It seems the switch to the free-to-play business model is working well for Turbine as it was announced today that the third Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Rise of Isengard, is the best selling Lotro expansion to date.
Although no specific sales figures have been released yet, Turbine did mention that pre-purchases fueled the record breaking sales numbers for Rise of Isengard. It’s also safe to say that going F2P also helped to contribute to the numbers as membership numbers have been steadily increasing since the switch.
The first two expansions were also released when LOTRO was still a subscription based game and subscribers were steadily declining. It seems F2P has turned the tide in a big way for LOTRO and Turbine. In January it was also revealed that Turbine has tripled its revenue since the switch to F2P.
Fluff piece. They “wont release any numbers”, but they’re saying it’s the “best selling”? Right.
Two years in the making… Incomplete, bugs, NO 3 man or 6 man Instance. Not even enough quests to get you to 75 and thats IF you can find them all. Why did they even beta test this thing? They released it with the known bugs that were in the game even before the beta that they KNEW about. Two years in the making and all we got was “We’ll fix that later, We’ll put that in with the next patch etc.”. It looks Great visually but when you have to do OLD instances that you have done a million times already in order to get the new armor set something is wrong.Just one week into the release and a vast majority of players are already back to full time PvP because the PvE world is Dead. Two Years in the making and all we paid for is the level to 75 the rest is lipstick on a pig. Maybe it is the bests selling expansion ever, since Ive seen people who left the game a year ago return to play this expansion. Unfortunetly some of these same people have already left out of share frustration. So yeah best selling ever. I highly doubt they will be able to say the same thing for the next expansion in say another TWO years.