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LotRO’s Cash Shop and Where It Leads

Throughout the transition period, I’ve done my best to support Turbine and Lord of the Rings Online. As a lifetime subscriber, the change to freemium meant very little for me – and, still do. So, while I empathized with players terrified of what the changeover meant for them, I couldn’t exactly share their fear.

That’s all still true today, but the recent unveil of the cash shop leaves me a bit worried for the future. There’s a lot of controversy about the things they’re selling. Permanent stat buffs, rep. mounts, super-powered potions, and Get Out of Grind Free passes abound.

You guys know me, I’m a blogger, so I’ve got to share my opinion about anything and everything. Honestly, much of what’s for sale is flying under my radar.

I don’t mind the rep. mounts, honestly, for the same reason I didn’t mind Blizzard re-using Naxx and Onyxia: developers and artists worked hard on this stuff and giving players another option to experience it is a good thing.

The accelerated deed and virtue items also don’t bother me because I’m not a grinder. I don’t mind killing mobs to help level, but killing hundreds and thousands of mobs for an extra 2% to some stat – that, as a leveler, doesn’t really matter to me anyways – isn’t my cup of tea. I would gladly pay a few bucks to save myself the hours of wasted time. Yes, monotonously killing low-level mobs is a waste of time. While I sit there, doing the most boring of MMO legwork, my mind drifts to the other things I could be doing and, before you know it, I’m logged out and doing them.

Selling the virtue stuff is like selling player retention. Why should they bother slamming their head against a wall when they could be playing something else? The deed grind should be completely reworked, in my opinion, but this is the next best thing. Kind of lame for the people who ground it out, though.

Finally, the stat boosters are what worry me. They’re small, but as Syp rightly notes in the article linked above, without them, you’re an unoptimized raider. And, as Keen points out, the sale of these items has a direct impact on the larger game world — even on players who never buy a thing. That means, by endgame, the guy who buys the stat pack has the advantage. It seems to me that any raid team serious about progression will consider this a requirement. Something about that just seems wrong.

The MMO genre is moving closer and closer towards F2P dominance. Is this what we have to look forward to, being outmatched by our neighbors pocketbook? I know that beta players are saying the boosts are really minimal, and that’s cool, but it’s this kind of move that really makes free-to-play look like a sham. I realize that this is the price we pay for losing the subscription model, but at no other time is it more evident that free-to-play isn’t really free at all. With subscription games, you pay for equality. With a cash shop, you pay to be free from inequality.

No one wants to be a drag because they couldn’t do as good as the guy with the cash shop item. No one also wants to be told that they have to buy a stat pack if they want to raid on Friday. The closer we get to free-to-play, the more and more likely that seems.

I want to throw this one to Ferrel for a comment, but also to all of you, too. As a raid leader, would this be the kind of thing you would require you raiders to have?

Or am I getting too far ahead of myself? For the most part, I’m still really looking forward to the move, but these thoughts hung with me today. I’d like to think there’s something there.

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