homepage:http://lotro.turbine.com/
some details abt tis game:
2.7 Costs
The game will not be free: you will have to buy the game/box and in
addition pay a monthly fee. The exact prices are not known yet but
will be competitive. Current similar games cost the
following:
one time 50 US dollars for the initial release including one month
of playing time
after the first month 10-15 US dollars each month depending on the
number of months you subscribe for at once including (smaller)
periodic expansions
30 US dollars for each separate released big expansions
This "high price" will come as a surprise to some people but are
needed to cover the high costs (see below) and you are getting a
lot for it in return:
You will get to wander the whole of Middle-earth and not just a
small sliver the Fellowship walked through (like in other
LotR-inspired games). To give you an idea of the size: running from
the Grey Havens to Rivendell will take about 10 hours real
time.
The game will get new content every 6-8 weeks financed from the
monthly fees
You can play together with some 100k people of which some 3,000
will be directly playing on the same server as you: with those 3000
nuts, you can play with (and against), chat with and conquer the
troubles of the world with.
The game will be moderated/controlled giving cheaters and griefers
less chance
Periodic free additions to the game making it possible to find new
things all the time and the occasional paid for HUGE addition
Because of the previous things, the game will remain fun and new
for a long long long period of time, which will save you heaps of
money since you do not have to buy another game for a long long
long time.
Apart from wanting to make some profit, the reason for a monthly
fee is simply that they need recurring income to pay for recurring
costs:
Costs for technical and CS staff
Costs for bandwidth
Costs for replacing equipment
Costs for the live time making periodical expansions at no extra
costs.
In addition the development costs are much higher because the game
must be incredibly big to be able to entertain a few thousand
people at the same time. Also they need to buy all the servers to
run the game
i meen wow.... after reading tis, world of warcraft isnt the best
game at all, it now has a competitor
