In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Lord of the Rings Online executive producer Jeffrey Steefel showed just how much faith he has in the spin-off MMO.
When asked how he defines success without "ten million players to brag about," Steefel admits that Blizzard is the only company to achieve "mass-market critical mass" but also believes LotRO will be the second came to accomplish such:
"The first threshold is, can you make a viable game, 90 per cent of people don't get past that. In some respects success is just getting past that. The next is, do you have an ongoing, viable, profitable business that is growing? Definitely hit that mark.... And then, there's another level of success, which is reaching a certain mass-market critical mass, which to be totally fair, only Blizzard has achieved completely so far. We think that we are the game that has the most likelihood of being the second to do that, but we're not there yet.
That's a combination of expanding worldwide like we're doing - that's something that'll help expand the critical mass of LOTRO, it's definitely something that helped WOW tremendously, obviously. It's a challenge, but we're confident that we can get there, especially with something of this broad appeal and high quality."
At a later point in the interview, he likens Turbine to David and Blizzard to Goliath, with the smaller company looking for a way of distinguishing itself and its game from Blizzard and World of Warcraft.
While the game's current player population has remained stagnant, he states that "the awareness of Tolkien is about to increase quite a bit," with Guillermo del Toro's upcoming Hobbit movies.
LotRO's progression is also a slow climb because of how in depth the development process can get, Steefel explained. And though the development team remains loyal to Tolkein's legacy and the LotR license overall, certain creative freedoms are taken as the game progresses:
"We're slowly trying new things; the addition of the Rune-Keeper in Moria, a straightforward magic using class, is a pretty big step in that respect. It's not something that a pure Tolkien lore person would accept, it just couldn't exist in Middle-Earth. On the other hand, this is an RPG, it must exist.So, our Middle-Earth needs to diverge slightly from the literary Middle-Earth, and Tolkien enterprises has been okay with that, I think that they're comfortable with us allows us to push those things a little further."
Steefel is preparing for the long haul and expects the LotR MMO to last for years and years. As such, Turbine may need to explore different business models in order to cater to a wider gamer demographic:
"For people that want to have a more casual relationship with the game, and just have fun a couple of hours, a couple of times a week, right now I think we have a difficult value proposition. They're paying a premium price to get a whole bunch more than they actually want. So, maybe there's room to satisfy those people in a slightly different way.This is a franchise that's going to continue for years and years and years, and there's no way that the singular, monolithic, USD 14.95 a month subscription model is going to last for years and years and years all by itself. I think the answer is, it has to change."
Despite such overt optimism, he did not publicly release any figures corresponding to subscribers and player count. However, he maintains that Lord of the Rings Online is doing exceptionally well in terms of profit and growth.
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