coppied this from
MMORPG.com.
If you ever paid to play the game, your account type is premium.
Characters played once while you where VIP are not subject to gold, bagspace and trait limits even after downgrading to Premium(cheaper to subscribe for a month than upgrade several chars from store). Looks like our existing charaters will not be subject to these limits. I know I have more bags, gold and traits that the limits show. I also still have a journal full of high-level quests that it looks like I can do, even though they are now paid content.
1. F2P, what does it mean incase of LotRO?
It means you get the gameclient as a free download at LotRO.com or LotRO-Europe.com as of 10.09.2010. It also means you can create an account for free and log into the game without being required to enter CC information or some other payment method. The European site and servers are run by Codemasters, and they have a multilingual client(English, French, German) and support. You can play on either or both, there is also a Russian, Korean, Japanese and Chinese site but i know nothing about them. Take lag due to distance into account when choosing where to play, though Europe to U.S. and vice versa is playable.
2. The Store.
Yes there will be a ingame store. It will use a currency called Turbine Points(or just Points in Europe), this currency can be bought via the usual means(CC, Paypal, C&B etc) or earned ingame by completing Deeds(around 5k TPs currently currently known to be earnable, per char). There is a wide variety of items offered, things like pretty and not so pretty cosmetic clothes, consumables from healing potions to one use items granting you rested XP etcpp. Most important though is that a huge pile of content in the game is sold via this store. The good news is that all content is a once per account sale, the bad news is that basicly all quests, instances and Deeds beyond the racial starting areas needs to be bought with points(as far as we know they are always combined in Questpacks, Skirmishes might be sold seperately).
To give you a rough idea, 1k points cost about 10-15$(I will update once i get accurate prices when the service goes live). An expansion costs between 1.8-2.5k points, a questpack for an area that always includes all quests and instances in that area(even raids) around 350-800. You earn between 3-15 TP per Deed. A normal Zone has between 100-245 TP worth of Deeds to do, instances will have less. Points through deeds get earned per character, but get into a account wide pool. Same Deeds on different chars still gives the full Points.
The store currently holds no High Quality gear that would usually be aquired in instances, nor are there plans to add it according to Turbine. Reputation based mounts will also not be included in the store. They sell you the content, you go there to farm the gear. Biggest advantage you currently get out of the store(and store alone) are health or powerpots not sharing a CD with the crafted ones.
3. Who gets what content?
3.1 Similarities - Everyone gets this/has to buy this
Character Slots
The base of charslots is 5 per server, it gets adjusted by MoM expansion(+2), Adventure Pack(+2) and Store bought slots(+1, up to 8x). So the maximum of characters per server would be 17 for VIP, 15 For Premium and 10 for Free players.
Storage
The base storage of your char is 5 Bags with 15 places each, Premium and Free players only get 3(upgradeable via TPs to base). You also get a bankvault with 30 spaces that can be upgraded 6 times with either ingame gold or TPs, the last two upgrades for a total of 8 are only available with TPs(150 space total). There is a option for a shared storage, its included with the Adventure Pack and has otherwise to be bought via the store. It has a base of 20 spaces which are accessible to all your characters on the server and can be upgraded multiple times via TPs(max 50 afaik).
Additionally the variaty of thrash loot has been decreased, and the stacksize increased.
Expansions and other Content
MoM - The Mines of Moria.
Full Expansion. Sold via ingame store or boxed in regular stores. Regular store version(complete edition) may 30 days of VIP access included. This gives access to Warden and Runekeeper classes, two more charslots, +10 levelmaximum, Legendary Items(LIs) aswell as several new zones and instances. Its a prerequisite for SoM.
SoM - Siege of Mirkwood
Smaller Expansion. Sold via ingame store or online. Gives access to a new zone, new instances, +5 levelmaximum, 6 new skirmishes and removes limits from Skirmish play.
Adventure pack
DLC. Sold via ingame store or online. Gives access to shared storage and +2 charslots.
3.2 Account Types
Independent of the store there are three access levels which are called VIP, Premium and Free that have a huge influence about what you get and how much its going to cost you to see/do something. Your account go through some or all of these phases, however once premium or VIP you can never become a free player again.
Free - You successfully created an account without spending money
You get 3 base Charslots less and can access all Quests, Instances and Deeds in the racial starting zones and play the Epic storyline up to level 50 without being forced to spend TP in the store. Content has to be bought by spendind TPs in the Store, but will be available accountwide forever. Major limits in regards to chatting up zones, sending tells to multiple people at the same time or using the auction house(buy only). Crafting, bagspace, max gold, traits and swift travel are restricted. Limit removals, charslots, bagspace and content can still be bought through earned TPs like a premium player. You do not get rested XP and can not do any form of Monsterplay. You also have the lowest priority in Server queues.
Notice: The act of buying TPs would make you premium. The spending of earned TPs however would not.
Premium - Your LotRO account was atleast once involved in earning Turbine/Codemasters money(at any point in time).
You get 2 base characterslots less. You have similar limits as a Free player, but they are usually less severe. Your priority in server queues is higher and you get customer support for 30 days following the purchase of TPs. The main difference between Free and Premium though is that the latter will have alot more TPs to spend getting what he wants, while a free player will have to ration his TPs in a way that improves his TP income(so he can get more content). Your quality of life can be increased greatly by spending as little as 10$ worth of TPs to get two zones to level in post starting zones.
VIP - Active monthly payment at Industry standard prices(i.e. around 10-15$ a month)
They get everything Subscribers get today, and will get things in the future todays Subscribers would have gotten if they hadnt become VIPs due to the F2P release. Read that again and take it literally. That means they generally do not have to buy Quests, Deeds or Instances in the Store, but it does not include any of the content or perks of the expansions. It does include a 500 turbine points per month stipend though. They are able to participate in Monsterplay on both sides. This is basicly P2P as we know and love(or hate) it.
Notice: Lifetimers are always and permanently VIPs.
3.3 Value
Premium and VIP payments run contraire to each other. The more content you buy, the less value you get for your VIP subscription. In an extreme case you would pay 15$ each month just for two character slots, rested XP, swift travel and monsterplay. The opposite extreme would be someone being a VIP for years and then dropping to a premium status with huge content holes(Moria and Mirkwood will likely at some point become medium level content, the latest zone enedwaith is already not included in them).
So do your math if you want to safe money.
4. Random Tipps, Tricks and Info
You can enter Zones without buying them, just not do Quests, Deeds or Instances in them. Does not apply to Zones contained in the Expansions.
Codemasters is still offering Lifetime abo @ around 200€ till F2P launch, Turbine noticed they would be paying people(in TPs) to play their game in the longterm and stopped selling Lifetime already.
Free/Premium membership goes from slightly better than Free to almost as good as Lifetime, the more time you spend twinking(or the slower you level) the more time you will be able to play without paying. Also if you level 3-5 chars through a zone the deeds can make the zone pay for itself(notice the clever amount of chars required, free players get 2 on a single server).
Characters played once while you where VIP are not subject to gold, bagspace and trait limits even after downgrading to Premium(cheaper to subscribe for a month than upgrade several chars from store).
TPs are account wide. If a Free player is persistant enough he can get all content ingame aswell as remove all gameplay related disadvantages by farming Deeds on multiple servers(Server priority, chat & auction limitations are afaik hardcoded into being not a VIP). If you think Lineage was not that bad you might find it acceptable.
Turbine wants to bring Monsterplay as a Store item to premium and free players in the future.
Expansions are particularly good bang for your buck.
There will be new Servers at launch. All accounts can play on all servers, but not cross region.
