Legal Niches

Turbine: LOTRO Doubles Subscriber Base as a Free-To-Play Game

By james_fudge

Speaking at GDC Online this week, Turbine's Katie Paiz (executive producer on Lord of the Rings Online) said that revenues had doubled since the MMO switched from a subscription-based service to free-to-play last month. She also said that the game had attracted over a million new registrations and a 400 percent increase in active players.

"When you tell people you no longer have to pay for it, they come in droves," said Paiz. This is the second game that Turbine has revamped and relaunched to be free-to-play; the first was Dungeons & Dragons Online.

Other interesting data from Kaiz: 20 percent of players that stopped paying for the game returned when it became free; to the game now enjoys three times the number of simultaneous online players; and 53 percent of players spent money on micro transactions.

Source: Joystiq

Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on October 09, 2010 (boomark / email).