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LoTRO Holiday Gifts: Raging Against Turbine
By Cameron Sorden | December 7, 2007
Maybe it’s just sour grapes, but I’m a little irked by Lord of the Rings Online’s holiday promotions. If you haven’t seen it yet, they’re doing two different things: Founders and lifetime subscribers will be receiving the free level 25 Bree Horse (which the European players got with the Gold Box), and then there’s the new holiday pricing that’s available to everyone. You can sign up for three months of play at $29.97, so about ten bucks per month.
However, to qualify for the Bree Horse, you had to be a subscribed founder at the time of the promotion. That annoys me, because I intend to go back to LoTRO and try it again eventually, and I’d love to have access to the Bree Horse. Moreover, I’m a founder. Since it sounds like they’re giving the horse to all your characters and the new characters you make in perpetuity, I totally would have resubscribed to get the horse, if just for the month. Now, I’m just annoyed that I missed out because there was no warning about the promotion. (Yes, I know it’s supposed to be a special gift to reward subscribers, and no, I don’t care.)
As for the holiday pricing, what annoys me there is that you can lock it in and continue paying the special holiday price for as long as you want. They’re basically giving the special founder’s price to whoever wants it. That’s fine and dandy, except that I can’t re-enable my founder’s pricing since there was a gap in my subscription. If you’re going to let people switch to what’s basically the same pricing plan, why can’t I start up at my founder’s price again?
On the whole, these are cool perks and Turbine’s got a good record of keeping their community happy. I’m just annoyed that former subscribers don’t get any heads up about this kind of stuff, which could easily serve as a hook to bring back players to LoTRO. Bah humbug.
Topics: Random |
December 7th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Just makes me happy I’m a LOTRO lifetimer! It’s great to be able to take breaks now and then without being hassled to cancel then resub later, not to mention little things like this that are a great way for Turbine to continue saying “thanks” to those of us who jumped in early.
Since you opted for lifetime on Hellgate, I hope Flagship gives you similar promotions down the road.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Merry Christmas, I guess
December 8th, 2007 at 7:40 am
Wait? You expected Founder special pricing to never cross over into the general audience? ROFL, Turbine got you.
It really irks me to see LotRO “lifers” try to scrape for any reason so they can say that they are getting a good return on investment.
December 8th, 2007 at 9:41 am
Nah, it’s not that I’m annoyed that lifer pricing crossed over. It doesn’t bug me that they’re offering it to more people.
What bugs me is that I can’t re-enable my special pricing (if you take a break in playing you lose your founder pricing), which seems dumb if they’re just going to open it to everyone anyway. Sure, I could lock in the holiday pricing. But what if I wanted to resub in February?
Like I said, it’s kind of silly to be annoyed. I know this. It’s irrational.
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