LOTRO's Mordor pre-order deals put in perspective

This week, Lord of the Rings Online announced its upcoming Mordor expansion, including its pre-order options. Whereas other MMOs feed the hype before the release of a new expansion, LOTRO stuck to tradition by causing a huge player outrage with its pre-order offers. Just like in 2012 and 2013, it looks like the player base will spend the last weeks before the release of a major expansion discussing its outrageous pricing rather than eagerly anticipating cool new content.

Mordor expansion pre-order pricing

Let's look at the pricing, and compare it to the previous two expansions:

	Riders of Rohan (2012)	Helm’s Deep (2013)	Mordor (2017)
Basic	$40,-	$40,-	$40,-
Deluxe	$50,-	$60,-	$80,-
Legendary	$70,-	-	$130,-

N.B.: you can find all the pre-order bonuses here on the official LOTRO website. For European players, be prices are €35/£30,- (basic), €75,-/£60,- (deluxe) and €114,-/£100,- (legendary). When pre-ordering, you gain access to the content at August 31st at the latest; if you buy with LOTRO Points (LP), you'll have to wait until "winter". When buying with LP, the basic version will cost 2495 LP; the High Elf race 1000 LP.

Historically, the amount of content in LOTRO’s expansions has steadily decreased. As we can see, the price of the basic edition, however, has stayed the same. The more expensive editions have considerably gone up in price, with the legendary edition now costing almost twice as much as in 2012.

A history of mistrust

It is not the first time LOTRO's pre-order offers cause a stir in the community. Veteran players may still remember the Riders of Rohan pre-order costs in 2012. Back then a essential quality-of-life feature, the sixth inventory bag, was originally exclusive to, and gated behind the legendary edition. Only after a huge player outcry did the developers quickly announce that the bag would be available for separate purchase in the Store as well, upon launch. The pre-order offers for Helm's Deep in 2013 didn't fare much better. So far, each expansion has reinforced the image of the game studio as greedy and out-of-touch with their community. Fast forward five years and nothing has changed.

It's not even the ridiculous price of the legendary edition that's disgruntling most current players: that's obviously meant for fans that want to support the game in any way they can, and it only grants cosmetic fluff on top of the content of the other editions. However, LOTRO's new High Elf race is exclusive to the deluxe and legendary edition. It is used to to push people into buying the deluxe version in a similar fashion as the sixth bag was in 2012.

How expansions are handled in the MMO scape

As we can see from the table above, LOTRO's expansion costs have always been steep. At the time of the game's launch in the late 2000's, a subscription model and money charged for an expansion were the only sources of income for a game development studio. Because of this, higher expansion costs were deemed acceptable by players. However, much has changed since then in the MMO scape. With the introduction of alternative revenue models, such as free-to-play and buy-to-play, the expansion model has been thrown out of the window by many game studios. The focus has shifted to smaller, free updates. In a way, LOTRO's Mordor expansion pricing model still stems from the late 2000's.

To understand why many LOTRO players are upset with the pre-order pricing, we should look at how other MMOs have handled recent expansions.

First off, there's Star Wars: the Old Republic (SWTOR). Although this MMO is strictly speaking free-to-play, it leans heavily on subscriptions. Its last two expansions, Knights of the Fallen Empire (2015) and Knights of the Eternal Throne (2016), are unlocked by subscribing in the month of release (or later). They do not cost an additional fee and if you'd want, you could unsubscribe a month later. The price of a one-month subscription is $15,- or €12,50.

Then there's Guild Wars 2 (GW2). This MMO has one expansion, Heart of Thorns (2015). Similarly to LOTRO, the expansion comes in three editions: a standard edition (€30,-), a deluxe version (€55,-) and an ultimate edition (€80,-). Note, however, that each of these options is cheaper than their LOTRO equivalent. On top of this, GW2 is free-to-play (previously buy-to-play) without the option to subscribe. Because of this, the game studio relies more on the sale of expansions to keep making content; players understand this and are willing to pay more.

Finally, let's look at the market leader: World of Warcraft (WoW). WoW is not free-to-play and relies on subscribers for income. Its latest expansion, Legion (2016), comes in two editions: the standard edition ($50,-/€45,-) and a deluxe edition ($70,-/€60,-). Costing $10,- more than LOTRO's base package, it's the only MMO that charges more for a base edition. However, it's worth noting that Legion contains way more content than the Mordor expansion: at launch, it came with no less than 9 dungeons and two raids. (LOTRO comes with none.) It also includes a new class, whereas a new race costs LOTRO players $40,- more (deluxe edition). WoW's deluxe edition only adds cosmetic fluff.

All things considered, it's clear that LOTRO's prices, especially those of the deluxe and legendary edition, are quite high compared to what's customary in the industry.

It's the thought that counts

Even though the LOTRO developers may choose to live in their own virtual Middle-earth bubble, players are aware of the MMO market and its customary prices. You cannot blame players for being displeased by being ripped off. As a LOTRO player myself, I want Standing Stone Games to continue to work on LOTRO and produce more content, but when the prices radiate such greed, I feel less inclined to do so.

Standing Stone Games (SSG) built up a lot of goodwill by going indie earlier this year. Many players felt that past greedy business decisions were forced from 'above' by Warner Bros. or Turbine. Now SSG is its own studio, we know this is not the case: it looks like SSG brought the same tone deaf marketing team along when making the switch.

Part of LOTRO's playerbase consists of extremely loyal fans that don't play any other games and are willing to pay anything. The Mordor expansion is heavily relying on these people. But the price is high. In doing so, SSG spends some of the goodwill of the community that was carefully built up earlier this year - and karma is easier spent than gained. It's not just the goodies that tempt players to spend money on a pricey expansion: it's also their belief in the game studio and their willingness to support said studio. This is especially the case for an old game that cathers to loyal, veteran players rather than new ones. When charged exorbitant amounts, it's not surprising when players feel insulted and decide to buy the new expansion with saved up LOTRO points rather than spending real money on it.

Perhaps this is what it costs to keep an indie game studio up and running these days. If that's the case, I'd love to know. I bet people would be way more willing to pay more! Sadly, transparency is underrated. If you're going to charge way more than customary for your content, give some explanation to your players why that is, or it'll only come off as insulting. At the end of the day, the only one SSG hurts with overpricing their expansion, is SSG.

Since I like to keep myself in the dark, the pictures in this post are not of Mordor. They are, however, taken not far north of the Black Gate and radiate a similar air of despair that we no doubt can expect to enjoy in the expansion.