Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) has become a free-to-play success story for developer Turbine and publisher Codemasters. The game first launched in April 2007 to critical acclaim. In September 2010, the North American region of the game made the move to a free-to-play model, following on the heels of the successful Dungeons & Dragons Online free-to-play switch.
The EU region was to follow shortly afterwards in November 2010. The free-to-play model allows access to the majority of game features, with Premium and VIP players being granted certain bonus features. MyGaming previously confirmed that EU free-to-play registration was open to South African gamers.
MyGaming ran a few questions past David Solari, Vice President and General Manager for Codemasters Online.
David Solari, Vice President and General Manager for Codemasters Online
For the uninitiated, Solari provides a brief description of the style of MMO to expect with LOTRO: “The Lord of the Rings Online is a fantasy MMO based on the world of J.R.R Tolkien, following the adventures of Aragorn, Frodo and the Fellowship as they travel to Mordor to destroy the ring. Players are thrown into the mix in supporting roles, working behind the scenes, helping the Fellowship accomplish their goal and protecting the lands of Middle-earth from Sauron’s dark armies.”
“As you are one of the free people of Middle-earth the game naturally focuses on PvE content, with great expansive landscapes, terrifying dungeons and exciting combat. In addition to this LOTRO also offers Monster Play, the ability to take on the role of one of Sauron’s minions, offering a PvP experience where you fight against the free people in certain areas of the world,” said Solari.
Solari explained the reasoning behind implementing a free-to-play model with LOTRO: “Codemasters Online have previously taken two subscription MMOs (RF Online and ArchLord), to the Free to Play model and have always been supportive of making changes to further broaden the audience that the product is available to. When Turbine took Dungeons and Dragons Online to Free to Play last year they saw an immediate effect and it was determined that this could only be a good thing for LOTRO as well, which we are in full support of.”
The EU region is the likely stomping ground for SA players. Discussing the way in which European servers are managed, and the possibility of a dedicated SA server, Solari said “all of the servers operated by Codemasters Online are located within the same datacenter in Amsterdam, which provides a good level of service to our customers in all the regions. If there is noticeable demand for a datacenter in a specific region it is something can we look to providing, though at this time we have no plans to expand to additional datacenters.”
Solari stated that Codemasters does not publically provide detailed statistics on the LOTRO operation, and thus wasn’t able to reveal the number of registered South African players. He did state that the free-to-play model has generated significant growth across all supported regions, and the EU region recently hit the milestone of 1 million sales since launch.
South African gamers like to stick together and MyGaming asked Solari if he knew which particular server has the greatest number of SA players among the population: “This isn’t currently something that we track through our reporting. We’ll have a look into [this] and see if we can provide some demographics to our players about which servers are popular in each region. We do however encourage players to get involved in our community – the best way to find out which server is popular for a specific nationality is to ask on our forums and see what the other players say.”
Solari’s recommendation for the best server to cater to SA players was ‘Gilrain.’
Discussing future content updates Solari said: “There will be a new update in early December. Following on from that in the first part of next year you will see new raids and group instances introduced for the higher level characters in the game as well as later in the year a new digital expansion, Rise of Isengard.”
MyGaming’s readers also had a chance to pose some question to Solari:
Q: Will the European servers receive forums of equal quality to that of Turbine’s US forums? For example, Euro forums do not allow for sigs/armory showcasing of characters.
Solari: “We are working with Turbine closely to provide new features for our community, keep an eye out for future announcements about this.”
Q: Will there be a reshuffling of PvP on the cards any time soon? Perhaps Arena teams? With the lack of opposing factions, there’s not much in terms of PVP happening in the game.
Solari: “There aren’t any plans at this time to introduce arenas to the game, though the next expansion Rise of Isengard will be introducing some significant improvements to the Monster Play experience.”
Q: What sort of items/rewards can we expect in the LOTRO store which we’re getting points for?
Solari: “The store is there to provide convenience to our VIP players and access to content for Free and Premium players, this focus won’t change any time soon as we believe it is the best approach to take with the store. This means that in the future you can expect to see more cosmetic items, more convenience items, more quest packs and basically more of everything that you can already see in the store.”
Q: Are there going to be improvements to the look of characters, so that individuals can feel a little more unique within the game world?
Solari: “There are some plans being worked on now that will further expand on the cosmetic items found in the game, introducing new outfits, new items of clothing and more customisation options, which you will see added to the game over the next twelve months.”
Wrapping up, MyGaming asked Solari about his personal LOTRO characters: “If I shared my character name I’d be a priority target in the Ettenmoors,” he joked. “I have a level 65 Rune Keeper and a level 62 Minstrel; both are damage spec. I play in a group with another minstrel – I’ve played everything to about level 10 though. I play on Laurelin.”
Those interested in signing up for Lord of the Rings Online should visit the LOTRO website.
Discuss MyGaming’s interview with Lord of the Rings Online and Codemaster’s David Solari on the MyGaming forum.
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