LotRO Producer "Hopeful" About Monetization Changes For Next Year

The first rule when talking about monetization for a free-to-play game is: "Don't talk about monetization, unless you're really, really, really ready to talk about monetization." If you give out vague information or leave out fine details -- intentionally or not -- players will use their vast imagination to come up with ideas of how it should be, and when your real plans are announced, you'll be lambasted for not measuring up to what you "promised."

That's why the decision of someone on the Lord of the Rings Online team to bring up monetization in a random forum thread is one that's fraught with peril. As MassivelyOP noticed, Producer Raninia said that changing monetization definitely wouldn't happen before the Gundabad expansion, as it's "too big a thing to handle at the same time as making a new expansion." The goal is to "get a plan that gets us 70-80% of the way there, get that out the door, then work on the rest," probably sometime in 2022.

Naturally, there was nothing specific mentioned about what would be changed -- cue the speculation I mentioned before -- but Raninia is putting together a proposal and hopes that "we'll have a decision on overall direction within the next month or two." Then again, having plans and discussions is pretty much the permanent state of LotRO development regarding major issues, so don't get too attached to that 2022 date for a monetization revamp.