Better hurry, LoTRO is selling lvl 50 characters ‘for a limited time’ everyone…
Aside from “Lulz, LotRO”, the question I have is when will Turbine just fully embrace P2W for the game? They keep creeping towards it one update at a time while still trying to convince people that’s not the model. Why?
P2W works, both for companies and for players. Why not become the first ‘AAA’ MMO that fully embraces P2W in the west? Sell raid-level gear, maxed characters, gold, boosts, teleportation; the works. Let someone who wants to only experience the story quests do so by paying to remove the game/challenge aspects. If someone wants to PvP without worrying about characters or gear, let them pay for that as well. Want to just wander around the environments? We have a cash shop item for that!
By creeping towards P2W but denying it at every step, you only piss off both sides. P2W players aren’t getting what they fully want, and P2W haters have something to bitch about every patch. LotRO has long since stopped being about keeping the lore pure, or being WoW in the LotR setting.
Embrace what we all know you will eventually be anyway LotRO.
Hardcore Casual 
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I think there is clearly a correlation between “gamers getting older” and the trend towards things like P2W where they can invest less time and more real cash. It’s definitely true that as you get older, you tend to have less time and more disposable income.
In any event… I don’t think just because you are getting older and these types of things are becoming more attractive to you personally that it’s good for gaming in general.
Oh, I’d have zero interest in the game P2W or not. I just think if you are going to do something, might as well do it well.
hahaha. After reading this on massively, I was betting you will post about it and was waiting for this :) I think they are close to sell the One Ring as you said once
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A game so fun you’ll pay to not play it. Awesome.
Can I ask how it is pay to win exactly. Who would I be winning against if I did purchase, the others still levelling?
It’s not, especially since it only boosts you to 50 rather than the cap. It will be closer once you can buy a capped character, and they make reaching the cap ‘naturally’ much harder, ala something like Atlantica Online. Hence creeping in the title.
It is actually “pay to not lose” http://greedygoblin.blogspot.gr/2013/12/pay-to-not-lose.html
Clicked link, read first line, said line is wrong, closed page.
Tough to keep reading when the strawman falls over so quickly.
maybe the “not successful” is not going to the selling product itself, but overall for the game..think “allods”. Pey to win items may sell very well, but the game fail after sort cause the majority of players will drop that game and that will leave whales only…but in a game with whales only, you can’t have advantage.
Allods is one example, although an odd one considering its mostly a themepark (or was way back when it launched and I tried it, who knows now).
Atlantica Online, almost all the top 10 iPhone games, countless MMOs in Asia, MtG (both online and off); all examples of successful P2W.
You got me here cause I have absolutely no idea about asian MMOs except those that made it to the west…I still think Aion and tera are on the list of “pay not to lose” though…I heard some complaints for Age of Wushu but did not played it.
To clear things out, I am against the f2p model even if it is the category of “pay not to lose”. I just have made that distinction between f2p games for ecyclopedian reasons :)
Read a few more lines of Gevlon, and we have this:
“You can buy faster XP gain and gold tanks in World of Tanks. You can buy faster XP and IP gains and champions in League of Legends. Yet these games aren’t considered “pay to win”.”
First, LoL isn’t pay-to-anything. Nothing you can buy effects what you can do in a ranked match. Getting to the point of playing ranked (max XP) is like paying to skip the tutorial.
WoT back when it had gold ammo as a cash-only item was clearly P2W (the devs even said so when they removed shop-only gold ammo). Gold ammo let you win X% of matches vs playing without it; that’s the definition of P2W.
People like to strawman up that ‘true’ P2W is buying godmode, or a 100% winrate. It’s not, as that kind of model clearly would not work (nor has ever been attempted, anywhere, to the best of my knowledge).
Edit: I need to stop reading his post, because line after line the wrong just keeps stacking up:
“These games doesn’t have a “game over, you lost” screen or a nice endgame cinematics celebrating your victory.”
WoT/LoL don’t have a ‘victory/defeat’ screen after a match huh? LoL doesn’t have ranks where at the end of the season what reward you get is based on your rank, and those ranks only allow a certain % of players in? Good ol’ tackle-titan Gevlon in action.
Yet still more interesting to talk about than Darkfail, apparently.
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