By Jim Rossignol on November 3rd, 2010 at 9:18 am.
The free-to-play launch of Lord Of The Rings Online in Europe is upon us, and to celebrate Codemasters have provided us with a number of 500 points (roughly £5) vouchers of in-game cash tokens, which you can spend on trinkets and treasures from the game’s item store. Want one? Then email us here with your best idea for the name of an ent. The best ent names will win the virtual elf bucks. All the usual rules apply, with the additional caveat that you need to be resident in an EU country to apply.We will select the winners on Monday and then LOTRO folk will be in touch with the vouchers.
You can always play the game for free, of course.
EDIT: Compo closed. Winners will be contacted with their cash soonish by agents of Codemasters/Turbine.
03/11/2010 at 09:28 K says:
Will this also never be finished, like the Chime contest?
03/11/2010 at 09:42 Jim Rossignol says:
Eh? Chime contest was finished weeks ago.
EDIT: Right, I didn’t update the post to say codes had been sent.
03/11/2010 at 09:55 K says:
That would mean I didn’t win? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D58LpHBnvsI&feature=related
Can we get a list of winning entries then?
03/11/2010 at 09:47 Uglycat says:
Could we also have the winrars posted?
03/11/2010 at 10:54 clownst0pper says:
Oh good lord my first RPS comment removed!*
*I’m hurt and confused??…:(
03/11/2010 at 10:59 Lukasz says:
LOTR is doing that badly that they have to move it to free to play scheme>
03/11/2010 at 11:20 Matthew says:
Uh, no.
03/11/2010 at 11:35 MKharris says:
Um, have you missed the massive shifts in MMO business model thinking over the last year?
Going F2P just means they understand what is happening to the market.
D&D online has done very well out of F2P….
03/11/2010 at 13:01 MXZ says:
ROFL, “Going F2P just means they understand what is happening to the market.” – Is this how LOTRO fanboys these days are saying “WoW has utterly dominated 2 generations of MMOs with no end in sight”? Face it, the only way to compete with WoW is to let people play your game for free and pray they waste a bunch of money on trinkets.
Maybe we’ll see next year that they made money doing this. Personally, seems to me like Turbine’s days are numbered.
03/11/2010 at 13:06 AndrewC says:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-10-27-zynga-valued-at-whopping-USD5-51-billion
03/11/2010 at 13:09 MXZ says:
So a company that isn’t Turbine makes a lot of money with a online game in a different genre that isn’t even a PC game.
03/11/2010 at 13:09 CMaster says:
Are you people deliberately dense?
LOTRO has been successful. Yeah, it’s no WoW, but it gathered hundreds of thousands of subscribers and made a lot of money and was continuing to make plenty of money. Turbine have done this simply because their failing MMO, DDO, hugley increased its profitability when going for the mixed sub/F2P option. Seeing the chance to make even more money, Turbine went for it. Neither LOTRO nor Turbine were struggling, they’re just looking to maximise profitability.
03/11/2010 at 13:15 MXZ says:
Did you not even read your own post? Going F2P is a last-ditch attempt to save an unprofitable MMO. You think they would switch LOTRO to F2P if LOTRO was actually successful? Yeah, let’s just risk millions per month in guaranteed revenue for an uncertain, spiky revenue.
In other words, you can’t just DDO LOTRO. Unless LOTRO is actually failing… http://syncaine.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/you-cant-just-ddo-lotro/
03/11/2010 at 14:17 The Great Wayne says:
Ditto. Lotro was successful, but not successful enough to the taste of Turbine/WB interactive.
They’re just copying what worked for DDO to lotro trying to make the most out of it. Lotro players don’t care about WoW, as long as WoW players stay on WoW.
Actually, if you think about it, it’s in the interest of most MMO players that WoW stays there, efficiently grabbing the attention of the gaming population you don’t want to see in your game of choice.
It’s not unlike the pipebomb from L4D when you think about it… except, well, this one doesn’t explode (instead it cuts you off from any social contact and strikes you with obesity).
03/11/2010 at 17:53 Howl says:
Yes, WoW is like flypaper. It’s in everyone’s best interest to keep it hanging up there.
03/11/2010 at 11:31 MKharris says:
According to lore an Ents true name is hugely long.
IIRC Treebeards full name in Entish takes over a day to say (although Ents do speak very slowly).
In Entish, names are more like descriptions – somebodies name is in essence a far ranging description and a history biography of their entire life.
03/11/2010 at 12:01 Lobotomist says:
Jeez. Hope i win. That will be enough to buy one quest pack :D
03/11/2010 at 12:51 Dominic White says:
Entered – I’ve been waiting for the game to go F2P, and while 500 points is fuck-all, it’s better than nothing.
03/11/2010 at 18:05 Howl says:
I thought I’d give this a whirl and see if the core experience is any different from the release client.
HOLY HELL….ITS TEN GIGS!!!!
Surely if you’re shifting over to a modular, pay-per-content model you can launch a minimal client that downloads content as you purchase it? I can’t see that many people being bothered to download 10GB for what is essentially a demo.
03/11/2010 at 22:58 Starky says:
It’s an MMO… there’s no getting around it.
That said, 10 gigs will take me about 2 hours, 90 mins if my connection maxes – so it’s not a huge deal for me.
04/11/2010 at 03:29 Ted says:
I downloaded and played this for a few hours when it went free to play in the U.S. Even at free, I feel like I was ripped off. What a complete piece of garbage.