While speaking at a GDC Online 2010 panel, Lord of the Rings Online Executive Producer Kate Paiz announced that since the conversion to a free-to-play from a subscription model, Lord of the Rings online has doubled it’s revenue. Additionally, since converting to free-to-play early last month, LotRO has seen over a million new accounts.
If doubled revenues and 1 million+ new players weren’t enough in the good news department, Paiz also outlined f2p LotRO’s 20 percent return of former players since the conversion. The game has also seen a 300 percent increase in peak concurrency, three times the number of players online at the same time, and a 400 percent increase in total active players.
And now for the financial good news. New and returning players arriving in droves can only mean good news for Turbine’s in-game microtransactions store. Paiz reports that 53 percent of players have made microtransactions purchases, which range from mounts to XP boosting outfits, etc.). And while Turbine has seen a massive influx of new and returning players, with more than half of them taking advantage of the microtransactions, they’ve also seen a rise in subscriptions.
The Turbine decision to switch Lord of the Rings Online to the free-to-play model is their second, preceded by Dungeons and Dragons. Only doing slightly better than LotRO, DDO saw an increase of around 500 percent since converting.
Tags: lord of the rings online, LoTRO, Turbine, Warner Brothers
