With the relaunch of Lord of the Rings Online as a free-to-play title, it's another sign that the MMO industry is shifting away from the subscription-only model. Jerome Lalin, Turbine's Vice President Marketing, is very bullish on the MMO model the company first used on Dungeons and Dragons Online Unlimited.
“The audience has shifted. The industry is not entirely shifting though,” said Lalin. “It takes some guts I must say to change a business model and many have failed either by changing or by not changing. But overall I would be concerned if I was to launch a game that only offers a subscription model to players in the future.”
“Going free-to-play means a lot of headaches and additional work for the development and marketing teams,” he added. “You are best positioned when the game is designed as a free-to-play game from the start. Retro-fitting free-to-play is a design and organizational challenge. Given the nature of our games, we were able to take on the design challenge quite well. It’s a lot of effort to think in constant terms of monetization and content itemization while building a game that is fun to play and balanced over 1,000+ hours! It’s a lot of work but it is a greater reward as well.”
To read more about the marketing campaign behind Lord of the Rings Online going free, please visit [a]list for the full interview.
1 Comments
September 13, 2010
I think freemium or subscription based is really a question of the the IP you are working with. For mainstream franchises like Warcraft and Star Wars, It seems the strength of these IPs are enough to merit a subscription right out of the gate.
On the other hand, Turbine has certainly found some success with the freemium model even while working primarily with two well established IPs (D&D and LOTR). In any case, it will be interesting to see how the LOTRO userbase changes with the switch to freemium.