At the GDC Online conference in Texas, Lord of the Rings online Executive Producer Kate Paiz announced that the Free-to-Play transition has been an amazing success for Turbine. Not only have a million new accounts been created, but the game has doubled it’s revenue.

The details of the talk that Paiz gave can be found on joystick here.

Here are some numbers:

  • 20% of former LOTRO players have returned since the transition.
  • There has been a 300% increase in peak concurency (how many people are playing at once). In english, that means that there are 3 times as many people playing the game at any one time than before.
  • 400% increase in total active players.
  • 53% of players have used the in-game store for micro-transactions.

Pretty impressive, in my opinion.

The one thing that’s important to notice in all of this is that the game itself has not changed in any drastic way. Yes, there are some changes to the community, but nothing that in my mind has been a deal breaker. Although there are more people acting in very immature ways in the starter zone, I’ve been very impressed with the way in which the players have responded, which is to shut those people down in a very non-threatening way, i.e. “That’s not cool dude. Please stop.”

The only thing that’s missing now is some more content. Has anyone heard anything about some new content? Beuller? Bueller?

See you in-game!