The Lord of the Rings Online Free-to-Play Interview
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Will there be any sort of dual VIP package for LotRO and DDO?The only issue I see with this is that The Lord of the Rings Online is an open world MMORPG, making content packs much tougher to implement in comparison to Dungeons & Dragons Online's instance-heavy adventure setup. I'm sure they'll pull it off, but it will be interesting to see how the final product turns out.
Right now there's no plan to do so. We've got a lot of IPs in the background, a lot of business arrangements with people. From the player perspective it's very simple to create a Turbine Pass, but it's complicated in the background with all the different licensors and distribution partners we have around the world. We clearly see that there might be some opportunities in the future, but right now each game has got its own thing going on, and the only thing they're going to share right now is a similar business model.
Can you give us some hints regarding what sorts of things we'll find in the LotRO store?
Absolutely! We're going to be offering content packs, so a player who comes into the game will have all of the launch races and classes available. The Rune-keeper and the Warden, which were introduced with the Moria expansion pack, will be purchaseable items individually or as part of the Moria bundle. That's one thing you can get. You'll be able to get more character slots. When you get into the game you'll have all of Bree, the Shire, Ered Luin -- that's all completely free. That's about 800 quests, and that includes the epic story up to level 50. There are going to be content packs -- some of the optional quests in a region, each region has between 80 and 200 quests. You'll be able to walk through the landscape, hunt monsters within the landscape and get XP for that, and then choose to purchase the content packs if you wish.
There will also be cosmetic items, convenience items, horses, XP boosts, things like that. It's going to be a very rich offering for anyone who's looking to enhance or ease their gameplay a little bit.
One thing that I want to make sure that everyone's aware of is that we're not selling gear. There may be something like they do in DDO where low-level players can get a foot up when they start the game, if they're a little nervous and looking for a little help, that might be possible in the future. But it's never our intention to sell raid loot or endgame-quality gear and items because we feel like questing and getting that great loot is a big part of the game and we don't want to lose sight of that.
