LOTRO and The (Un)Free To Play Plan

Jeff Hollis looks at how the new deal from Turbine could be a real money-spinner for the LOTRO developers.Hello, my fellow virtual space dweller, and welcome to this week’s edition of MMO Weekly. In this week’s edition, we’ll explore the biggest news to hit MMOs in quite some time. That news, of course, is that the successful MMO Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) is breaking away from its subscription model, and is now becoming a “free to play” (FTP) game. Everyone is in a tizzy trying to wrap their brains around this, and gamers are all excited. The kicker, of course, that LOTRO actually isn’t really going free to play. Well, it is, but it isn’t. Sort of. Oh, never mind, read on, my fellow geekling!Read on after the break: