Lord of the Rings Online Doubles Revenue After Move to Free-to-Play

I've been a lifetime subscriber since beta. Good to see LOTS of people running around again. The F2P program actually doesn't affect the lifetimers. I haven't paid since April 2007 yet get all the perks of a paid VIP account. WIN!

of course active players shot up 400%...its a free game. will they be around in a month?

I was in the beta way back when, but never subscribed.

I'm playing now, and I've spent about $6 on points, just to get a mount.
Decent game, and free is the right price.

So many haters. IT IS FREE. Turbine is doing great job with the F2P model and have awesome content. DDO was awesome and I (with regret) never bought a thing! Just try it! Don't even buy anything!

Pretty much all MMOs are going to be forced this route, especially when Guild Wars 2 arrives. If they don't cancel the Warhammer 40K MMO, which they should, then this better be the model they choose. Star Wars The Old Republic is doomed.

I have registered, and downloaded the client - really want to get into this but "To run this application you first need...... .NET framework V1.1.4322" -

And that V1.1.4322 .NET framework refuses to install. Can a shacker help?

Windows 7
Radeon HD 4850
4 GB Ram
Athlon Phenom 945

I've never played DDO. Anyone care to summarize how the in-game store works?

The beginning of the end. However at least Turbines F2P setup is pretty good. SoE's current F2P setup with EQ2 is an abomination at the moment. Also kudos to Blizzard from refraining from going balls to wall...yet anyways. Considering their massive success with the dabbling that they have done I imagine that some financial advisors are up Chris Metzen's ass 24/7 about significantly expanding the Blizzard store.

With that said though I can understand why mmo developers are adopting the F2P model. Blizzard has set the bar so high for MMO developers that the traditional monthly sub entry is impossible to meet without an incredible talented staff and financial support to back everything up.

To the naysayers, the initial setup for F2P mmo's is freaking free. The industry overall is going to be moving mainly towards these setups such as F2P and DLC. Get used to it or find a new hobby.

The statistic about how many people have bought something via the store could easily be misleading since there are several quests in the game which introduce you to the store and give you points to spend and then require you to spend those points to finish the quest.

Never gave a rats ass about LOTRO before. This went F2P, I tried it got hooked. Swore I would never spend money on it. Before I knew it, I dropped $20 to get a mount and some other convenience features. I swore that would be the end of my contribution. A month later, I've put a bunch more in and I ended up subscribing.

GG Turbine. gg.