sooooo f2p is here

seemed like for months before it came out, everyone was talking about it. sounds really good right? I know of some people who said they were going to come and play when it became free.
Myself though, I was confused about how it all worked. I mean, I paid monthly for it. Was I going to stop paying? I thought I was the only one who was confused, but now I look back on it, and I am wondering why so many people were excited about it becoming f2p? I don't believe that I know anyone who was actually effected substantially by f2p.

Yes, I see that there is a positive. The servers all seemed to get upgraded. I mean, the game runs so f-ing smooth now. I love that. However, that's about it.
Some people say there are way more people playing. But here is the problem. The game is not free. It's like, a free demo. All these people who have come to play, are casual gamers. They won't be level 65's with multiple characters who play all the time. And really, you don't need more people to play the game except at the high levels. No one groups up at low levels anyway. If anything I've been effected negatively at low levels since now I have to queue to kill named bosses for quests, and loads of people are just stealing my ore.

Of course I do realize that Codemasters is probably making way more money. This might sound like it's not a positive for all of us, but it probably is. MMO's not named WOW usually don't last much longer than a couple of years. It is entirely possible that had this game not gone f2p, it could go bankrupt. Most of these games do and I don't know either way with this particular one, so I'd have to say it's safe to assume it needs to be making a shit ton of money.

Anyway I feel like I am no longer confused, but am I right? Am I wrong about any of this stuff?

Agree to a point - although I've not had a chance to play much of F2P, I was in the beta and preview etc., True the more causual demo free players won't be toting multiple 65 char's but that's good in a way. In the older days getting groups for lower level stuff was easy - there were always people around. Gradually the game got bigger and people dispersed more, mostly into moria. Trying to get a group to do non epic full fellowship low level stuff these days became hard.

You could usually rely on helpful clan people coming along for the ride, but often on chars that are too high level, taking some of the challenge and hence fun out of the experience. The new Free players will essentially pad out the lower levels and those that like it will become paid members when they progress to the upper levels.

When I looked forward to some of the aspects of F2P, it wasn't actually the 'free players' part, it was often some of the changes lumped in with it, such as the scaled instances, wardrobes etc.,

ohh yeah sorry I should add to the positives, the things you've said monkey in regards to scaled instances (or just adding all the instances in to skirmish menu), wardrobes etc that stuff is all very positive and I'm happy with.
and yes I guess I understand what you are saying, I will admit, on a few level 10-20ish quests where I just couldn't solo them, I would quite literally hang out in the area for 2 or 3 minutes until someone else came along and looked obviously to be doing the same quest. often there wouldn't even be words exchanged, just a quick invite, a quick kill and everyone on their way. that said, sometimes thats a negative too, as there are now a zillion people running around with no desire to actually form a community.

I think what annoys me the most is everyone seemed to be talking like they wouldn't have to be paying once the f2p kicked in. Which is pretty much not the case at all. I don't know if I misunderstood them, or they were confused.

oh and one more negative. is it just me or did they change the run animation of the hobbits?? my mintrel now runs with the animation of a dwarf. it looks terrible.

F2P is a good thing in my opinion: no more being summoned to an instance etc., scaleable shit is good too - even though I've not been on much in the past few days, what I've seen is goodness. I do hate the fucking vault system and will probably never learn to love it though.

The thing with F2P though is it's just a hook to get new players; if they like it they'll buy shit, it was never going to be 'free to play' everything.

Believe.

From what I gather, LOTRO was one of the only MMORPGs to be increasing in subscriber numbers even before F2P, so there was never any imminent danger in the game shutting down or losing servers. F2P will no doubt add to the number of players, which as stated before is a good thing, as it'll give more players for the low level stuff. One of the things I found is that places like 21st were substantially more packed than places like Bree, which is weird if you think about it.

Hopefully we'll have a fuller world, and more people to show off our shiny new mega-weapons and crafting expertise to, eh?

i h8 the new instance join! once it would be cool when a hunter would say "ive got camp nr there" now its straight into a instance, then if u want to do another one, u HAVE to disband and form a new group as the old instance will not dissapear......(yes even if it was completed ie boss killed)

agreed last night was lame because of that.
i didn't mind the skirmish thing that we used to have, as it isn't really the main part of the game, just something to do sometimes.. but now that they have pretty much made the entire top end of the game in the way of the skirmish, it's totally taken away the epic feel.

i think i'm going to permanently stick my minstrel in his house. i can just join you lot for instances from there. that's a proper hobbit thing to do eh.. never leave home