14 DAY TRIAL // History has not been kind to MMOs in the last few months. After all, Hellgate: London is gone, Tabula Rasa went out with a bang earlier in the year, and Age of Conan has been merging servers in an effort to make sure that the player density is constant. It seems that only World of Warcraft from Blizzard, and free-to-play initiatives are now successful.
Yet, one MMO still going strong is The Lord of the Rings Online which, although not managing to capture 10 million players, has a stable player base deeply involved in the game. And the developers over at Turbine are confident that the MMO will be successful in the long term.
Aaron Campbell, who is the live producer for The Lord of the Rings Online, told VG247 that “If anything, The Lord of the Rings Online is growing. We have no plans to merge servers. And please don’t mention it, it makes me twitch unpleasantly.”
One of the reasons for the staying power of the Tolkien inspired MMO has been the way it makes use of its license in order to make sure that players do typical in-game activities, like raiding, joining parties and leveling up, while also experiencing the rather extensive lore of the setting.
It also helps that Turbine is offering more content regularly and that a lot of players are probably still in the game waiting for areas such as Mordor to be opened up to characters. Of course, this offers a potential problem for the developers, who can look forward to a big drop in subscription numbers once the entire Middle Earth is offered up to players.
It may still be some time until then and Turbine is promising that, even if the end game is in sight, it will still strive to expand it, both geographically and gameplay-wise, making sure that players are satisfied with their The Lord of the Rings Online experience.