LOTRO pay-to-win items ‘create solutions’

The recent addition of stat-based items added to Lord of the Rings Online’s cash store will help new players just starting out in the game, Turbine has stated.

While many users believe adding performance enhancing armour to the store will create a “pay-to-win” quality to the freemium MMO, Turbine communications director Adam Mersky explained to Gamefront that it actually creates solutions in the game.

“We have a lot of different players in the game. Lower level players are telling us that they are having difficulty obtaining good gear.

“This is us coming up with solutions to problems players are reporting to us. We’re trying to create solutions for players.”

He goes on to say that if the addition of these items creates problems for the game then Turbine will drop it immediately.

“We’re not adverse to pulling things off the store if they don’t work,” he explains. “We’re committed to keeping things balanced.”

Turbine has no plans to add raid gear to the store.

Lord of the Rings Online adopted a freemium model in September 2010 and saw an immediate increase in revenue and userbase soon after.

Despite all the controversy, this is still no Monoclegate. Turbine has a tendency to try and squeeze money out of any area they can in their game, but as long as this is purely built for low level users it’s not necessarily an EVE Online style drama.