore mentality in WoW enforces a ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ feeling within WoW, a gravy train of trying to impress others that we all invariably end up boarding. Because that’s human nature. WoW is huge because it’s not really all that much like Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a lot more like Facebook, or in fact a lot more like Real Life.

Ultimately I think LotrO will attract a number of additional people, but I don’t see it upsetting the resident gorilla’s perch at the top. WoW creates this desire to be the best, to have the best gear, to be the highest rated arena player, to be in a top guild. It’s a competitive game. LotrO, on the other hand, is a friendlier, more co-operative game. And when it comes down to it, we’re all sharks, we’re all looking out for number one. It’s a dog eat dog world…of warcraft.