It must be a month that has at least 28 days in it, because Turbine is rolling out yet another LOTRO welcome back event for former subscribers. I've lost track, but this makes at least three free-retrial so far in 2009, and that last one ended up running for well over a week due to server issues. (Why they want to repeat that situation by increasing server loads right after a patch AGAIN is beyond me.)
Seriously, guys, this is getting embarrassing. I've already decided that I'm waiting for Rohan. Keep this up and you'll start to scare me into thinking that your numbers are so bad that you're planning to pull an AC2 by launching the expansion box to cash in one last time off of your remaining faithful before pulling the plug. As I already discussed a retrial or two ago, I can't even take advantage of your retrial right now if I wanted to, because my character is level capped for not owning the current expansion.
If you're really interested in luring me back into the game, here's a deal I would snatch up without hesitation:
1. Wait until one month before Rohan launches.
2. Re-offer the $30/3 months deal.
3. Offer a free Moria key (currently $10) with a paid Rohan pre-order.
Yet another chance to resubscribe at full price (worse than the deal you were offering last month) with the expansion so far away that you haven't even announced its existence yet is just not going to cut it.
I played the trial for a few days and then did not subscribe. At least once a week I was emailed by Turbine about coming back to play until I went to the website and had it completely cut off.
ReplyDeleteIt was fairly annoying.
I played one of the betas. It seemed ok, but it didn't really grab me either. And I loved (and still love) my EQ2 and didn't (and don't) really care to split my mmo time between several games when each has a different subscription cost. I don't mind having EQ2, VG, and SWG all on my pc becuz they're all included in the station pass, but when each new game starts adding more and more cost.... Nope.
ReplyDeleteFortunately since I was only in the beta, not even a trial I'm not getting the "try us again" offers. Well.. not for LotRO, anyway. The DDO spam was a little embarrassing for a while. Though since it's going F2P I may give it another look. Time will tell.
I think the way that SOE (and now Mythic apparently) handles things is better. Instead of having "welcome back" weekends they just stick ten free days on your account that you can use whenever you feel like it.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, you may have noticed a pattern to the free time in LoTRO. Any time they patch in something major they have a "welcome back" weekend to try and attract lapsed subs. We just got a new 12 man multi-boss raid, new high end three man instances (designed by the DDO team), a major revamp of the crafting system, and an expended summer festival. They waited until they had the bugs ironed out with the three mans and then announced this free weekend.