Today on the official LOTRO forums, community manager Sapience posted a clarification to the Helms Deep pre-purchase information that set off quite a flurry of discussion around the community. The original question was asking for clarification on what is included in the Helms Deep expansion order (for pay) and what will be granted to all players (for free). The response:
Requires purchase of the Helm’s Deep expansion pack
- Battle of Helm’s Deep (Epic Battles).
- Epic Story.
- Western Rohan/Helm’s Deep Content (Quests).
Does not require Expansion Pack Purchase
- Class Changes.
- Level Cap increase.
- Additional Crafting Tier.
The thing that caught everybody’s attention right away was bullet #2 under the “requires purchase” header. The reason: LOTRO’s Epic Stories have all been free for some period of time, certainly as long as I’ve been playing, and the expectation from the player base was that they always would be. In fact, there are many players who have been around since the free to play transition who claim that Turbine actually made a promise that the Epic Story would always be free. I haven’t been able to find that promise, but Sapience did make a reference to it a couple of years ago, so I’m assuming that Turbine did make it at some point in the past.
Sapience went on to attempt justification of charging for the epic:
The Epic Story in Helm’s deep is very tightly entwined with the Epic Battle system. The story in Helm’s Deep is the Epic battle we all know from the books. We’ve returned to the core story line from the lore and that line leads in a direct path, laid out by the Professor himself, into Helm’s Deep and the battles and heroic deeds that occur there. As a result, this means the Epic story requires the purchase of the Helm’s Deep expansion. Otherwise you’d not be able to complete it as it moves through the Epic Battle system.
Now that I’ve reported on the facts, I guess it’s time to give my opinion. To be honest, on my first realization that the epic would not be free, I was pretty shocked. I think I always had the expectation that that part of the game would always be free to all players, if only because it always had been. Next, I got a little sad. I’ve always been able to hold LOTRO up as a “true” free to play example, because the epic was always there to be experienced by anybody who downloaded the game. It was a shining example of how to pull off a hybrid model. In fact, if it weren’t for free to play, I wouldn’t be writing this post right now. Now, when detractors speak of the ills and evils of the hybrid model, I have that much less ammunition with which to return fire.
However, I think Turbine put themselves in somewhat of a no-win situation when they decided to return to following the books. It was a decision that was unanimously applauded when the consequences were not yet clear. By closely intertwining the book stories with the epics, they ensured that the Battle of the Hornburg would have to be a part of the epic storyline. You can’t follow the stories from Two Towers without a Helms Deep.
As far as the expansion goes, they could do one of two things. They could continue to give away the epic storyline which includes the big battle at Helms Deep, but in doing so, would have difficulty charging the targeted price points of $40 and $60 for what would amount to a quest pack, lest they enrage those who only paid 995 TP for Wildermore. Charging less for the expansion was likely out of the question to the brass at the WB. Their money and development cycles was likely spent mostly on big battles and the class revamps. It would be very difficult to give both of those away for free, taking into account the considerable development costs of both. Execs like to see a return on all of the investment time/dollars they’ve allocated to your team. Charging for the class revamps is not technically feasible. Since you can’t have some players using the skill trees and some opting not to pay for them, the natural conclusion is that you need to charge for the big battles, which we’ve previously established are closely tied to the epic story.
So, Turbine has chosen what they see as the lesser of two evils, to charge for the big battles and the epic, disregarding their promise to players that the epic storyline will always be free to everybody. This will anger a certain segment of the player base, especially those who actually remember “the promise”, but they can more easily justify the price tag of the expansion and recoup the development costs for the game.
In other words, I can see the business side of things. However, I don’t necessarily agree with the way this new information was presented. In my most humble opinion (as a player), if you’re going to go back on a promise you’ve made to your customer base (especially if your slogan is “powered by our fans”), you need to come out and tell them, and give a good reason. Waiting for the players to decipher your marketing material, and then bringing it up only as an answer to a question in the forums makes it look like you’re trying to sneak it past your customers. I have a feeling the way this information came out is not going to sit will with a large portion of the player base. It’s like the instance snafu from Riders of Rohan, except this time they can’t undo (and re-do) it.
Update:
MadeofLions has posted a response in the forums explaining some of the history of the epic story development and walking us through Turbine’s decision process for this change. (Thanks Jonathon from Twitter for the link). He’s pretty much validated my conjecture above, but makes no mention of any past Turbine promise to keep the epics forever free. Here’s the crux of the issue:
(in reference to the Rise of Isengard epic story)
I had a choice to make. We could make the Epic in such a way that it avoided all those iconic locations that are part of the ‘expansion content,’ and that way the Epic could remain separate from the expansion and stay free. Or we could keep it the way it is and charge for the Epic as part of the expansion, so you only get to play the Epic in Isengard if you bought the Isengard expansion. But there was a third choice, and it’s the one we went with: I could refuse to change the Epic, keeping it in Isengard with all of the iconic things and happenings there, and we keep it free. It’s certainly the biggest public relations win – I mean, who doesn’t love free stuff? We were adored as heroes of the people, and life was good.
But there would come a time in the future when the decision wasn’t so easy. What if there were a system looming on the horizon that would be the centerpiece of an expansion, such that everything was tied into it, and the Epic Story needed to interweave with it in such a way that we couldn’t separate the two, but we also couldn’t give you the entire system for free? Ah, I’m sure our Future Selves will handle it.
Well, here we are in the future, confronted with a system that allows you to experience the Battle of the Hornburg in all its rainy glory, and an Epic Story that would be doing you a disservice if it didn’t tell the story of that battle. There are players who play the Epic even without buying the expansions, and I am sorry that this is a change for you guys. But it’s a change that serves to reward the players that do pick up the expansion, and makes the expansion a better deal, more worth your time and your money. This is just an expansion change for now – I’m hoping we can keep the Epic Story free in other updates. But for big expansions I’d expect that it’ll be featured as one of the Things You Get on the ‘virtual box.’
The good news is that they don’t seem to think this sets a prescedent to charge for epic story moving forward – for non-expansion updates, anyway. However, that word “hope” along with recent deteriorating credibility makes me somewhat skeptical.
Again, I think if this would have been better communicated and at an earlier stage, players would have been a little more understanding. As it is, it remains to be seen whether “better late than never” actually holds.
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