So we just had a mighty big bombshell dropped on us today. The yearly Executive Producers Letter, normally a brief summary of the year’s achievements and an incredibly vague hint at the next year to come, has, among other things, stated that there will be no expansion release for 2014. Take a moment for that to sink in, folks. Indeed, this news is so big that we at LOTRO Players decided to get together and discuss our reactions to it!
That’s not all the letter revealed either. Turbine has also decided to have quarterly major updates, including three(and maybe four) landscape releases such as Fangorn, the Paths of The Dead and the Dead Marshes, as well as focusing more on improving the various systems already in place in LOTRO.
They have also requested player feedback on certain aspects that will see changes in the coming year, including Inventory and Bag Space, Festivals and Events and the long awaited Housing revamp which has officially been pushed back to 2014.
Check out the forum thread linked at the top for more information, and also give the video above a listen for our initial thoughts and reactions to this huge, huge news!
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To me, this implies a few things:
1. Turbine no longer has enough employees working on LOTRO to put out a package of content worthy of an expansion-sized price tag every 12 months. That’s okay with me. I’d prefer that Turbine not drive away LOTRO’s few remaining veteran designers and developers by pushing them to meet unrealistic goals.
2. Revenue streams have reached a tipping point where the cash from new players paying for existing content and systems has outpaced the money from veteran players paying for new stuff. It’s in Turbine’s (and therefore LOTRO’s) best interest to make the existing content and systems worth paying for.
3. Player activity in LOTRO has reached a plateau where Turbine feels safe enough to give itself a breather. The game’s steady decline in player activity over the past three years actually leveled off in the last six months–a time when absolutely zero new content was released. What LOTRO has left is a small (but steady) stream of new players who don’t need an expansion, and a core of dedicated fans who will keep playing (and paying) just because it’s Middle-earth.
I like the idea that they will focus on fixing bugs and polishing systems. The games feels like a bit of a hot mess to me right now. It lacks a certain cohesion from level 1 to 95 and from system to system. UI windows no longer share unified art, icons are a mess, we cannot examine other player’s trait setups, etc.
Also, hopefully this break will give the current roster of devs some time to get up to speed with both the game and with the source material. Things like new skill icons having different borders than every other skill icon in the history of the game shows that the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing, and that’s just one example of the former. Examples of the latter are the many, many inappropriate skill and trait names released with the new trait trees. Skill and trait names almost all used to have names sourced from Tolkien’s text. Now we have inappropriate nonsense like “Sic ‘Em”, “Tenderize”, and skills “cashing out” effects.
I’d absolutely love to see a more polished game by the time we ring in 2015. But I have two thoughts: 1) Does this mean no expansion for two full years? Seems risky with LOTRO’s population but I think Fredelas’s point #2 speaks to this. And 2) Does this have something to do with the license extension? I know they said they’d be “supporting the game for years to come”, but that seems a bit evasive. Is the future after 2014 unclear such that selling an expansion at the end of 2014 is inadvisable?
> 2) Does this have something to do with the license extension? I know they said they’d be “supporting the game for years to come”, but that seems a bit evasive.
I truly think that the reason they didn’t give us a new date on the license extension was so they could avoid the poopstorm that came as a result of people knowing that the previous license agreement was nearing an end. It’s not something they want players worrying about. If I were them, I wouldn’t tell us a date either.
They do work with the Tolkien Estate very closely though so I would be surprised if this is a real issue.
They initially did, but I think the Estate’s conflicts with SZC and WB since the movies has put Turbine’s relationship with them on ice.
Not sure if they actually plan to produce less content in a year or just release it more frequently in smaller chunks.
If they really can’t produce expansion-sized content annually, it’s hard to see them making the expansion-sized annual revenues that go with it. Esp given the new content will be free to VIP.
If that’s truly the case it will be a nasty spiral. Less revenue -> Less staff -> Less new content -> Even less revenue…
This plan might be worse for Turbine than for the players. We can always go play other stuff for a while if we want, but the more we do that, the less income they’ll have.
They can potentially make more money through subscriptions than expansions. If they are able to “bring the value back” to VIP, and augment those subs with store sales, the financial plan should be solid. In fact, monthly subs provide a steadier overal revenue stream than the once-a-year expansion would.
Yeah, it’s kind of a vicious cycle. However, if VIPs had mostly been purchasing expansions with saved-up TP, Turbine may not lose out on as much revenue as we think. I’m sure Turbine will come up with something else to spend TP on.
I think with a $10-15 price tag, players will not only have more reasonable expectations, but also be more forgiving if those expectations are not met. At this point, fewer customers are probably willing to pay $40-60 months in advance.
I honestly think this change is more of a story mandated change. They can’t have another expansion with the Rohan/Isengard line. They also can’t just skip to a new expansion. While players could have had influence on the choice, I think it is more a story-based necessity.
This makes sense. The story breaks into four stories, Turbine plans quarterly releases.
Did anyone else leap to the conclusion that the additional ‘surprise’ they mention will be a New Class for the game? That is the first thing that jumped into MY mind. You don’t necessarily need a new expansion if everyone in the game starts over and plays through all of the old content with a new class. That dovetails with polishing up the existing game systems AND drives a lot of money into their coffers, between making the new class a For Sale item and all the store items that support leveling a new character from scratch! You can bet the new Instant Lvl-50 pocket item would exclude this class initially as well! I think it would be a very shrewd move by them, but hard to accommodate with an expansion given their resources and the fact that adding a new class to the game at this stage would have so many tendrils, so I think it makes sense in a lot of ways.
Beornings or bust!
Absolutely! A close second for my vote would be the Druedain led by Ghan Buri Ghan, whom we should be encountering shortly in the epic story line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gh%C3%A2n-buri-Gh%C3%A2n). I picture them as a sort of primitive cross between RK’s and Champions!) (Mystic Brawlers!) which would be a novel class addition.
Personally I think this is good news… I know a lot of plays have said they should take a break to do a major bugfix… I’d like to see this… and from the sounds of it they are releasing new content, just not all in one place… Plus it sounds like there are some big changes coming in terms of housing and this “surprise.” I’d rather they focus on these first… than try to split their attention to a whole expansion… I’d much rather wait longer for a better quality product in the end, and I think that’s what this entails.
Well, that escalated quickly!
I think it’s terrific that they’re directing resources towards improving the game. I agree with others who said that in its current form, the game is a bit of a disjointed mess. I’ve been getting a growing sense of unease about the situation at Turbine when I read interviews and posts by Turbine Devs saying things like “as one of my potential solutions, I’m going to be…” or “That one’s on me, guys. Sorry!”. Lack of new cosmetics at festivals, the decreasing value of VIP, and the increase in the number of thinly-veiled money grabs are all equally frustrating and worrisome.
I like the game, and many of the individual pieces have value, but it’s lacking a cohesive vision. Let’s hope they can take a pretty good game, digest all of our suggestions, and make it great. 🙂
Everyone in the podcast is very hopeful about what it might mean (that there’s no expansion). I’m normally a “glass half full” person, but I can’t help but wonder what this means. Are there legal problems with renewing the license from SZ? Do they plan to shut the game down? Do they not have a budget to hire more staff? What’s really behind this? They seem to say “the players said” a lot, but is that really true? Time will tell.
I can’t remember where I read it, but someone made a good point and addressed the fact that they don’t think the game will shut down completely as in servers are shut down. If the game is no longer updated or supported with further expansions, it is viable that the servers could be maintained for less cost as long as there are enough people still subscribing or paying for TP, etc. I personally hope this game persists for a good long time. I thoroughly enjoy it!
The problem with this game and the reason me and most my guild quit when helms deep was announced is they killed the real end game experience for the crap we have on on live. The originality of end game has been replaced with old raids scalwd up to where we are now with no real raiding aside from epic battles something that should have been pvp based. End game gear went from being earned to being handed out to casuals who dont have to raid. Dont no if thats the way it is now with gear as not played since 4 months after riders of rohan release. And turbine dont care bout end game anymore they made it a casuals mmo. Top all that now with no raids for this expandion declining player base and no expansion fir 2014 makes me think turbine dont really care anymore. A shame what was once a great mmo has become boring and for me the lore isnt enough to keep me playing. Now if tgey took the game back to its roots and made real end game content that was unique and gear was earned again id probs return but in its stat niw no chance. Turbine brought these population decreases on themselves imo but dumbing down the game
Can’t argue with your points about end-game raids. I think you’re probably right about that.
However, I didn’t feel like Hytbold was “handing out end-game gear to casuals”. I had to grind dalies for at least 3 months to get the hytbold gear, maybe longer. That particular grind didn’t feel very casual to me, it just felt like an alternative to the raiding grind for those of us who can’t get 12 people together…well, ever, let alone for nights on-end. I liked having the ability to get good gear for those of us with family lives who can’t schedule a large chunk of our weekend into raiding. I think it’s a mistake to confuse non-raiders with casual players in all cases.