MMO Week in Review: Monetization lessons from LOTRO and EVE

This week in MMOs saw two stories that really tell opposite tales when it comes to monetization. Lord of the Rings Online came out with a plan to make freely available significant chunks of the game that had previously been locked behind years’ worth of paid expansions, essentially streamlining and simplifying the entire business model of the game, to the cheers of MMO players. EVE Online, however, had been stewing in a money mess of its own making dubbed barge-gate, whereby players and influencers were in open revolt over. Fortunately, late Friday night, CCP Games finally gave in and canceled the barge sales, but not without a nasty PR hit.

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORIES

LOTRO is making tons of expansion content permanently free, adding a new Hobbit zone - Hey, do you like free stuff? Lord of the Rings Online's March 2022 producer letter has arrived, and it's promising tons of free stuff in Update 33. Essentially, Standing Stone…

CCP Games walks back EVE Online’s bargegate fiasco, plans ship packs ‘made for new players, by veterans’ - The past few days have seen many EVE Online players up in arms over the sale of a mining barge bundle that CCP Games put out last week, causing player…

Four Winds: The good, the bad, and the weird of Lost Ark’s endgame - So here I am, at the top of the mountain of Lost Ark, but then another rise greets me. I've been moving at a pretty leisurely pace since the game…

NCsoft is reimagining Lineage Eternal as Throne and Liberty with a new IP and look - Don't look now, but NCsoft is pivoting hard away from the Lineage brand: It's just reintroduced Lineage III aka Lineage Eternal aka Project The Lineage aka Project TL as... Throne…

The Soapbox: SWTOR’s Legacy of the Sith is bad, but not for the reasons you’ve heard - I've never been a big Star Wars fan, but I am a big BioWare fan, and after many failed attempts to get into the game, Star Wars: The Old Republic…

Tamriel Infinium: Is Elder Scrolls Online a pretty or ugly game? - I've been loosely following the general discussion of Elder Scrolls Online over the years, and one thread that I've seen picked up and toyed with from time to time is…

Elder Scrolls Online’s Ascending Tide DLC is live on PC today - [AL:ESO]Elder Scrolls Online is dropping its first big DLC of the year today with the release of The Ascending Tide DLC on PC, Mac, and Stadia. The DLC kicks off…

LOTRO Legendarium: Lord of the Rings Online takes much-needed steps forward - I don't know about you, Lord of the Rings Online fans, but I am really, really digging these quarterly producer's letters. It feels like just the right amount of information…

Wisdom of Nym: Final Fantasy XIV’s limited job problem - All right. So are we done with people being mad about Blue Mage in Final Fantasy XIV yet? No, of course not; that was a silly hope and it's silly…

Mortal Online 2 apologizes for ‘drought of new content’ while it stabilizes post-launch - Mortal Online's latest patch, 1.0.0.22, went live earlier this week; it focuses largely on fixing UI and landscape bugs, though it also tweaks the game's reputation system, as players will…

Vague Patch Notes: Pretty is boring in MMOs - So NCsoft unveiled Throne and Liberty and it looks... pretty? I guess? But it looks pretty in the worst way. It looks pretty in the way that makes "pretty" sound like…

WoW Factor: No one is attacking you for liking World of Warcraft - Let's just go ahead and give away the conclusion of this article right in the first line: There is no grand conspiracy of people out there who just hate World…

Hearthstone announces Voyage to the Sunken City card set for next month - Scrounge up your SCUBA gear and make best friends with your neighborhood murlocs, because Hearthstone is heading underwater for its next card set. Blizzard announced Voyage to the Sunken City,…

Zenith’s Ramen VR just scored another $35M in investment, ‘accelerates’ efforts on PC version - Zenith studio Ramen VR just secured more money to bolster the future of the VR MMORPG: The company announced last night that it just closed its Series B investment round,…

Elyon and ArcheAge line up huge releases for the coming months - On Thursday, Kakao hosted an informative livestream in which the studio revealed some major updates coming to both Elyon and ArcheAge in the near future. Suffice it to say, players…

Massively Overthinking: Does wallet-voting work in modern MMOs? - MOP reader The Grand Nagus recently pointed us to his thread on the Star Trek Online reddit where players were trying to sort out how they could "wallet vote" in…

Massively on the Go: Previewing Orna’s 3.1 story update and quality-of-life improvements - Looking for a mobile MMO that doesn't ask for personal information, encourages getting out of the house, but doesn't want you to walk and play? Well, that's basically what I've…

Elyon adds new events and raises the level cap in its latest update - Badges? Elyon thinks you'll need some stinkin' badges! See, the game is giving out badges when completing the Commander's Training Field to celebrate the opening of that content, and you can…

Blade & Soul’s Unchained Chaos is live with new dungeon and Gunslinger’s third spec - Blade & Soul players have a lot to take in this week as Unchained Chaos is now live for the NCsoft MMORPG. The crown jewel for this update is of…

EverQuest turns 23 years old and throws a bash to match - It's a very happy birthday to EverQuest, which marked its 23rd birthday this week following its release back in March 1999. Let's just absorb the fact that this MMO came…

EVE Online community podcast loses official CCP Games partnership over media blackout participation - Yesterday, we reported on a media blackout protest being fomented by the EVE Online community in response to CCP Games' monetization decisions over the past few years, with a kitted-out…

Elite Dangerous puts console to PC wealth transfers on hold to assess possible changes - Before Elite: Dangerous studio Frontier Developments elected to put the kibosh on content development for consoles, it allowed players a one-time transfer of wealth from one platform to another, moving…

Lost Ark says it’s slowing content rollout to bolster economy and avoid rushing players to endgame - Amazon and Smilegate delivered a joint address to the Lost Ark playerbase late last night, though whether it sufficiently assuages the core community concerns is up for debate. The studios…

Perfect Ten: World of Warcraft’s array of bear-based threats - Hey, if you've never played World of Warcraft, there's something you should know: This is a game with a lot of bears. You might not think much about that because really,…

EVE Online streamers organize an ‘EVE Blackout’ to protest CCP’s monetization of the sandbox - The complaints about EVE Online's recent monetization moves are not going away despite CCP Games' best efforts to keep its head down. Some streamers of the game are taking part…

New World backs off plan to test 40v40 wars thanks to player feedback - Earlier this week, Amazon announced that it was considering major changes to New World's large-scale wars. On the test server was a revision that would've seen those wars cap out…

Guild Wars 2’s latest End of Dragons patch blaps Catalysts with the nerf bat - If you play a Catalyst, you're probably still reeling from yesterday's Guild Wars 2 patch, as ArenaNet brought its nerf bat out and it had your name on it. It…

Chinese regulators draft ‘youth mode’ requirement for online games and more - It appears that China's gaming industry still hasn't come close to hitting rock bottom. According to the South China Morning Post, China's Cyberspace Administration (CAC) has drafted yet another round…

Interview: Mortal Online 2’s CEO on launch, the playerbase, tech, and the future of the sandbox - Mortal Online 2 was one of multiple MMOs to launch in the first few months of 2022, and it began life with the best problem: Way too many people showed…

Niantic suspends Pokemon Go and Ingress in Russia, donates to support Ukraine - Late last week, Niantic announced that it was pulling its massively online alternate reality games from Russia and Belarus following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The company made the announcement, which…

Blade and Soul will sell class changes for a modest $100 apiece - Sick of your class in Blade and Soul, but you don't want to reroll? Starting tomorrow, you will have another option: to pay for a class change. This move puts…

Whatever happened to Derek Smart’s Alganon? - Sit right back and I'll tell you a tale -- a tale of the most amazing MMORPG that took a trip to the convenience store one day and never came…

THIS WEEK’S CASTS & STREAMS

Massively OP Podcast Episode 364: Turtle power!

Battle Bards Episode 211: Shops and services

The Stream Team: Spies and jumping puzzles in Dungeons & Dragons Online

The Stream Team: Starting SWTOR’s Legacy of the Sith for real

The Stream Team: Fighting for a sea fort and more in Sea of Thieves

The Stream Team: Can’t Trust a Pirate on the Ides of March in Guild Wars 2

The Stream Team: Wandering Valheim’s caves of wonder

The Stream Team: A first look at the early access of tabletop MMO World Seed

Every week, get caught up on the MMO genre’s latest news and Massively OP’s best content in our MMO Week in Review! Want more roundups of content? Try Friday’s Betawatch for MMO testing highlights, Saturday’s Make My MMO for MMO crowdfunding updates, and Sunday’s The MOP Up, which mops up all the bits of news we didn’t cover anywhere else.