Picking flowers to gain best in slot equipment: how LOTRO monetizes its endgame gear grind

It's Thursday evening; I'm home after a long day. He had picked me up from the station and now he was finishing dinner. Happy he was taking care so well of an exhausted me, I gave him a big hug - but he just gloomily stared at the wall. "What's up?" I asked. "Did I do something wrong?" "No, it's not you." Conrad replied, adding a dramatic pause. I looked at him inquisitively. "It's Turbine", he continued in a dark voice. "Today is a black day in history. Lord of the Rings Online is introducing the worst cash grabbing endgame gear I've ever seen. I can't believe they are going through with this... That, and Trump is going to be president."

So what was that all about?

It's hard to not get attached to one's first MMO. Lord of the Rings Online was this for me and Conrad both. With the introduction of the free-to-play model we watched with sadness how more and more immersion breaking "buy this in the Store" buttons were added, while increasingly many functions became gated behind Turbine Points, even for subscribing players. But we kept playing, because virtual Middle-earth was beautiful, its inhabitants our friends and the raids challenging. Only when no new group content was released for years there was nothing left for us, and our kinship gradually moved over to Star Wars: the Old Republic (SWTOR).

This year, however, actual group content was added to LOTRO: the Osgiliath cluster (two 3-man and one 6-man instance) and the Pelennor cluster (two 3-man, one 6-man instance and one 12-man raid). Especially the Pelennor raid was a big surprise, as the last full-feature raid was added five years ago. So Conrad and I returned to LOTRO with the intent to ignore its flaws and just smell the roses. What we did not know is that Turbine would be taking that last bit literally.

Ithilien is full of beautiful flowers. Spending days picking them was not on my wishlist, though.

LOTRO's latest update added North Ithilien. With it, a new tier of essences*, jewellery and the option to upgrade raid armour was added to the game that can be acquired by running around in the landscape and picking hundreds of flowers. Yes, you read that right, some of the rewards that can only be acquired by picking flowers are better than rewards earned through group content, including the Throne of the Dread Terror raid.

One of the unwritten rules in MMOs is that harder content should provide with better gear. LOTRO released a new raid earlier this year, their first in four years. It seems logical to encourage people to do this valuable content, especially after so many raiders have left the game. Hence it is mind-boggling that mindless solo grinding rewards you with anything at all that is better that raid rewards. Or is it?

There is a possible explanation for Turbine taking this approach, and it revolves around certain items that can be acquired through either RNG or LOTRO's real money Store. Let's look into this in more detail.

A brief history of best in slot gear in 2016

People that are not familiar with LOTRO's endgame should know that the game has an intricate gear system that is primarily RNG based. It takes a long time to gear up compared to other MMOs. Initially, max level instances and the new tier 2 raid dropped the best in slot gear. However, during the course of 2016 several tiers of new gear have been introduced.

• Update 19: new jewellery was added to the lootboxes of featured instances. Earlier acquired jewellery was not replaced, so players effectively needed to play the same instances in order to get new rewards.
• Update 19: Ithilien essences were introduced from North Ithilien quests (and, officially, instances, but with such a minuscule drop chance it is negligible). The Ithilien morale essences are universally better than the non-Ithilien ones that drop from instances, the others are situationally better. Tier 2 raid armour can be upgraded using flowers, but the essences are destroyed if you don't remove them first.
• Update 19.1: jewellery was added from picking flowers that is better than that of the tier 2 raid.
• An upcoming update (19.2?) will add new Ithilien essences that are better than those that drop from group content. In order to get them, you need to barter a crafted item that requires one extremely rare ingredient (more on this later).

So far, this sounds like an obvious attempt to keep the player occupied with the game by adding new rewards to existing content, so they don't run off to other games. It's not the most chivalrous attitude towards your playerbase, but it's done before in other games (*cough* SWTOR's Dark vs Light event *cough*). Turbine just takes it to a whole new level. Nothing new here, right? 

However, there is another thing going on here that is hard to see for those who are not deeply involved with the LOTRO's endgame gear system. I mentioned earlier that getting best in slot equipment is a huge grind. It is a grind that you cannot skip if you want to do the hardest available content, because the amount of incoming damage in tier 2 instances is such that you will simply die without the amount of morale and mitigations essence gear allows for. Non essence gear does not offer enough total stats. Some of the more rare items that are imperative to acquiring essence gear are, conveniently, available for purchase in the LOTRO Store.

A crash course to LOTRO's essence gear system

Essence gear is armour or jewellery that has empty slots, called "sockets". These slots can be filled with essences. However, once an essence is put in, it cannot be taken out without using a special consumable item, the essence reclamation scroll. These scrolls can be bartered for at NPCs (for instance for faction items), but they are not cheap. They can also be bought from the LOTRO Store.

My lore-master's gear. Highlighted is the chest set bonus piece with four filled essence slots

Essences come in three tiers: purple, teal and gold. Purple essences can randomly drop from instances and raids. The other tiers need to be crafted. Each crafted essence needs an essence from the previous tier and a universal solvent, among other things. Solvents can be acquired randomly, but they are rare. They are guaranteed to drop from challenge mode in Pelennor instances (1 from 3-mans, 2 from the 6-man); however, this is per group, not per character, so you will still need to roll for it. However, solvents can also be acquired... you guessed it, in the LOTRO Store.

The essence system is so sophisticated that it is difficult to get an understanding of the scale of things. I will try to illustrate this. Some classes can 'get away' with using some non essence armour or jewellery with a good set bonus, but in the worst case scenario a character needs (18 sockets for the jewellery, 24 for the armour, 1 for the cloak, 1 for the class item) a total of 44 essences. Two universal solvents per essence are needed to transform them to the best in slot gold tier, meaning that you need (4 x 44 =) 88 universal solvents.

Believe me when I say these items will take months of intensive grind to acquire, and then we're just talking about one character build - imagine wanting an alternate build, or to gear up an alt. Want to tank on your captain in addition to DPSing? See you in two months. Or you could just buy that 25 universal solvent pack from the Store for 700 Turbine Points. Hmm, tempting.

If you don't want to spend Turbine Points yourself, you'll probably end up buying them for 50-100 gold from someone else who got them from the Store to make some quick in-game gold. Either way, real money is spent on Turbine Points. The rules of supply and demand keep this system operational.

More flower picking incoming

I briefly mentioned flower picking above. At the moment, upcoming changes involving more Ithilien flowers are live on Bullroarer (LOTRO's test server). They introduce the gold tier of Ithilien essences that will be universally better than anything currently available. The keyword seems to be grind. Below is a video from a beta tester that I wholeheartedly recommend watching if you're interested in the amount of RNG involved (initially this content was intended to go live with 19.1, hence the title). It's astonishing.

LOTRO U19.1 Coverage part 1/2 by Thomas Huayra (Beta material) (Source)

I know this is still officially up to change. But I do find it worrying that Thomas, after having picked over five hundred flowers, was starting to wonder if these new rare ingredients were live on the test server at all. And then, when he eventually got one to drop (just before he was going to give up), it was bound to account and meant for a different vocation. So if you don't have an army of crafting alts on the top level crafting tier, you may even end up with a super rare material that you cannot use, nor trade with someone else.

To clarify: by running around and clicking for hours (I would love to know how many), Thomas got the special ingredient that allows him to craft one essence. And you need around 40. Not to mention that you need a teal Ithilien essence for the recipe, for which you also need flowers. Update 19.2? The grind is strong with this one.

Edit: Thomas let me know it took him five hours of non stop flower picking to get the ingredient. He also told me he did not run into any competition for the flowers because he was playing on the test server; he expects it would take longer on the live servers because people would have to fight over flowers (they disappear when picked).

Food for thought

One wonders why this new gear is even being added. The only thing it does is add more power creep, which is the absolute last thing LOTRO needs. You don't need the new gear to beat any in-game challenges, so it only serves to cheapen the experience by allowing characters to be more powerful than the instances were designed for. From a gameplay and balancing perspective, there is no reason for this gear to exist; it is clearly a decision driven entirely by the desire for increased revenue.

This suspicion is only reinforced by the fact that new tiers of gear are added gradually, rather than being released all at once, so that every time players need to buy new essence reclamation scrolls to upgrade or replace their essence gear, rather than only having to do that once.

I have shown above how Turbine is continuously adding gear grind as a substitute for new content and an incentive to buy items in the Store. Now, before the fanboys and -girls leap upon me, this post is not about me hating the game. I love Lord of the Rings Online; its landscape, cute quests, festivals and group content in particular. I have written many posts on this blog that celebrate those aspects. It is possible to love a game, but dislike a specific aspect of it. This post is also not about attacking LOTRO's successful free to play model, or invoking the end of LOTRO. It is about identifying the recent disturbing trend of monetizing endgame gear, that can be - at best - described as borderline pay to win.

Equally worrying is the absence of community feedback on these changes. The raiders that used to be vocal about this kind of thing have either voted with their feet, leaving for other games, or have given up after having written threads full of helpful feedback that was ignored (one such a specimen is sitting right next to me). The blogosphere is silent as well. I only know of a handful of LOTRO blogs, and they write about fashion, roleplay events or their personal adventures. It is up to the playerbase to voice our concerns with the development team; remaining silent is effectively signalling that monetizing gear is okay. Am I the only one who is unhappy about this?

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* Essences are comparable to modifications in SWTOR to a certain extent, but they can be upgraded (twice) by crafting (only when not slotted) and cannot be taken out nor replaced once slotted without a specific consumable item. Both crafting ingredients and the consumable to take them out can be purchased from the LOTRO Store.

IntPiPoMo count: 19/50. Not counting unfashionable pictures with UI elements.