Is anyone else as happy about this as I?

[Kerzan]

LotRO is going free to play! So an awesome game that we all for some reason ended up quitting is now going free to play. That is fucking awesome. My only gripe is you have to be a premium member to do the monster play which is fucking stupid cause that means no one will ever do it.

*Edit*
Just found my Mines of Moria box and it has 3 Buddy keys. While the game isn't F2P yet might be fun to play around and see if we want to play when it's F2P. I know most of us have accounts already but as these are expansion keys you might be able to put them in and get the 2 weeks free. I only have 3 so first 3 get it. However, if you never played before there is a free trial thingy through the site too that definitely won't work for the people with accounts already. I'm already reupping my account as I usually play something in the summer and I'm sick of WoW. Let me know if you want 2 free weeks of LotRO fun.

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[HPanda]

Could be interesting. I think we originally quit because it was too much like WoW, though. The starting areas were pretty fun, but it kinda fell apart after that.

[Kerzan]

Well if you wanna try to use a key let me know. I'm still patching ATM. I enjoy the game the main reason I stopped playing last summer was I had no one to play with and got interested in WoW.

[HPanda]

Whatever. If everyone else plays, I'll play. Just know that going free is kind of a sign that the game is in its death throes.

[Kerzan]

Um not really. It's Turbines new business plan. In fact everything I have read has stated nothing but positives about the game. The two expansions have both won awards. At the end of last year there was a rumor that servers were gonna merge to which the lead guy said the game is doing fine in fact it's growing. The reason they are going F2P has nothing to do with the game dieing. At this point in semi-popular MMO's life it's good business. The game has never had WoW like numbers and is just looking to up the player base. All it's gonna do is get more people playing and Turbine will lose little money and in fact possibly make a boat load of money. Just look at the faq about the F2P move and you will get what I mean.

DDO did the same thing (another Turbine game) and was basically the guinea pig for LotRO to see if it would be a worth while move. Obviously it did well enough for DDO for Turbine to decide to do it with LotRO which has always been a much more popular game.

As far as everyone else playing it I don't think Geist has seen this yet and Mentoc never reads the forums.

[HPanda]

Wiggy. Well, we have til the Fall to wait until it's F2P, anyway. I wonder what sort of limitations they'll have in place once it becomes F2P. My guess is that one or two classes will cost money, and the levels will be capped (though possibly with an in-game item to remove the cap per character), if they're following DDO 's model.

[Kerzan]

My first link in the op leads to the info on the f2p model. The f2p is the original game. To get higher requires the expansions to be purchased. There is limits on amount of chars per server and other things based on account status. All of us with accounts are premium and would have 3 chars a server and carry 5g etc.

[HPanda]

They're also still in beta for it, so things are prone to change.

[Geist_Wolf]

I'm more than willing to give it a try. I mean, hell, I actually have DDO on my comp and play it time to time but get bored quick cuz no one else does. The main reason I left LotRO was cuz my comp wasn't very happy with it, but that was an old comp. And maybe because it was wowish and would have rather spent the money on wow. But if it's free I'll play it. Started the download now so send me a buddy key for the expansion.

Holy Crap, they are going to add DX11 support with that next big update... so it already supporst DX10?

[Kerzan]

Holy Crap, they are going to add DX11 support with that next big update... so it already supports DX10?

Yup, I'm running everything at max and still have like a 60+ fps. I'll send everyone a key. I'm having a blast in it with my Hunter and Rune Master. Might play my guardian tho if we find we need a tank. I know HPanda and Mentoc were minstrels. I'll send Mentoc a text so he knows to look here for a key after I hear if they work.