LOTRO Executive Producer, Kate Paiz, issued the following letter yesterday, under the title of "Producer's Letter October 2010". It promises further changes to the game in November. On the face of it, this sounds like good news, as it may be the first indication of regular new content. However, the more you think about it, the more questions it raises, most of which do not have an answer at present. There is also the fact that the European market is still one patch behind the US, an issue that still may not be addressed by November. As you can see, there is much to contemplate. Firstly, here is the letter.

Producer's Letter October- 2010

Hello everyone,

It has been more than a month now since we launched Enedwaith and Book 2, and we hope you’ve been enjoying the new content and other changes to the game! It’s been such a pleasure to see how friendly and helpful all of you are to the new players just joining, and how busy many of the towns have been!

As some of you know, I was invited to speak at the Austin Game Developers Conference and present some details on the results of LOTRO’s introduction of the free option and Store. I’d like to share some of that talk with you, now. First off, the results have been great – our revenues have doubled, we’ve had a million new accounts created, and our subscription numbers continue to grow! I made two main points at GDC (other than talking about the results), which are:

Turbine’s philosophy on making great MMOs centers around the following four points:

    * Build a great game & consistently deliver polished game updates, so that the core gameplay continues to be strong and fun – two elements needed if players are going to keep coming back.
    * Give players ways they can customize how to pay and play the game, with different account levels, payment options, and content types – making sure that we offer something for every player interested in the game.
    * Make the buying experience as easy as possible and integrate into gameplay – in game purchase experiences that are awkward and hard to understand do not encourage repeat business.
    * Provide responsive and reliable customer service for players, including actively listening to player concerns and responding to feedback with game changes or adjustments.

As a result of the change in our business model, we have grown our view on how to develop new content and features for the game.

    * Listen to your players. Players vote by buying or playing content or items they like the best, and by giving direct feedback through the forums, customer service, and chat in game. By staying tuned in on how players are feeling about the game, devs know better what to add, what to fix, and how to ensure that players keep having fun.
    * Optimize the Store. Focus on improving the buying experience and catalog offering to make sure player needs are being addressed is vital to having a healthy business.
    * Quality storytelling is also really good business! Great content engages players and keeps them having fun. In a business model where players can choose to not pay for the game, players that are in game and having fun are more apt to stay engaged and purchase additional quality content and other items.

We’ve been so pleased with the response of both our new players and our tenured players to the new business model options, and we promise to keep delivering great content and features updates to the game on a regular basis.

On the topic of updates, I wanted to let you know that we have shifted the way we think about our releases. In the past our updates depended on new Books being added to the Epic story. Going forward, updates will not always feature a new installment in the epic story line. By decoupling the Books from Updates we’ll have the flexibility to offer different types of new content and new features in each release. This will also allow us to do more releases each year. Don’t worry, continuing the Epic Story and continuing along the path of the Ring is very important to us! We’ll have more information to share about that and our plans for 2011 in the coming months.

“So what’s next?”, you may ask. Our next update is right around the corner and while I don’t want to spill it all, here’s a quick look at some of what you can expect in the November Update:

    * Tasks - a new content type for all players to enjoy in the early game
    * A major revision to the Vault
    * New skills and updates for the Lore-master and Rune-keeper classes.
    * A change to the way we handle the Mines of Moria and Siege of Mirkwood expansion packs.

The Moria and Mirkwood expansion packs will still be purchasable in the LOTRO Store, but all players will be able to enter those areas and play through the epic quests just as you can currently with the Shadows of Angmar areas.

A dev diary on the Vault UI changes is coming this week, and additional dev diaries explaining our new Tasks system as well as other changes will be following in the coming weeks.

In the future, I’ll be talking with you more often in letters like this one, and of course we’ll be doing dev diaries as usual, so that you have a better sense of what content and features are coming and when. I encourage each of you to participate in testing new content when it becomes available on Bullroarer. This is a great way to get your voice heard and help us finalize and polish upcoming changes and new features. Of course we’re always reading feedback and suggestions posted to the forums as we are planning updates and deciding what we should be building next. We’re listening, so please let us know what you want to see in the game, in the store, or in your experience with us in general.

Thanks for being such an important part of LOTRO – we are so pleased with how great our community is, and how you make the game come alive!

See you in game!

Kate “Nereid” Paiz .

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